'In looking back to that time, I wonder at the patience with which Mr. Elkington listened to what I had to say, being very young, and scarcely able to find English words to convey my meaning. After showing me what he was doing already in the way of electro-plating, Mr. Elkington sent me back to London in order to read some patents of his own, asking me to return if, after perusal, I still thought I could teach him anything. To my great disappointment, I found that the chemical solutions I had been using were actually mentioned in one of his patents, although in a manner that would hardly have sufficed to enable a third person to obtain practical results. On my return to Birmingham I frankly stated what I had found, and with this frankness I evidently gained the favour of another townsman of yours, Mr. Josiah Mason, who had just joined Mr. Elkington in business, and whose name, as Sir Josiah Mason, will ever be remembered for his munificent endowment of education. It was agreed that I should not be judged by the novelty of my invention, but by the results which I promised, namely, of being able to deposit with a smooth surface 30 dwt. of silver upon a dish-cover, the crystalline structure of the deposit having theretofore been a source of difficulty. In this I succeeded, and I was able to return to my native country and my mechanical engineering a comparative Croesus. 'But it was not for long, as in the following year (1844) I again landed in the Thames with another invention, worked out also with my brother, namely, the chronometric governor, which, though less successful, commercially speaking, than the first, obtained for me the advantage of bringing me into contact with the engineering world, and of fixing me permanently in this country. This invention was in course of time applied by Sir George Airy, the then Astronomer-Royal, for regulating the motion of his great transit and touch-recording instrument at the Royal Observatory, where it still continues to be employed. 'Another early subject of mine, the anastatic printing process, found favour with Faraday, "the great and the good," who made it the subject of a Friday evening lecture at the Royal Institution. These two circumstances, combined, obtained for me an entry into scientific circles, and helped to sustain me in difficulty, until, by dint of a certain determination to win, I was able to advance step by step up to this place of honour, situated within a gunshot of the scene of my earliest success in life, but separated from it by the time of a generation. But notwithstanding the lapse of time, my heart still beats quick each time I come back to the scene of this, the determining incident of my life.'