27 
So we have endeavored to gather in this Museum not only that 
which shall please the eye and cultivate the taste, but also to give 
instruction to the student and the scientist. Our aim is to make 
these collections more and more the source and means of study, 
instruction and recreation. To do this we must have educated 
men, and the cooperation of our institutes of learning ; our halls 
will be opened to the schools and classes of this city who shall 
come with their teachers to receive that instruction, and pursue 
their investigations from the specimens that will make them profi- 
cient in their chosen vocation. The Trustees have endeavored, 
with the help of the city authorities during these many years past, 
to present to you and the public to-day, a Museum equal in all 
its parts, as we think, and I say it modestly, one of the best, and 
if allowed to grow and progress in the future, will be one of the 
most renowned museums of the world. 
Address of Hon. Seth Lozu, President of Columbia College : 
Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen. — A few years ago 
it was my good fortune to visit Mr. Edison in the establishment 
which he then maintained in the City of New York. He took 
me about it to see what was being done there, and as we came to 
some of these bulbs, which were being prepared for the electric 
light, he told me that they very early discovered that this light 
could be produced in a vacuum, and their great difficulty was to 
learn how to create a vacuum with commercial cheapness. At 
last it occurred to him, I believe, or to one of his colleagues, that 
the vacuum could be produced by driving mercury through the 
glass, the mercury being dense enough to dispel all the air, or a 
sufficient amount of it to answer their purpose. They thought 
then that they had solved their problem, only to discover that 
they could find no pump which would pump mercury, just because 
it was so dense no pump would do the work. At last it entered 
the fertile mind of that magician himself that the old pump of 
Archimedes, the endless screw, would do the business. As a 
consequence, this most modern of inventions rests absolutely for 
its possibility to-day upon one of the earliest recorded inventions 
of mankind. I think that is an instructive incident. 
