“Every one who has paid attention to the history of mechanical progress must have been impressed by the smallness in number of recorded attempts to decide the broader questions in engineering by systematic experiments, as well as by the great results which, in the long run, have apparently followed as the effect of these few researches. I say ‘apparently,’ because it is certain that there have been other researches which probably, on account of failure to attain some immediate object, have not been recorded, although they may have yielded valuable experience which, though not put on record, has, before it was forgotten, led to other attempts. But even discounting such lost researches it is very evident that mechanical science was in the past very much hampered by the want of sufficient inducement to the undertaking of experiments to settle questions of the utmost importance to scientific advance, but which have not promised pecuniary results, scientific questions which involved a greater sacrifice of time and money than the individuals could afford. The mechanical engineers recently induced Mr. Beauchamp Towers to carry out his celebrated researches on the friction of lubricated journals, the results of which research certainly claim notice as one of the most important steps in mechanical science.” Lord Rayleigh has said:-- “The present development of electricity on a large scale depends as much upon the incandescent lamp as the dynamo. The success of these lamps demands a very perfect vacuum--not more than one millionth of the normal quantity of air should remain. It is interesting to recall that in 1865 such vacua were rare even in the laboratory of the physicist. It is pretty safe to say that these wonderful results would never have been accomplished had practical applications alone been in view. The way was prepared by an army of men whose main object was the advancement of knowledge, and who could scarcely have imagined that the processes which they had elaborated would soon be in use on a commercial scale and entrusted to the hands of ordinary workmen.” He adds:--“The requirements of practice react in the most healthy manner upon scientific electricity. Just as in former days the science received a stimulus from the application to telegraphy, under which everything relating to measurement on a small scale acquired an importance and development for which we might otherwise have had long to wait, so now the requirements of electric lighting are giving rise to a new development of the art of measurement on a large scale, which cannot fail to prove of scientific as well as practical importance.” Regarding the territory likely to yield most fruit to the researcher, he observes:--“The neglected border land between two branches of knowledge is often that which best repays cultivation; or, to use a metaphor of Maxwell’s, the greatest benefits may be derived from a cross-fertilization of the sciences.” The Example of Germany.