Abstract
THE lecturer stated that this was the subject with which the council had requested him to deal in his lecture, but it must not for a moment be imagined that the metallurgic art was not included in the wide range covered by the Institution, which had, from its earliest days, given prominence to the work of metallurgists. He quoted Mr. G. P. Bidder, who, in his presidential address to the Institution delivered in 1860, said “that if he were called upon to define the object and scope of the profession of civil engineer, he would say that it was to take up the results discovered by the abstract men of science and to apply them practically for the commercial advantage of the world at large, and to diffuse their beneficent influence among all classes of his fellow citizens.” He hoped to be able to show that metallurgists practising an industrial art had helped the engineer to do this, and in evidence that such was the case, he quoted from the presidential address of Sir John Fowler, words to the effect that engineers had been more assisted by members of the Institution and by distinguished men of science generally in relation to iron and steel than as regarded any other material. It was in connection with iron and steel that the illustrations of the lecture would be mainly given. It might at; first be thought that the relations between metallurgists and engineers, which had become so close and enduring, arose quite simply from common interest. The case was, however, far from “being so simple; communication between those who extracted metals from their ores and adapted them for the use of the engineers, who actually employed metals in construction, was. seldom, at the outset, quite direct. The relations with which, the lecture dealt had been strangely stimulated by the intervention of men who, in many cases, were neither engineers nor metallurgists, but were men whose lives had been devoted to oabstract science. Such men recognised the value of certain metals and alloys for definite uses, they investigated their mechanical properties, and proclaimed their merits to engineers. The intervener then disappeared, leaving behind some coefficient or constant bearing his name by which he was gratefully remembered. As an instance, Galileo's estimation of the tensile strength of copper cylinders, and Young's determination of the rigidity of steel (which had resulted in Young's modulus) were cited.
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The Relations Between Metallurgy and Engineering 1 . Nature 66, 18–19 (1902). https://doi.org/10.1038/066018b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/066018b0