On the future extension of Birmingham industries / by G. Gore.

  • Gore, George, 1826-1909.
Date:
1872
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the future extension of Birmingham industries / by G. Gore. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    employer, Mr. Armstrong, a scientific man, and led him to construct the hydro-electric machine. The accumulation of electricity in submarine tele- graph cables was also first observed at the Gutta- Percha Company’s works, London. It was noticed on testing the cable by means of a voltaic battery (the cable being submerged in water) that dis- charges of electricity flowed from the cable after the battery was removed; this circumstance was investigated by Faraday, and led to improvements in submarine telegraphy. In these instances also the same general method was employed, viz., new experiments were made (though not intentionally) by putting matter and its forces under new condi- tions, and new results were observed. Many improvements in machinery, manufac- tures, and trades are effected either by inventors who occupy their lives in making inventions and patenting them, or by practical men engaged in trades and manufactures. These improvements are also effected by means of experiment, obser- vation, and study; and each of these classes of men are largely indebted for the knowledge they employ to those scientific observers who previously discovered and made known in books the proper- ties of the substances and forces they require to use. Watt acknowledged that he could not so largely have improved the steam engine had he not learned from the discoveries of Dr. Black “what was the heat absorbed and rendered latent by the conversion of water into steam.” In making an improvement—in machinery, for example—a practical man requires to study the influence of many laws and properties of bodies, of which, as a workman, he would be quite igno- rant. An ordinary workman in a manufactory works largely by routine, and becomes very fami- liar with a few properties of the substances with which he has to deal, but remains almost entirely ignorant of the greater number of properties which those substances possess. The properties of a single substance are so numerous that if a work- man was to thoroughly study the whole of them, he would become a scientific authority in the sub- jects of heat, light, electricity, magnetism, and chemistry. A blacksmith who knew all the phy- sical and chemical properties of iron and steel would be quite a scientific philosopher. It is said that “ an ounce of practice is worth a pound of theory;” but we must not forget that however valuable the ounce of practice is without the theory, it is very much more valuable with it. Scientific discovery, therefore, by developing new facts and laws relating to matter and its forces, constitutes not only the basis of new