It is of considerable historical interest to observe here that Carnegie’s magnificent gift to these national engineering societies is closely connected with a very modest move made by the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, nearly thirty years ago. The late Doctor Schuyler Skaats Wheeler, at one time president of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, had purchased the famous electrical library of the late Latimer Clark, of London, and had presented it to the Institute. But the Institute had no building of its own, and, therefore, no place for housing permanently this unique library. Several of the members of the Institute, including myself, were looking around anxiously for some practical scheme which would provide the Institute with a home of its own, where the Latimer Clark library could be permanently located. It was obvious that Andrew Carnegie, who was always interested in libraries, should be selected as our first point of application. We never had to appeal to anybody else; Mr. Carnegie was most generous. The engineering societies appealed to his lively imagination. It was the engineer who assisted him in the development of the great steel industry, and it was the engineer upon whom he relied to maintain the American steel industry in the leading position which it had won, in a great measure, by Carnegie’s initiative and efforts. He had already paid a splendid tribute to science for the service it had rendered to him when he created and richly endowed the Carnegie Institution of Washington, which was to provide and does provide ample facilities to American genius in its efforts to solve some of the great problems in science. I mention here as an illustration the endowment of the Mount Wilson Astrophysical Observatory at Pasadena, California, an act which has borne magnificent fruit under Professor George Ellery Hale’s direction. Instead of giving to the American Institute of Electrical Engineers a building for a library, Mr. Carnegie presented to the four national engineering societies a building for their permanent home, with suitable accommodations for a great library, for administrative offices, for conference and meeting rooms, for lecture-rooms, and for a great assembly hall. One of the objects of the United Engineering Society was, according to its charter, to hold and administer this princely gift “for the purpose of advancing the engineering arts and sciences in all their branches and for maintaining a free public engineering library.” The famous Latimer Clark electrical library is now a part of this great engineering library. The four national societies represented by the United Engineering Society have a carefully picked membership of over fifty thousand, and the magnificence of their home on Thirty-ninth Street, near Fifth Avenue, New York, is fully justified by their great prestige. I never look upon this beautiful structure without being thrilled by the thought that the treasures it contains in