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CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 A. M. Roberts 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tiiis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924012430694 
 
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Cornell University Library 
 QC 16.K29 
 
 In memoriam. The Right Honorable William 
 
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 Iprlnceton, Toronto) 
 
 Born June 26, 1824 ; Dte5 December 17, 1907 
 
 irnterrc£» In THIlcstminster 2HbbCB December 23, 1907 
 
 PUBLISHED BY 
 
 AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF ELECTRICAL ENGINEERS 
 NEW YORK 
 
 1908 
 
 FL 
 

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 SS" 
 
 The "Memoir of Lord Kelvin" and the account of the 
 " Memorial Exercises in Honor of Lord Kelvin " in the following 
 pages are reprinted from the January and February, J908, issues of 
 the Proceedings of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers 
 
fiDemoir of Xorb Ikelvin 
 
 William Thomson, first Lord Kelvin, the noted scientist, President of 
 the Institution of Electrical Engineers, died at Glasgow, 'Scotland, De- 
 cember 17, 1907, at the ripe age of eighty-three years. Born in Belfast, 
 Ireland, June 25, 1824, William Thomson began life without a title, or 
 any heritage, save that of brains. In 1832, his father, James Thomson, 
 professor of mathematics in an institute in Belfast, removed the scene 
 of his activities to his alma mater at Glasgow, which thenceforward 
 remained the home of his distinguished son. William received his edu- 
 cation in part from his father and in part from the College of Glasgow. 
 In 1845 he was graduated from St. Peter's College, Cambridge, where 
 he won notable honors, being first Smith's prizeman of.his year, as well 
 as second wrangler. While at Cambridge, Thomson was devoted to 
 athletics, and rowed in the winning boat ilj a race with Oxford. 
 
 At the age of twenty -two, a year after he was graduated, Thomson 
 became professor of natural history in the University of Glasgow, after 
 several months spent inJthe laboratory of Regnault in Paris. Despite 
 repeated offers of similar posts elsewhere, he remained loyal to the 
 great city on the Clyde. In 1896, half a century after his appointment, 
 he received a wonderful tribute of admiration and affection, in which 
 the university and civil authorities of Glasgow, leading scientific socie- 
 ties of America and Europe, and distinguished individuals, including 
 the Prince and Princess of Wales, united by personal presence, formal 
 addresses, letters, telegrams, and cable messages, they made his jubilee 
 celebration an event practically without a parallel in the history of 
 science. He was elected Chancellor of the university in 1904., 
 
 One of Professor Thomson's first great achievements was in overcom- 
 ing the retardation affecting electric signals sent through a submarine 
 cable, which threatened to blur them beyond recognition. Faraday had 
 previously furnished a partial key to the evil, but Thomson invented 
 the instrument which made it possible to transmit signals with reason- 
 ably satisfactory clearness and speed. In a controversy disputing the 
 correctness of his statement of the laws involved. Professor Thomson 
 disposed of the argument so effectively that he was retained as con- 
 sulting engineer, officiating in that capacity both for the cable of 1858 
 and for that of 1866. He was also electrical engineer for the French 
 Atlantic cable in 1869, the Brazilian and River Plata cable in 1873, the 
 
 3 
 
4 MEMOIR OF LORD KELVIN 
 
 West Indian cables in 1875, and the Mackay-Bennett Atlantic cable in 
 1879. 
 
 As a further contribution to the success of these enterprises, Professor 
 Thomson invented a method of testing the conductivity of a submarine 
 wire while being laid, so that any defect might be promptly discovered 
 and remedied. He also invented instruments for receiving messages. 
 A mirror was so mounted on a tiny magnet that the feeble electric im- 
 pulses traversing a cable caused it to sway, and a beam of light was de- 
 flected to the right and left, on a blank white surface in a dark room. 
 The magnet being suspended by a silk fibre, its movements were vir- 
 tually unimpeded by friction. This was supplemented by one which 
 would leave a permanent trace on a strip of paper; it was called " the 
 siphon recorder." It was employed to receive some of the greetings sent 
 to its inventor in 1896. He was knighted in 1866, as one who had 
 done more than any other scientific man to develop submarine tele- 
 graphy. Subsequently he devised a sending key for use with a cable, 
 and perfected apparatus for taking deep-sea soundings, thus greatly 
 facilitating the exploration of cable routes. Two of Sir William Thom- 
 son's valuable inventions ■ are his improvements on the construction of 
 the compass, and his provision for overcoming the influence of a ship's 
 magnetism on that instrument. The compass card was lightened, and 
 a large number of fine needles substituted for the few coarse ones for- 
 merly attached to it. To attain the other object, small globes of iron 
 the sizes and distance of which were carefully computed, were placed 
 near and on opposite sides of the compass. 
 
 For measuring charges of static electricity. Sir William originated 
 the quadrant electrometer, and made useful additions to other types 
 of apparatus. One of the most important of his non-electrical inven- 
 tions is a machine for predicting the level of the tides in any part of the 
 world. His wide experience, deep insight, and sound judgment made 
 him an authority on electrical science. When American capitalists pro- 
 posed to " harness Niagara," the Glasgow professor of natural philos- 
 ophy (who was elevated to the peerage in 1892), was made chairman 
 of the board of experts convened to study the possibilities of the plan. 
 He made a trip to Niagara Falls in 1897 and displayed great enthusiasm 
 over the achievement. 
 
 He visited the plant of the Niagara Falls Power Company on August 
 16, 1897, on which date his signature appears on the visitors' register 
 with this comment: 
 
 " Very much pleased to see the great success here achieved, as a result 
 of courageous undertaking and originality of invention, and skilful 
 design and construction. K." 
 
 Lord Kelvin always evinced the warmest interest in the work of 
 other electrical inventors. At the reception in his honor given by the 
 
MEMOIR OF LORD KELVIM 6 
 
 American Institute of Electrical Engineers and" Columbia University, 
 at New York in 1902, he publicly and cordially praised Mr. Edison who 
 sat beside him, for perfecting the incandescent lamp. A few months 
 later, at a reception by George Westmghouse m London, Loid Kelvin 
 evinced much delight with the so-called " current rectifier," an inven- 
 tion of Cooper Hewitt, which was there exhibited. On that occasion 
 he commended the introduction into England of certain American 
 business methods, of which he regarded his host a fine exponent. The 
 first commercial messages transmitted in Great Britain, b}' means of 
 Marconi's invention, were dispatched in 1898, from Glum Bay, Isle of 
 \Mght, by Lord Kelvin; one to Sir George Stokes, in Cambridge, a sec- 
 ond to his own assistant in Glasgow, and a third to Lord Rayleigh and 
 Sir William Preece, in London. 
 
 Lord Kelvin, moreover, was one of the first men who admitted the 
 credibility of the theory regarding the composite nature of the atom, 
 as being a collection of tiny, negatively electrified particles; although 
 he had once fancied that an atom might have a construction and an in- 
 ternal motion like that of a ring of smoke ejected from a locomotive 
 smokestack. 
 
 As early as 1848 Professor Thomson published an article on an abso- 
 lute thermometric scale, and in 1854 he modified his proposition. Two 
 long articles from his pen in the " Encyclopedia Britannica " having 
 been republished under the title " On Heat and Electricity." His work 
 in connection with Professor Tait, " A Treatise on Natural Philosophy," 
 contains material of the highest value. 
 
 While consistently conservative. Lord Kelvin took a deep and lively 
 interest in the recent investigations regarding radium and radio-activity. 
 He would not assent to the theory that one element could be evolved 
 from another, nor to the theory lately advanced, that the heat of the 
 sun or the earth is due to radium, rather than to gravitation. 
 
 Lnrd Kelvin's development of the relation which exists between heat 
 and mechanical power enabled him to reconcile the diverse doctrines 
 advocated' by Joule and Carnot, and he cooperated with Joule in ex- 
 periments which aided in dispelling the uncertainty relating to thermal 
 effects in fluids, which results were communicated to the Royal Society 
 in 1862. 
 
 Lord Kelvin's other published writings are: " Electrostatics and Mag- 
 netism (1 vol.); " Mathematical and Physical Papers " (3 vols.); " Pop- 
 ular Lectures and Addresses" (3 vols.); and "Baltimore Lectures," 
 delivered at -Johns Hopkins University, in 1884. 
 
 Lord Kelvin visited Montreal in 1884, and Toronto in 1897 to attend 
 meetings of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 
 these meetings being ordinarily held on the other side of the Atlantic. 
 That he was made a peer by Queen Victoria at the opening of the year 
 
G MEMOIR OF LORD KELVIN 
 
 1892, was a delight to his scientific friends, who felt not only that the 
 honor was deserved but also that it was a public though tardy recog- 
 nition of the value of science. The title, Lord Kelvin, was suggested 
 by the name of a stream, the Kelvin, that empties into the Clyde at 
 Glasgow. The buildings of the University of Glasgow border on this 
 stream. 
 
 He became the recipient of all honors that his fellow beings could 
 bestow, was beloved by all with whom he came in contact, and was of 
 benefit to many who never knew his name. Inheriting a fine intellect 
 and a passion for the investigation of natural phenomena, he acquired 
 a mastery of mathematics that served him as a precious instrument of 
 research and promoted precision of thought. His conservative and 
 sound judgment, coupled with an ever increasing wealth of experience, 
 made his opinion concerning engineering undertakings invaluable. 
 Oftentimes in scientific problems the suspense of this judgment, until 
 all facts had been considered, ultimately lead to extremely interesting 
 and fundamentally important cosmological conclusions. A free use of 
 his analytical mind invariably gave a maximum of conclusions from a 
 minimum of data. A highly developed power of imagination, balanced 
 by a keen sense of the practicable, was evidenced in his great resource- 
 fulness of invention. Withal, perhaps the most important element of 
 greatness was his simple, sympathetic, loyal and generous nature. He 
 was never governed by such sordid motives as jealousy, envy, hatred, 
 and malice. His continuance to the end, of participation in the ac- 
 tivities of scientific and engineering organizations, long after their power 
 to confer distinction upon him had ceased, deserves emulation. 
 
 Quite recently he had been appointed President of the International 
 Electrotechnical Commission, the duties of which are expected to 
 supersede the functions heretofore delegated to International electrical 
 congresses. 
 
 The honors and decorations otherwise bestowed upon this great man 
 are legion: He received degrees from the leading universities of Great 
 Britain and America. In 1893 he was elected an Honorary Member 
 of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers. He was a foreign 
 Associate of the Academy of Sciences of Paris, and an Honorary Member 
 of other French scientific organizations. He was a Grand Officer of 
 the Legion of Honor in France; a Knight of the Grand Cross of the 
 Royal Victorian Order; a Knight of the Order of Merit of France, and 
 a Commander of the Order of Leopold of Belgium. He was also a 
 member of the Order of the First Class of the Sacred Treasure of Japan, 
 and of the Order of Merit established by Edward VII in 1902. He 
 had been president of the Royal Society of Edinburg, the British Asso- 
 ciation for the Advancement of Science, and three times president of 
 the Institution of Electrical Engineers. As president of the Royal 
 
MEMOIR OF LORD KELVIN 7 
 
 Society of London he attained an honor that has, since Newton's day, 
 been regarded as the highest to whicli a British scientist could aspire. 
 In death, as in life, Great Britain graciously bestows upon Lord 
 Kelvin her highest honor; for he is to rest with Newton, Herschel, 
 Darwin, and the other illustrious dead, in the nave of the venerable 
 \\'estminster Abbey. 
 
 R. W P 
 
Hmerican Unstitute of leiectrical lenQineers. 
 
 IResolutlons tn bonot of l,ot& Ikelvln, a&opte& bg tbc 
 aSoarO of Directors Januarg 10, 1908, anO approved 
 at tbe flftemorial /iReetlng, IRew Korft, Jan. 12, 1908. 
 
 THHbereae: With the death of the Right Honorable William Thomson, 
 Lord Kelvin, Honorary Member of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, 
 there has passed a'way the greatest exponent of contemporary science ; a man whose 
 contributions to the advancement of knowledge and whose inventions for amelio- 
 rating the conditions of mankind give him place in history as one of the greatest 
 benefactors of the human race ; and 
 
 IKIlbereas : His modest, kindly, and unassuming ways; his charming per- 
 sonality ; his interest in the -welfare of his fellow^ men ; and his sympathetic nature, 
 won for him the regard and affection of all 'with whom he came in contact ; and 
 
 IKIlbereaS : His clear and comprehensive mind ; his vast reach of thought ; 
 his ability in scientific research ; his highly developed inventive faculties ; and his 
 achievements in the electrical arts and sciences; marked him as the first and great- 
 est electrical engineer ; 
 
 :Be it IResoIved : That the American Institute of Electrical Engineers 
 gives expression to its sense of the irreparable loss which the engineering profession 
 has sustained in the death of this great and good man, and it reverently offers Lady 
 Kelvin its deep sympathy in her bereavement ; and 
 
 3&e it jFurtber IResolved : That these Resolutions be forwarded to Lady 
 Kelvin, that they may be entered in full in the Proceedings of the Institute, and that 
 the National Flag be flown at half mast on the Engineers' Building upon the day 
 of interment at Westminster Abbey, and during the Memorial Exercises in New 
 York City, January J2, J908 
 
 AMERICANIINSTITUTE OF ELECTRICAL ENGINEERS. 
 
 HENRY G. STOTT, 
 
 President. 
 By order of the Board of Directors. 
 
 RALPH W. POPE, 
 
 Secretary. 
 
flDcmorial lexercisee in IHonor of Xort) Ikelvin 
 
 :Enflmeer6' asuil&tng, IHew Korft, JanuarB 12, 1908 
 
 AT a special meeting of the Board of Directors held December 30, 1907, a com- 
 mittee was appointed to arrange for suitable memorial exercises in honor of 
 Lord Kelvin, composed of the following members: Percy H. Thomas, chairman; 
 John^ W. Lieb, Jr., T. C. Martin and Samuel Sheldon. President Stott also 
 appointed the following committee on resolutions: John W. Lieb, Jr., chair- 
 man; Bion J. Arnold, Charles P. Scott, Charles P. Steinmetz, Samuel Sheldon, 
 and Schuyler S.Wheeler. The date of the meeting was fixed for Sunday, January 
 12, 1908, and the following program of exercises arranged: 
 
 MUSIC 
 (By the Kronold Sextette.) 
 
 Prayer. 
 Rev. Wm. T. M.inning, D.D. 
 
 Introductory Remarks. 
 President Stott. 
 
 Reading of Memorial Resolutions by Secretary. 
 Adoption by Rising Vote. 
 
 Address. 
 Rev. William T. Manning, D.D. 
 
 Lord Kelvin as an Electrical Engineer. 
 Professor Elihu Thomson. 
 
 program 
 
 MUSIC 
 
 Lord Kelvin as a Scientist. 
 Professor E. L. Nichols. 
 
 Lord Kelvin's Work in Submarine Telegraphy 
 G. G. Ward, Esq. 
 
 Lord Kelvin in Naval Engineering. 
 Rear Admiral Geo. W. Melville, U.S.N. 
 
 Lord Kelvin and the American Institute of 
 Electrical Engineers. 
 T. C. Martin, Esq. 
 
 Benediction. 
 Rev. Wm. T. Manning, D. D. 
 
 MUSIC 
 
 After a prayer by Dr. Manning, Presi- 
 dent Stott made the following intro- 
 ductory remarks: 
 
 Henry G. Stott 
 
 We have assembled here this after- 
 noon to honor the memory of Lord 
 Kelvin, and to offer our tribute of praise 
 to his enduring work for mankind. 
 
 Your committee in considering the 
 most fitting manner to set forth our 
 appreciation of his career, were at once 
 confronted by the question " Whom 
 can we find capable of describing his 
 vast work in mathematics, physics, 
 science, electrical engineering, submarine 
 telegraphy, and navigation, and last 
 but not least, his lovable character 
 as a Christian man." The answer 
 was, no one. 
 
 It therefore was apparent, that our 
 only resource was to invite several 
 gentlemen, each of whom was notable 
 for his preeminence in one of the many 
 fields covered by Lord Kelvin's work. 
 
 Perhaps no greater tribute could be 
 paid to his memory by the gentlemen 
 whose names appear in the program, 
 than to state that each one accepted 
 our invitation to speak without a 
 moment's hesitation, some coming from 
 a distance at great personal inconve- 
 nience. 
 
 I will not trespass on the ground to 
 be covered by these gentlemen, but I 
 wish to quote a sentence from the words 
 of that great German scientist, Helm- 
 holtz, which seems to summarize most 
 admirably the characteristics of Lord 
 Kelvin's work; 
 
 9 
 
10 
 
 MEMORIAL EXERCISES. 
 
 " His peculiar merit consists in his 
 methods of treating problems of mathe- 
 matical physics. He has striven with 
 great consistency to purify the mathe- 
 matical theory from hypothetical as- 
 sumptions which were not a pure ex- 
 pression of the facts. In this way he 
 has done very much to destroy the old 
 unnatural separation between experi- 
 mental and mathematical physics, and 
 to reduce the latter to a precise and 
 pure expression of the laws of the 
 phenomena. He is an eminent mathe- 
 matician, but the gift to translate real 
 facts into mathematical equations 
 and vice versa, is far more rare than 
 that to find a solution of a given mathe- 
 matical problem, and in this direction 
 Sir. William Thomson is most eminent 
 and original." 
 
 To the speaker. Lord Kelvin's charm- 
 ing personality was one of his most 
 striking characteristics, and his own 
 words in replying to a toast at his 
 jubilee in 1896 in which he said " To 
 live among friends is the primary es- 
 sential of happiness " gives the key- 
 note of his life, and surely no man 
 was ever more blessed in his friends 
 than he. 
 
 The dominant impression gained from 
 personal contact with him was, that 
 the most wonderful thing about this 
 great man was his humility, a humility 
 which made him the immediate friend 
 of every child, which drew the confi- 
 dence of the backward student as he 
 took him by the arm to one side, so 
 that he might explain a difficult point 
 to him without embarrassment. 
 
 His words in reply to an address 
 by one of the great scientific bodies, 
 congratulating him upon his wonderful 
 mastery of physics are a fitting lesson 
 in real humility to us all. 
 
 " I have lived long, and have learned 
 enough to realize that I know nothing." 
 
 During his life he was the recipient 
 of every honor that man could confer 
 upon him, and now a grateful sorrow- 
 ing nation lays him to rest amongst 
 its honored dead in Westminster 
 Abbey., 
 
 The resolutions adopted by the Board 
 of Directors were then read by the 
 secretary, and approved by a rising 
 vote. (These resolutions appear on 
 page 8.) The secretary read the fol- 
 lowing communications: 
 [Telegram] 
 Washington, D. C, Jan. 11, 1908. 
 
 I am very sorry that illness in my 
 family prevents me from being present 
 at the memorial meeting in honor of 
 Lord Kelvin, for I should have liked to 
 have said a few words of appreciation 
 concerning Lord Kelvin's connection 
 with the early history of the telephone, 
 and his personal kindness to me when 
 as a young and unknown man, I brought 
 the telephone to his attention at the 
 Centennial Exhibition in 1876. 
 
 It was really Lord Kelvin who made 
 the telephone known to the world. In 
 spite of my efforts, the general public 
 were skeptical concerning the reality of 
 electrical utterance, but when Sir Wil- 
 liam Thomson spoke, the world be- 
 lieved. Before he delivered his mem- 
 orable address at the British Associa- 
 tion for the Advancement of Science in 
 1876, the telephone was looked upon as 
 a scientific toy, of no commercial value, 
 even by persons who had themselves 
 heard the articulation of the instrument, 
 but Sir William Thomson's address ban- 
 ished skepticism and the telephone en- 
 tered upon its career of practical use- ■ 
 fulness. Alexander Graham Bell. 
 
 [Letter] 
 111 Broadway, New York, 
 My Dear Sir: Jan. 10, 1908. 
 
 I thank you sincerely for your cordial 
 invitation to be present at the Memo- 
 rial meeting to be he]d under the aus- 
 pices of the American Institute of Elec- 
 trical Engineers in honor of the late 
 Lord Kelvin, and especially for the op- 
 portunity afforded me to give public 
 expression to those sentiments of ad- 
 miration and esteem for him which were 
 inspired by many years of acquaintance- 
 ship and friendship. 
 
 No words of mine are needed to en- 
 hance public appreciation of Lord Kel- 
 
IN HONOR OF LORD KELVIN 
 
 11 
 
 vin's great and enduring services to 
 science and engineering, and particu- 
 larly to electrical engineering. He com- 
 bined in a rare degree, the ability to 
 pursue the loftiest abstractions of pure 
 science, and the practical engineering 
 which promotes the progress and happi- 
 ness of the human race. Seldom, if ever 
 before, have the scientific mind and the 
 knowledge of the practical engineer been 
 so harmoniously united and so mutually 
 complementary as in the genius of Lord 
 Kelvin. 
 
 I was particularly impressed by his 
 constant mental activity in devising im- 
 provements on his many useful inven- 
 tions, the ardor with which he studied 
 the inventions and the improvements 
 of others, and the extraordinary inven- 
 tive fertility of his mind, even when well 
 advanced in years. 
 
 Whenever I had the pleasure of call- 
 ing upon him in his London home, he 
 was always desirovis of discussing some 
 detail with me, and during these dis- 
 cussions I had ample opportunity to 
 note his great familiarity with mechan- 
 ical subjects. He took a very great in- 
 terest in discussing the advances made 
 in electrical apparatus, prime-movers 
 of all kinds, and the many novel uses of 
 electricity, and in hearing of the new 
 industries constantly being developed 
 to meet the ever-increasing wants of 
 humanity. 
 
 But, as one who was honored with 
 his friendship for many years, I would 
 not willingly forego the pleasure of 
 speaking of the man himself, as well as 
 of the scientist. His character, as all 
 know, was blameless; his personalit)'^, 
 most lovable. Years of association with 
 him only heightened the esteem and 
 admiration which he awakened at our 
 first meeting. His modesty, the sim- 
 plicity of his manners, his warmth of 
 heart, the openness of his mind to re- 
 ceive new impressions, even at an age 
 when great minds might be expected to 
 become less observant and less easily im- 
 pressed by new facts, the unerring 
 quickness of his perceptions and the 
 accuracy of his judgment, his friendli- 
 
 ness to America and Americans and his 
 interest, as I have already said, in the 
 progress of science and engineering on 
 this side of the Atlantic, excited in turn 
 the admiration of all who met and knew 
 him. 
 
 To have known him and Lady Kelvin, 
 whose devotion and helpfulness added 
 so much to his comfort and efficiency 
 during his later years, and to have been 
 admitted to their ever-widening circle 
 of friends, will always remain for me a 
 source of the purest pleasure. 
 Very sincerely yours, 
 
 Geo. WestinCtHouse. 
 
 To H. G. Stott, President, A. I. E. E. 
 
 A telegram from Mr. Edison stated 
 that he was confined to his bed by ill- 
 ness, otherwise he would have been 
 present in testimony of his sympathy 
 in the loss of his esteemed friend. Lord 
 Kelvin. 
 
 The President: I will now ask the 
 Rev. William T. Manning, D.D., Assist- 
 ant Rector of Trinity Parish, to s^jeak 
 of Lord Kelvin as a Christian. 
 William T. Manning 
 
 We are here to pay our tribute to one 
 who was not only the greatest scien- 
 tist of his own age, but whose name 
 takes its place, as you all know, among 
 those of the few very greatest masters 
 and leaders of scientific thought in any 
 age — one whose place is beside Sir Isaac 
 Newton, not only in Westminster Abbey 
 where his body now lies, but in the just 
 appreciation of his fellowmen. But 
 there is one thing that we can say to- 
 day about Lord Kelvin, even greater 
 than that he was the world's greatest 
 living scientist, and that is, that in a 
 measure and to a degree in which the 
 meaning of these words is seldom real- 
 ized, he was a true Christian. For the 
 life of this truly great man was one of 
 singular beauty; his were the simplicity, 
 the sincerity, the humility, the single- 
 heartedness, the cheerfulness, the kind- 
 liness, the perfect devotion to truth, the 
 firm, clear faith in God, which are the 
 marks of a true Christian; in life and 
 
12 
 
 MEMORIAL EXERCISES 
 
 also in faith, in character and also in 
 clear, reasoned, deliberate conviction, 
 he was a true example of a Christian 
 man. 
 
 It is not surprising that Lord Kelvin 
 should have been a Christian and a 
 churchman ; certainly not to us in these 
 days, when the idea that there is some 
 necessary conflict between religion and 
 science belongs already to the past, 
 when the faults, as I know you will 
 allow me to call them, on both sides of 
 that unhappy controversy are already 
 largely forgotten, when we are all com- 
 ing to realize that truth is One, what- 
 ever its source, and that any apparent 
 conflict between the truth of God re- 
 vealed in nature, and the truth of God 
 revealed in Christ, is of our own making, 
 and results solely from the insufficiency 
 of our knowledge, on the one hand, or 
 on the other. But though it is not sur- 
 prising, it is an encouragement and an 
 inspiration to hear a man like Lord 
 Kelvin say, as he did say again and 
 again all through his life in one form or 
 another, in many forms, that the facts 
 of science demand the recognition of a 
 purposive power in this universe and 
 that — I quote now from what he is re- 
 ported to have said in his lecture on 
 Present Day Rationalism — " With the 
 utmost freedom of thought we are 
 bound to reach the conclusion that sci- 
 ence is not antagonistic to religion, but 
 that it is a help to religion " 
 
 It is a strength to us to know that 
 with all the power of his great mind, 
 with all the sincerity of his noble and 
 simple nature he believed, definitely 
 and avowedly, in a personal and living 
 and loving God; that with all his knowl- 
 edge of the law and order, that reign in 
 this universe, he believed in a God who 
 hears and answers prayer; that with all 
 his utter and absolute devotion to truth, 
 he found strength and comfort all his 
 life long in the worship of the church; 
 he believed and recited with singular 
 earnestness and reality the Christian 
 creed. He held as another great scientist, 
 George John Romanes, came to hold 
 after years of earnest and patient think- 
 
 ing, that it is reasonable to be a Chris- 
 tian. 
 
 It is surely most fitting that as we 
 think of him here to-day we should 
 honor him, not only for his great services 
 to truth in the realm of science, but also 
 for his great witness to truth in the 
 sphere of religion, for the fact that with 
 all the humility of a true scientist, with 
 all the reverence of a true seeker after 
 truth, with all the earnestness and sim- 
 plicity of a true man , he lived and died in 
 the faith of that One who came into this 
 world to show us the truth, whose word 
 to us is, " Ye shall know the truth, and 
 the truth shall make you free ". 
 
 As one of Lord Kelvin's lifelong 
 friends said just the other day in Scot- 
 land, " There is something very magni- 
 ficent about the thought of a mind like 
 his entering into the vastness of eter- 
 nity, seeing at their sources the great 
 rivers of truth which he has been so 
 long, patiently investigating. He will 
 be able to comprehend so much more 
 than others; he has gone into the other 
 life with powers developed, with heart 
 and mind prepared, carrying with him 
 the purity and simplicity of soul which 
 will make him at once the companion 
 of the holiest and the best among all 
 who have gone before ". 
 
 And so to-day we pay our tribute to 
 William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, great 
 among the greatest as man of science, 
 but greater still in his life and in his 
 faith as a sincere and humble Christian. 
 
 The President: In looking for some 
 one to speak of Lord Kelvin's work in 
 electrical engineering, we had no diffi- 
 culty in selecting a gentleman who has 
 become known as the Dean of the elec- 
 trical engineering fraternity. We will 
 now ask Professor Elihu Thomson to 
 speak of Lord Kelvin as an electrical 
 engineer. 
 
 Elihu Thomson 
 
 Along the semi-arid eastern coast of 
 Spain there is to be seen even to-day, 
 a very ancient form of chain pump for 
 irrigation, kept in motion by animal 
 power and bringing up from the well 
 
IN HONOR OF LORD KELVIN 
 
 13 
 
 the life-giving water which confers lux- 
 uriance upon the surrounding thirsty 
 land, otherwise barren and desolate. 
 A wooden wheel supports a long belt 
 of cord or rope, which wet and in the 
 sunshine, is bleached, and seems to 
 possess a silvery lustre. It carries at 
 intervals along its length earthen ves- 
 sels, successively brought, full and 
 dripping, from the well below into the 
 full sunlight, suggesting to the poetic 
 fancy, burnished gold. Now and then 
 it m.ay be that a maiden from a habita- 
 tion near by, brings a quaint two-handle 
 urn or pitcher to this fountain of life, 
 just as was done in the eastern countries 
 three thousand years ago. Only after 
 seeing all this did I fully understand 
 the beautiful figurative allusion to the 
 close of life in the twelfth chapter of 
 Ecclesiastes: 
 
 " Or ever the silver cord be loosed, 
 or the golden bowl be broken; or the 
 pitcher be broken at the fountain, or 
 the wheel be broken at the cistern ' ' 
 
 " Then shall the dust return to the 
 earth as it was; and the spirit shall re- 
 turn unto God who gave it" 
 
 A great fountain of science has ceased 
 to flow, the silver cord is loosed, the 
 wheel is at rest. 
 
 In the recent death of Lord Kelvin 
 the world has lost one of the greatest 
 intellects, a most distinguished student 
 of science, whose attitude was, in spite 
 of his eminence, always that of great 
 modesty. We knew him as the un- 
 equalled mathematician and physicist, 
 who was also an electrical engineer of 
 the highest type. 
 
 Withal his disposition was of the most 
 kindly, his personality most lovable. 
 Even to the end of his long and active 
 life of more than four score years, his 
 mind was clear; he did not pause in 
 interest; his powers of dealing with 
 abstruse problems did not flag. To 
 those who have had the privilege of 
 personal contact with him, he was full 
 of inspiration, keenly alive to the value 
 of all advances, giving freely of his 
 great store of knowledge. His love for 
 
 science was only matched by his mas- 
 tery of its means and methods. 
 
 Others will speak of his lifelong math- 
 ematical and physical work, his con- 
 tributions to navigation, and his pioneer 
 electrical engineering in connection 
 with submarine cables. His cable work 
 was indeed, electrical engineering of a 
 high type. It will be my part to draw 
 attention to those other phases of his 
 work which link him closely with the 
 later developments in the electrical 
 field. I cannot at the outset forbear 
 to say that in Lord Kelvin were united 
 a deep devotion to science, as such, the 
 so-called pure science, and to the appli- 
 cations of science in industry, or engi- 
 neering. Let his life and work be ever 
 a standing rebuke to those who, few 
 though they now be, forgetting the very 
 dependence of pure research upon the 
 growth of civilization, as a consequence 
 of advance in applied science and ma- 
 terial resources, affect to find superior 
 or exceptional merit only in scientific 
 results which are not of practical use. 
 To the raan of true genius such as Lord 
 Kelvin was, the passion for accomplish- 
 ing things is no more sordid when em- 
 ployed on engineering problems, than in 
 pure research, and the two are mutu- 
 ally dependent. 
 
 If we consider the work he did in 
 design and working of cables, studies of 
 capacity and self-induction and the 
 delicate instruments to be used there- 
 with, prototypes of later forms, can we 
 not discover in the great man who has 
 passed from among us the father of 
 modem electrical engineering? History 
 shows that this early work was full of 
 trials, disappointments, and difficulties, 
 all arising from mechanical causes, in- 
 experience of men in the making and 
 handling of the cable and the machinery 
 for its manipulation — overcome at last 
 by a perseverance noble in itself. It is 
 too often the case, that with new en- 
 terprises not only the thing itself, but a 
 favorable environment must be created. 
 Neither men, nor tools, nor materials, 
 nor methods exist, or are to be had for 
 the asking. The pioneer has often per- 
 
14 
 
 MEMORIAL EXERCISES 
 
 force to cut his cloak to the cloth, and 
 not the cloth to the cloak. James Watt 
 had to be satisfied with engine cylinders 
 which did not vary more than a quarter 
 of an inch in bore from one end to the 
 other, and, so it is said, with a piston 
 packing of old felt hats. So it was when 
 iron wire, cast iron or highly hysteretic 
 stove-pipe sheet, the latter laboriously 
 fashioned without the modem punch 
 press, for dynamo armatures, had to 
 bring what content they could to pio- 
 neers who knew better, but then could 
 only wish. But this is a digression, and 
 it is only made as an assistance to the 
 perspective in appreciating disadvan- 
 tages, looking back from the present age 
 of highly developed materials, methods, 
 skill and special tools. It was charac- 
 teristic of Lord Kelvin's inventive en- 
 gineering that his conceptions were 
 complete, and when fully worked out 
 gave excellent results in practice. Later 
 work could only affect minor details, 
 and even these he often provided for. 
 He seemed mentally to pursue a prob- 
 lem to the end, and with the result that 
 nothing more could be added later. 
 
 Dr. Nichols may deal with his early 
 interest in the establishment of proper 
 units and standards of electrical meas- 
 urement, and his connection with the 
 Electrical Standards Committee of the 
 British Association for the Advance- 
 ment of Science in 1861 and later, 
 which took upon itself the task of es- 
 tablishment of the c. g. s. system. 
 
 It is not surprising that practically 
 throughout his life he gave much 
 attention to the revising of electric 
 measuring instruments and methods 
 of measurement. His absolute electro- 
 meter of 1855, followed by the quad- 
 rant electrometer, his graded galvano- 
 meters of the early period of electric 
 lighting and power, his electrostatic 
 voltmeters, and his later Kelvin balances 
 attest his interest, activity and success. 
 Some of these are lasting monuments 
 to his science and skill; valuable alike 
 to the physicist and electrical en- 
 gineer. 
 
 His visit to the Centennial Exibition 
 
 of 1876 was rendered notable from the 
 fact that he was one of the first to listen 
 to the speaking telephone of Bell, 
 there, I believe, originally shown pri- 
 vately, and was the most distinguished 
 witness of the reality of its powers. 
 
 It may be of interest to engineers to 
 recall the fact that in the early eighties 
 Lord Kelvin, then Sir Wm. Thomson, 
 made notable inventions in dynamo 
 machines and took out patents thereon, 
 one of which at least, dated Dec. 26, 
 1881, was used, together with improve- 
 ments made by the well-known pioneer 
 engineer, Ferranti, in the Ferranti- 
 Thomson alternating-current machine. 
 It had a disc armature composed of a 
 zigzag tape- winding without iron. This 
 machine existed about 1884 in sizes up 
 to 400 kw. capacity, an unusual output 
 for the time. It was constructed to 
 give 2000 amperes at 200 volts and light 
 about 5000 incandescent lamps. The 
 introduction of higher voltages and 
 transformers, necessitated remodelling, 
 which removed the characteristic zig- 
 zag winding from the subsequent great 
 Ferranti generators of the Deptford 
 plant. 
 
 From the early Atlantic cable suc- 
 cess, it followed that in any large cable 
 enterprise subsequent thereto Lord 
 Kelvin should be consulted. Similarly 
 his great and well-merited reputation 
 brought like responsibilities in other 
 directions. Upon the first se ious pro- 
 posal to utilize the power of Niagara 
 in electrical work he was made one of 
 the International Commission, com- 
 posed of a number of the most eminent 
 scientists and engineers, which in 1891 
 was charged with the duty of deciding 
 upon the methods to be followed, and 
 which finally shaped the work of the 
 Niagara Construction Company. The 
 wisdom of the decisions then made, has 
 been amply demonstrated in later 
 years. There was at first some question 
 as to whether direct currents or alterna- 
 ting currents should be generated and 
 transmitted. The disposition of the 
 water wheels, the governing of the same, 
 the type of dynamo' construction to 
 
IX HOXOR OF LORD KELVIX 
 
 15 
 
 be employed, generator voltage, ratios 
 of transformation, frequency, number 
 of phases, and other matters of more 
 or less importance required definite 
 selection . 
 
 It must be remembered that the orig- 
 inal Niagara plant was created, not 
 copied from existing practice, and there- 
 fore was a pioneer enterprise in all sub- 
 stantial respects. Nothing here said, 
 can detract from the great courage and 
 merit of the able engineers who were 
 entrusted with the actual construction 
 and installation of the plant. A few 
 words may be said as to the attitude 
 taken by Lord Kelvin concerning the 
 utilization of Niagara power to the detri- 
 ment of the sublime spectacle of the 
 falls itself. If I interpret him rightly 
 he said in effect that, in his view, there 
 was just as much, or more sublimity, 
 romance or poetry, as exists in a mad 
 rush of waters over a precipice; in the 
 establishment of a great community 
 making valuable and beautiful products 
 by electric power to enrich the whole 
 world and add to its resources; in 
 the supersedure of oxygen-consuming 
 lamps by beautiful electric lights in all 
 the surrounding territory; in the preven- 
 tion of the smoke nuisance on railways 
 and in cities miles away, with the inci- 
 dental saving of fuel for the use of 
 future generations. If this expresses his 
 attitude, it is one in which I can heartily 
 concur. Niagara in daylight and in full 
 flow is indeed a sublime spectacle to 
 be preserved, it seems to me, unchanged, 
 provided the sacrifice is not too great, 
 for it has some of the elements of a great 
 conflagration, and moreover it runs 
 on unseen, through fog and night, even 
 the long dark nights of our winter 
 season. 
 
 In bringing to a close this necessarily 
 brief and inadequate statement of the 
 connection of Lord Kelvin with electri- 
 cal engineering proper, it maybe of inter- 
 est to recall some incidents of a more 
 personal nature. It will be remem- 
 bered by those who attended the 
 Electrical Congress held in Philadelphia 
 in 1884 on the occasion of the Electrical 
 
 Exibition there, that the opening ad- 
 dress was made by him. It was not 
 a large body, but composing it were 
 many who are still with us. It was 
 my good fortune to again meet Lord 
 Kelvin in London in 1889, when as a 
 youthful president of this Institute, 
 then indeed itself youthful, barely out 
 of its swaddling clothes, I erdeavored 
 to fitly represent it in a speech at the 
 gathering and banquet of notables and 
 engineers of Great Britain and the 
 visiting American body, in the Guild- 
 hall; a combined audience of about 
 600. I interpreted as a compliment 
 to our young Institute, through myself 
 as its official head, an invitation to 
 visit Sir William Thomson at Glasgow. 
 But my plans had been made, and time 
 was limited, so that to my lasting re- 
 gret I was unable to accept. But I 
 now cherish as a memory of him, one 
 meeting of a few hours in 1897 which 
 came about quite unexpectedly. Lord 
 Kelvin, who was accompanied by his 
 devoted wife. Lady Kelvin, visited this 
 country in that year, and incidentally 
 made a tour of inspection of the shops 
 of the General Electric Company at 
 Schenectady. During this visit, those 
 who were with him had an opportunity 
 of discovering his striking ability to 
 seize upon the essential points of a 
 structure, to remark his incisive 
 questions, his quickness and clearness 
 of apprehension, and his untiring inter- 
 est and appreciation, during some 
 strenuous hours. It was a genuine 
 surprise to us who were with him, 
 that in spite of his burden of 73 years 
 his mind had retained its alertness and 
 vigor. 
 
 On the trip about the shops he car- 
 ried a note-book and made frequent 
 memoranda. Some years after this, Mr. 
 E. W. Rice, well-known to you, visited 
 Lord Kelvin at Glasgow, when at once 
 the note-book was produced, the items 
 of information gone over, and Mr. Rice 
 was questioned as to later developments 
 which were carefully noted, in order to 
 bring the matters up to date. In the 
 afternoon of the same day I had the 
 
16 
 
 MEMORIAL EXERCISES 
 
 satisfaction of finding that I was to be 
 a fellow traveler on the train to Boston, 
 which arrived there in the evening. It 
 is a trip which I have made very many 
 times, and it has generally seemed long 
 and tedious, but not at all so on that 
 occasion. It seemed to me too short. 
 Our talk ranged from details of con- 
 struction of coils of measuring instru- 
 ments, to the age of the earth, and the 
 nature of ether and matter. Even at 
 the end of the usually tiresome journey, 
 late in the evening, his interest did not 
 abate, for even at the late hour he in- 
 sisted on visiting the then recently con- 
 structed Boston subway before going to 
 his hotel. Lady Kelvin gently protested 
 that he must be too tired, but accom- 
 panied him to the subway. To one of his 
 nature, nothingthat interested him could 
 produce fatigue. The great charm about 
 him was his simplicity of manner and 
 entirely honest attitude as to truth. 
 When he did no.t know, he had no hesi- 
 tation in frankly saying so, and seeking 
 for information. ■ Later on, it fell to my 
 lot to speak some words of appreciation 
 at the meeting held in his honor at 
 Columbia University in 1902, on the 
 occasion of his last visit here. 
 
 He has been the recipient of numer- 
 ous high honors. He was one of our 
 very small list of honorary members, 
 and I am conscious that nothing which 
 I may say could add to the esteem, I 
 might almost say, veneration, in which 
 he has been held by all who have known 
 him or known of him. Yet I am thank- 
 ful to have had this opportunity to ex- 
 press appreciation of him in connection 
 with certain phases of his long and 
 wondrously active career. 
 
 The President: We will now ask 
 Professor E. L. Nichols, Professor of 
 Physics of Cornell University, and also 
 President of the American Society for 
 the Advancement of Science, to speak 
 of Lord Kelvin as a scientist. 
 
 Edward L. Nichols 
 It is often said and truly, that we 
 
 contemporaries, or to assign to them, 
 their proper position in the roll of fame. 
 Those who are most widely and favor- 
 ably known in their own time, are fre- 
 quently supplanted in the judgment of 
 later generations by others who receive 
 but little or no recognition during their 
 lives. Occasionally, however, there ap- 
 pears a man of genius, the value of 
 whose attainments can scarcely be 
 questioned, and the permanency of 
 whose position seems assured. Kelvin 
 was one of these. 
 
 It was said of Helmholtz' that he 
 was one of the greatest physicists, one 
 of the most accomplished physiologists 
 and one of the most accomplished math- 
 ematicians of the century. Just as 
 truly we may say of Kelvin that he was 
 one of the greatest physicists, one of 
 the most skilful mathematicians and 
 one of the most fertile and ingenious of 
 the inventors of his time. 
 
 Lord Kelvin was bom in Belfast, Ire- 
 land, on June 26, 1824. His father, 
 James Thomson, was a North-of-Ire- 
 land man of the sturdy Scot- Irish stock. 
 He had been educated at Glasgow. He 
 was a school teacher in Belfast, and it 
 was in that city that his two sons, 
 James Thomson and William Thomson, 
 first saw the light. 
 
 From 1832 James Thomson, Sr., was 
 professor of mathematics at Glasgow, 
 and there the two boys had their edu- 
 cation in an environment fitted early 
 to familiarize them with mathematical 
 and scientific subjects, and to develop 
 whatever latent powers they might pos- 
 sess. William was precocious, and at 
 an age when boys, at least in our day, 
 are thinking of entering college he was 
 graduated from the University of Glas- 
 gow and went to Cambridge for further 
 studies. There he distinguished himself 
 in mathematics and in 1841 when he 
 was seventeen years old published the 
 first of a series of papers in the Cam- 
 bridge Mathematical Journal. At Cam- 
 bridge he was a pupil of George Gabriel 
 Stokes, or more properly a companion,, 
 for he speaks of learning solar and stel- 
 
 are unable to estimate the value of our i. Clifford, "Seeing and Thinking." p. 18. 
 
7.V HOXOR OF LORD KELVLV 
 
 17 
 
 lar chemistry from him while they wan- 
 dered together am.ong the colleges.^ 
 Just what passed between these two 
 young fellows on that subject, nearly 
 twenty years before the appearance of 
 the work of Kirchhoff and Bunsen it 
 would indeed be interesting to know. 
 From Cambridge where his powers as a 
 mathematical physicist were rapidly 
 developed, Thomson went to Paris and 
 worked for some months in the labor- 
 atory of Regnault, one of the accom- 
 plished experimental physicists of that 
 time. 
 
 In 1846 William Thomson became 
 professor of physics at the University 
 of Glasgow, which position he held al- 
 most to the end of his very long and 
 active life. His brother James was sub- 
 sequently appointed professor of ap- 
 plied mathematics and engineering in 
 the same institution. The two, who 
 were very like each other in character 
 and in intellectual endowment, were 
 frequently engaged upon similar prob- 
 lems. In 1851, William Thomson was 
 elected to the Royal Society; in 1866, 
 he was knighted and became Sir William 
 Thomson; in 1892, he was raised to the 
 peerage and took the title of Lord 
 Kelvin. 
 
 Kelvin was a jnan of wide interests 
 in science, not a student of electricity 
 merely, nor of mechanics, nor of heat, 
 nor of sound and light, but of all of 
 these, with many fruitful excursions into 
 the fields of astronomy and geophysics 
 on the one hand and of navigation en- 
 gineering on the other. Owing perhaps 
 to his early training in mathematics, 
 and to the school in which he was 
 brought up, his tendency was always 
 to work from theory to experiment; 
 seeking by the latter to verify the con- 
 clusions of his analysis. A man who 
 naturally does this, however much ex- 
 perimental work he may perform, is to 
 be classed as a theoretical physicist in 
 contradistinction to those whose inter- 
 ests are primarily in phenomena, and 
 who use theory to explain and elucidate 
 
 what t hey observe. 
 
 2. Kelvin, Nature 67, p. 337. 
 
 The period from 1841, when young 
 William Thomson wrote his first pa- 
 pers, to 1907, when at the age of 83 
 he was still an active contributor to 
 scientific literature, has been incom- 
 parably the most fertile epoch in the 
 history of science and industry. Con- 
 sider the material world of 1841: 
 
 The railway had only just begun to 
 displace the stage coach; there were a 
 few ocean-going steamships, but most 
 travelers crossed the ocean in sailing 
 vessels; John Stephenson's attempt to 
 introduce street railways in New York 
 had been made and abandoned; there 
 were as yet no street cars, even with 
 horses as the motive power in any city. 
 The conception of electric transmission 
 of intelligence had been in men's minds 
 for nearly a century, and a practical 
 telegraph line had been constructed by 
 Wilhelm Weber, and Gauss, the astron- 
 omer, in Gottingen. This line connected 
 the observatory with the physical lab- 
 oratory and had been in successful op- 
 eration for five years. Railways, how- 
 ever, which were coming in, made the 
 telegraph a public necessity, and in 
 England in 1840, Wheatstone and Cooke 
 were installing their so-called ABC 
 system. In this country Morse was 
 busy with the same problem, but it 
 was not until 1844 that the line from 
 Baltimore to Washington was erected, 
 and telegraphy became a practical 
 thing in America. In a few of the 
 largest cities only, had gas come into 
 use for street lighting; petroleum had 
 not supplanted whale oil and candles, 
 for household illumination. The arc 
 lamp had long before been invented by 
 Davy, but electric lighting as a public 
 utility had yet forty years to wait. A 
 generation of electricians and inventors 
 (Gramme and Siemens, Jablokoff and 
 Swan, Edison, Weston, Brush, and a 
 host of others) were yet to spend years 
 of ceaseless toil in the development of 
 that art, and of the other great electrical 
 industries that the dynamo and motor 
 have made possible. The airship was a 
 dream of the visionary; the telephone 
 not even yet a dream. Thirty-six years 
 
n 
 
 MEMORIAL EXERCISES 
 
 later, the latter was to burst in a night 
 on an unprepared and un expecting 
 world — essentially complete and ready 
 for service. The airship was much 
 longer to remain a dream, and only in 
 these later days after much cost in hu- 
 man lives and endeavor, does it seem 
 to be n earing realization. These and a 
 thousand other things, skyscrapers and 
 elevators, trolley roads above and below 
 ground, stock-tickers and typewriters, 
 submarine boats and steam turbines, 
 motor boats and motor cars, wireless 
 telegraphs and all that render life to-day 
 at once more luxurious, more strenu- 
 ous, and more complicated, were dreams 
 or less than dreams in the year of 1841. 
 
 It is even more difficult to realize 
 the conditions of science at that time, 
 than to appreciate the changes that 
 have taken place in the industrial world. 
 Nineteen years were yet to elapse be- 
 fore the publication of Darwin's "Origin 
 of Species." Pasteur was not yet. 
 Brewster was still fighting his losing 
 battle against the undulatory theory of 
 light. In electricity. Coulomb and 
 Oersted and Ohm, Arago and Ampere 
 had paved the way to a new order of 
 things, but the labors of Faraday in 
 England, and of Joseph Henry in this 
 country were but just begun. Heat -was 
 still regarded as a subtle fluid, and nine 
 years were still to elapse before the 
 appearance of Helmholtz's paper on 
 the " Conservation of Energy." An era 
 of extraordinary activity, however, was 
 about to begin, during which science 
 was to revolutionize the industrial 
 methods of the world, and to be herself 
 revolutionized. 
 
 In both revolutions Kelvin was to 
 have an important part. Science to him 
 was the endeavor to give precise math- 
 ematical expression to relations per- 
 ceived, and thus to bring to light rela- 
 tions hidden and obscure. He sought 
 likewise to comprehend definitely the 
 mechanism involved in physical pro- 
 cesses. Where the mechanism was not 
 capable of being directly observed, he 
 strove to imagine one. With him, com- 
 putation was a passion, observation of 
 
 secondary interest. He was always cal- 
 culating, and few men I suppose have 
 ever applied mathematics to a greater 
 variety of subjects. The heat of the 
 sun, the age of the earth, the size of 
 atoms, the density of the luminiferous 
 ether, the power of a cubic mile of sun- 
 shine, the mechanical energy of the 
 solar system, the annual loss of heat 
 by radiation from the earth, the re- 
 tardation due to tides; these and innu- 
 merable other problems engaged him. 
 Even his popular addresses, where all 
 higher mathematics was excluded, teem 
 with numerical data. He was no com- 
 piler of statistics. He gave out the re- 
 sults of his own computation in illus- 
 tration of his subject. In such cases he 
 was wont to express himself in the 
 homely British measures — capillary 
 forces in tons to the square inch and the 
 like — ^but at the same time he was an 
 enthusiastic supporter of the metric sys- 
 tem, and was chiefly instrumental in 
 the establishment and adoption of the 
 c. g. s. system of ttnits. To a Phila- 
 delphia audience in 1884 he said: 
 
 " You in this country are subjected 
 to the British system in weights and 
 measures; you use the foot, inch and 
 yard. I am obliged to use that system, 
 but I apologize to you for doing so, be- 
 cause it is inconvenient. I look upon 
 our English system, as a wickedly brain- 
 destroying piece of bondage under which 
 ■yve suffer. The reason why we continue 
 to use it, is the imaginary difficulty of 
 making the change and nothing else; but 
 I do not think in America that any such 
 difficulty should stand in the way of 
 adopting so splendidly useful a reform." 
 
 Kelvin was a most prolific writer, 
 and his productiveness lasted from his 
 student days at Cambridge in 1841, 
 until the year of his death in 1907. He 
 contributed over 300 papers to some 30 
 different journals and transactions. 
 The list of titles is a catalogue of nearly 
 everything about which the world of 
 physics was thinking, during the long 
 period of his scientific activity. Often 
 it was but a passing, though always a 
 significant and suggestive thought which 
 
IX HOXOR OF LORD KELVIN 
 
 19 
 
 he presented, but certain great subjects 
 were to him themes of lifelong interest, 
 and to these he continually returned 
 with new contributions to our knowl- 
 edge. With the doctrine of energy, in 
 the development of which he was long 
 a co-worker with Joule, and the science 
 of thermo-dynamics which has grown 
 out of that doctrine; with the math- 
 ematical theories of heat and electricity; 
 with the theory of wave motion and 
 especially of water waves, and with nine- 
 teenth century speculation concerning 
 the constitution of matter, his name 
 will ever be associated. His work in 
 any one of these fields of investigation 
 would have placed him in the first rank, 
 and insured him a lasting reputation. 
 Taken altogether, they justify the uni- 
 versal acclamation of him as the fore- 
 most man of science of his time. 
 
 In 1854 Cyrus Field appeared in 
 England with a proposal for a trans- 
 atlantic cable. The great expense in- 
 volved, rendered the question of great 
 importance whether transmission was 
 practicable to such distances, and, if 
 possible, the conditions under which 
 success was to be expected. There was 
 no previous experience upon which to 
 base opinions, and most of the electri- 
 cians of that time were as ill-equipped 
 to consider the question from the theo- 
 retical point of view, as were most of 
 the practical men forty years later, 
 when suddenly confronted with the 
 change from direct to alternating cur- 
 rent systems for light and power. Kel- 
 vin, however, had already considered 
 from the mathematical standpoint, the 
 conditions existing in a circuit contain- 
 ing capacity and inductance. Three 
 years before, his analysis was sufficiently 
 advanced to enable him to forecast the 
 existence of the phenomenon of the 
 oscillatory discharge, and to state the 
 law of retardation. He was almost the 
 only man in England capable of giving 
 a definite answer to many of the ques- 
 tions involved in long-distance trans- 
 mission of signals through cables. 
 
 The history of his connection with 
 the transatlantic service is well known. 
 
 We know that the breaking down of 
 the first cable in 1858 was due to failure 
 to heed his warning, and that the ulti- 
 mate success of the scheme was very 
 largely the result of his mathematical 
 skill and rare mechanical insight. It 
 was in recognition of these practical 
 services as well as of his eminence as a 
 man of science, that he was knighted 
 in 1866. 
 
 Of his career as an electrical engineer, 
 and of his contributions to the art of 
 navigation it is not my province to 
 speak. Permit me, however, to note 
 the very unusual circumstance that al- 
 though a considerable portion of his 
 time was for many years given to tech- 
 nical work, his output as an engineer 
 was but a by-product. He was not 
 thereby diverted from the consideration 
 of the most abstruse and difficult phases 
 of pure science, but continued to con- 
 tribute with unabated ardor and suc- 
 cess to our knowledge of physical theory, 
 to the very end of his long life. Only 
 last summer at the meeting of the Brit- 
 ish Association, he was able to take an 
 animated and interested part in the dis- 
 cussions of the mathematical and phy- 
 sical section, and although he had a 
 few years ago resigned his professorship 
 at Glasgow, he may be said to have 
 died in harness, since his last illness a 
 few days ago was brought on by cold, 
 due to his experimenting in the un- 
 heated hallways of his country house in 
 Scotland. 
 
 Kelvin was keenly appreciative of 
 the scientific and technical work of 
 America. Of his visit in 1876 he spoke 
 in the following glowing terms on Sep- 
 tember 7 of that year;^ 
 
 " I came home, indeed, vividly im- 
 pressed with much that 1 had seen both 
 in the great exhibition in Philadelphia 
 and out of it; showingthe truest scien- 
 tific spirit and devotion, the originality, 
 the inventiveness, the patient persever- 
 ing thoroughness of work, the appre 
 ciativeness, and the generous open- 
 mindedness and sympathy, from which 
 
 1. Kelvin: Address to the Mathematical and 
 Physical Section of the British Asrociation, 1876. 
 
20 
 
 MEMORIAL EXERCISES 
 
 the great things of science come. I 
 wish I could speak to you of the veteran 
 Henry, generous rival of Faraday in 
 electromagnetic discovery; of Peirce, 
 the founder of high mathematics in 
 America; of Bache, and of the splendid 
 heritage he has left to America apd to 
 the world in the United States Coast 
 Survey; of the great school of astrono- 
 mers which followed — Gould, Newton, 
 Newcomb, Watson, Young, Alvan Clark, 
 Rutherford, Draper (father and son) ; 
 of Commander Belknap and his great 
 exploration of the Pacific depths by 
 pianoforte wire with imperfect appar- 
 atus supplied from Glasgow, out of 
 which he forced a success in his own 
 way; of Captain Sigsbee, who followed 
 with like fervor and resolution, and 
 made further improvements in the ap- 
 paratus by which he has done marvels 
 of easy, quick, and sure deep sea sound- 
 ing in his little surveying ship Blake. 
 
 " In the United States telegraphic 
 department I saw and heard Elisha 
 Gray's splendidly worked out electric 
 telephone actually sounding four mes- 
 sages simultaneously on the Morse code, 
 and clearly capable of doing yet four 
 times as many with very moderate im- 
 provements of detail; and I saw Ed- 
 ison's automatic telegraph delivering 
 1015 words in 57 seconds — this done by 
 the long neglected electrochemical meth- 
 od of Bain, long ago condemned in 
 England to the helot work of recording 
 from a relay, and then turned adrift as 
 needlessly delicate for that. In the 
 Canadian Department I heard ' To be 
 or not to be — there's the rub ', through 
 an electric telegraph wire; but scorning 
 monosyllables, the electric articulation 
 rose to higher flights, and gave me 
 passages taken at random from the New 
 York newspapers. All this my own ears 
 heard, spoken to me with unmistakable 
 distinctness by the thin circular disc 
 armature of just such another little 
 electromagnet as this which I hold in 
 my hand. The words were shouted 
 with a clear and loud voice by my col- 
 league-judge. Professor Watson, at the 
 far end of the telegraph wire, holding 
 
 his mouth close to a stretched mem- 
 brane, such as you see before you here, 
 carrying a little piece of soft iron, which 
 was thus made to perform in the neigh- 
 borhood of an eletromagnet in circuit 
 with the line, motions proportional to 
 the sonorific motions of the air. This, 
 the greatest by far of all the marvels 
 of the electric telegraph, is due to a 
 young countryman of our own, Mr. 
 Graham Bell of Edinburgh and Mon- 
 treal and Boston, now becoming a nat- 
 uralized citizen of the United States. 
 Who can but admire the hardihood of 
 invention which devised such very 
 slight means to realize the mathematical 
 conception, that if electricity is to con- 
 vey all the delicacies of quality which dis- 
 tinguish articulate speech, the strength 
 of its current must vary continuously 
 and as nearly as may be in simple pro- 
 portion to the velocity of a particle of 
 air engaged in constituting the sound " ? 
 In 1884 Kelvin attended the British 
 Association meeting in Montreal, and 
 tarried to deliver before a distinguished 
 and appreciative audience in Baltimore 
 the extraordinary course of lectures on 
 molecular dynamics which twenty years 
 later he published in book form. In 
 1897 the Toronto meeting of the Asso- 
 ciation brought him across the water 
 once more, and it was here that he read 
 his striking paper on the " Fuel Supply 
 and Air Supply of the World "; the 
 suggestion being that free oxygen is the 
 result of plant action, and that cessa- 
 tion of life is more likely to come from 
 depletion of the air, than from lack of 
 fuel. Upon his last visit to the United 
 States in 1902 he showed a spirit un- 
 conquered by old age, an enthusiasm 
 for all things scientific, and an interest 
 in things technical, as vivid and trench- 
 ant as that which had characterized his 
 younger days. Seeing a gang of 24 
 small direct-current generators oper- 
 ated in series for high-tension experi- 
 ments in the laboratory at Cornell, I 
 remember that he advocated the direct 
 current for long-distance transmission 
 in preference to alternating current — a 
 suggestion which then met with little 
 
I.y HOXOR OF LORD KELVI.Y 
 
 21 
 
 favor at least in this country, but which 
 is now being worked out on a practical 
 scale in Switzerland. 
 
 Kelvin was so familiar a figtire to en- 
 gineers and physicists in this country 
 that I need not attempt to describe 
 him. Many of you will remember the 
 spare wiry form, almost frail as to phy- 
 sique, but full of life and imbued with 
 an almost boyish eagerness. To my 
 mind his most striking characteristic 
 was an im ostentatious simplicity; the 
 simplicity which one remembers in men 
 such as Heinrich Hertz, and in Lorentz, 
 and which happily we find so frequently 
 in great men, that it may fairly be 
 termed the typical simplicity of genius. 
 With this simplicity was combined a 
 certain practicality; the practicality of 
 his race. I do not know; but I suspect 
 that Kelvin would have regarded Niag- 
 ara fully harnessed to the service of 
 man, a more beautiful and inspiring 
 sight than the original unchained Niag- 
 ara of the wilderness. I well remember 
 that years ago when the esthetically in- 
 clined, protested against the unsightli- 
 ness of overhead wires he remarked that 
 the time would come when the network 
 of wires across the sky would be re- 
 garded a fit subject for the rhapsodies 
 of the poets. 
 
 Combined again with these personal 
 attributes was the supreme quality of 
 kindliness; and to this I am able to bear 
 direct personal testimony. In the win- 
 ter of 1879 I was in Scotland, and ven- 
 tured somewhat timorously to visit 
 Kelvin's laboratory at the University of 
 Glasgow; an unknown student on my 
 way home from Germany with no claim 
 upon him, and no recommendation save 
 a certain enthusiasm for physics and 
 a keen interest in the work which he 
 was doing. I shall never forget the 
 warm friendliness of my reception, nor 
 the trouble he took to show me every- 
 thing in the laboratory and workshops, 
 nor the cordial hospitality of his house- 
 hold and that of his brother, James 
 Thomson, the professor of engineering. 
 
 Such was Lord Kelvin, physicist, 
 mathematician, electrician, inventor, 
 
 man of genius. He has passed from 
 earth, and his fellow countrymen have 
 paid him their highest tributes — a rest- 
 ing place in Westminster Abbey. May 
 not we, his cousins across the sea, gath- 
 ered in commemoration of him, and of 
 his services to mankind say, fittingly, 
 of him what he himself said, in his tri- 
 bute to his fellow physicist and friend, 
 Sir George Stokes: 
 
 " The world is poorer through his 
 death and we who knew him feel the 
 sorrow of bereavement " ^ 
 
 The President: There is another 
 part of Lord Kelvin's work, which ap- 
 pealed very largely to the popular im- 
 agination and benefited mankind in 
 general very greatly, and that is his 
 work in connection with submarine 
 telegraphy. 
 
 I will now ask Mr. G. G. Ward, hon- 
 orary secretary and treasurer for the 
 U. S. A. of the Institution of Electrical 
 Engineers of Great Britain, to address 
 you on the subject, " Lord Kelvin's 
 work in submarine telegraphy ". 
 
 George G. Ward 
 
 Fifty years ago the world was waiting 
 with profound interest, the outcome of 
 that gigantic enterprise which eventu- 
 ally culminated in the completion of the 
 short-lived but all important first trans- 
 atlantic cable of 1858. Two ships were 
 required to carry and lay the cable, 
 viz.: the U. S. frigate "Niagara" and 
 H. M.S. "Agamemnon." LordKelvin, then 
 Professor Thomson, was the electrical 
 engineer in charge, on board the Aga- 
 memnon, and now, just as the jubilee 
 of that historic and epoch-making event 
 approaches, we pay homage to his mem- 
 ory as the man whose contributions to 
 the success of submarine telegraphy 
 cannot be over-rated; the man who, we 
 may truthfully say without the slightest 
 exaggeration, first made long-distance 
 ocean telegraphy possible. 
 
 As early as 1855 he outlined the laws 
 of the speed of signals through ocean 
 
 1. Lord Kelvin: "The Scientific Work of Sir 
 George Stokes": Nature, 67, p. 337. 
 
22 
 
 MEMORIAL EXERCISES 
 
 cables, and their connection with other 
 natural forces. In 1856 he knew, what 
 no one else seemed to suspect, that' two 
 or more insulated wires of any great 
 length under one sheathing, would suffer 
 so much from mutual induction as to be 
 unworkable, and he warned engineers of 
 the danger of constructing such a cable. 
 
 He pointed out the great importance 
 of using copper for the conductor of the 
 cable, free from all traces of impurity, 
 on account of the extremely deleterious 
 effect such impurities had on its con- 
 ductivity. Many scientists at the time 
 were opposed to this theory, but his in- 
 sistence on its correctness led to the ap- 
 pointment of a special commission 
 under Dr. Matthiessen for the purpose 
 of making a thorough experimental in- 
 vestigation of the question. The work 
 of that commission is quoted to-day as 
 a basis of comparison, and at that date 
 revolutionized the manufacture of cop- 
 per for electrical conductors. 
 
 Other scientific men of prominence 
 had formed the opinion that the oppo- 
 sition of the cable to the passage of a 
 current on account of its great length, 
 and high resistance copper, could always 
 be overcome by increasing the battery 
 employed. 
 
 Professor Thomson knew, however, 
 that to increase the voltage was to at- 
 tack the subject frora the wrong side, 
 as was demonstrated in the cable of 
 1858, which, stimulated by powerful 
 batteries and induction coils, expired in 
 its effort to articulate. In 1865 his 
 theory of the practicability of using but 
 a minute power, one that could be gen- 
 erated in the bowl of a clay pipe or even 
 in a lady's thimble, was fully demon- 
 strated. He saw the need of a delicate 
 and extremely sensitive apparatus which 
 would respond to such a feeble current, 
 and invented for the purpose that beau- 
 tiful instrument, the mirror galvano- 
 meter. The mirror galvanometer was 
 employed on the 1866 cable, and not 
 only increased its efficiency, but prob- 
 ably has done more to reduce electrical 
 measurement to an exact science, than 
 any other instrument ever invented. 
 
 In 1869 he made a still further ad- 
 vance by inventing the siphon recorder, 
 which writes every signal passing 
 through a cable. This instrument was 
 introduced on long submarine lines in 
 1869, and the speaker had the honor of 
 being one of the first to work it. It 
 was then in a crude experimental form. 
 
 His marine galvanometer, specially 
 designed for ships, made it possible to 
 accurately test cables while being laid 
 or repaired. The motion of the vessel 
 had no effect upon it. 
 
 His was the wonderful mind that de- 
 vised the means of making the sub- 
 marine cable complete its purpose of 
 linking the hemispheres together. 
 
 At the jubilee of his professorship of 
 natural philosophy at the University of 
 Glasgow in 1896, his own inventions 
 were used to convey him congratula- 
 tions from every quarter of the globe. 
 
 He acted as electrical engineer during 
 the manufacture and laying of the 
 cables of 1865-1866 and at the end of 
 the latter expedition, received the honor 
 of knighthood, and in 1892 he was 
 made a peer. 
 
 His early investigations were carried 
 out at a time when no exact standards 
 of measurement existed, and while the 
 world owes him much for the direct re- 
 sults of his work for submarine tele- 
 graphy, the placing of these measure- 
 ments on a permanent and scientific 
 basis is equally important. Remem- 
 bering all these difficulties, his math- 
 ematical work inspires one with pro- 
 found admiration and respect, feelings 
 which are doubly intensified when one 
 thinks of the marvelous ingenuity and 
 versatility, which provided all manner 
 of simple and efficient expedients to 
 overcome the many difficulties that 
 arose in his experimental labors. 
 
 He devised many standard instru- 
 ments for making precise electrical 
 measurements. These have been used in 
 all branches of electrical work. His 
 quadrant electrometer is largely used 
 in submarine cable work, and is a fine 
 example of that care and forethought 
 which provided so fully for all the re- 
 
7.Y HONOR OF LORD KELVIN 
 
 23 
 
 quirements of a given problem. He 
 taught telegraph engineers the princi- 
 ples of their business. 
 
 Lord Kelvin was a profound thinker 
 and a busy worker in many diversified 
 subjects, but his interest in cable tele- 
 graphy never flagged. With his death, 
 the cable world has lost one of the pio- 
 neers, and the greatest master-mind of 
 the art, whose work will remain as a 
 prominent and lasting testimony to the 
 exactness and thoroughness with which 
 he carried out everything he undertook. 
 Submarine telegraphy owes so much to 
 the labors and genius of Lord Kelvin, 
 that no history of the ocean cable could 
 be -wTitten, that would not be largely a 
 history of his investigations, researches, 
 discoveries and inventions. 
 
 We who have worked submarine ca- 
 bles with his mirror galvanometer and 
 with his siphon recorder, have tested 
 them with his astatic galvanometer, and 
 with his electrometer, have calculated 
 their speeds by his formulas, have lo- 
 cated their faults by his raethods and 
 instruments, have sent our repair ships 
 guided by his compass, have taken our 
 soundings in new waters by his sounding 
 wire — how can we, who have worked with 
 ^ him all these years, think of any part 
 of our branch of applied electricity with- 
 out at the same time recalling William 
 Thomson, Lord Kelvin. His figure looms 
 so large with us that we deplore his 
 death as an irreparable loss. Those who 
 knew him and had the privilege of his 
 friendship, and there are many such 
 here to-day, will dwell with deep and 
 genuine regret on the sorrowful thought 
 that his modesty and his winning per- 
 sonality have passed into memory and 
 will be seen no more. 
 
 After a life devoted with unsurpassed 
 success to physical science and its prac- 
 tical applications, the mind that thought, 
 has fled to Him who bestowed it; the 
 body that wrought rests among kings in 
 that sacred pile where Britain lays and 
 guards her illustrious dead, but his name 
 and fame will endure world-wide never 
 to be forgotten while the sciences 
 flourish. 
 
 The President: The last speaker has 
 touched upon some of Lord Kelvin's 
 work of which the average layman has 
 heard but little, and I will now ask 
 Rear Admiral George W. Melville, 
 U.S.N., to speak on the subject, " Lord 
 Kelvin in naval engineering ". 
 
 George W. Melville 
 
 William Thomson, Sir William Thom- 
 son, Lord Kelvin, I was going to say of 
 Great Britain, but I must say of the 
 whole world, for he belongs to us, as 
 the engineers and physicists of America, 
 as well as of Great Britain. 
 
 He was the product of the land of the 
 thistle and heather, that storied land of 
 Scott and Bums. Sterile with rocks and 
 snows; but rich, so rich in song and 
 story, of men of great deeds, and ster- 
 ling worth; that land which in the 
 last httndred years has produced more 
 great men in every high station in life, 
 for her population, than any other land 
 under the sun. And he was one of these. 
 I had the honor and privilege of know- 
 ing him personally, dined and supped 
 with him, and had the great delight of 
 listening to his learned discourse, this 
 of itself a great privilege, and a bright 
 milestone in my varied life. 
 
 Yet he was as simple in his manner 
 as a child, and as patient as a Hindoo 
 god in listening to the various pigmies 
 who presented their varied opinions to 
 his great and well-trained mind. His 
 greatness was well exhibited in his pa- 
 tient well-bred manner. 
 
 I count it a privilege and a high honor 
 to have been asked to represent " those 
 who go down to the sea in ships " in 
 paying a tribute for them to the mem- 
 ory of the great man, whose beneficent 
 genius included them among the multi- 
 tudes, whose lives are safer, broader and 
 more enlightened because he lived and 
 worked. 
 
 We all know how difficult it is to 
 judge of relative magnitudes when we 
 are close to them, and I think, in spite 
 of the veneration in which we all held 
 Lord Kelvin, something of the kind is 
 
24 
 
 MEMORIAL EXERCISES 
 
 true of his reputation. He has been so 
 close to us all in his wonderful ability 
 to make practical application of ab- 
 struse mathematical reasoning, that we 
 can hardly, as yet, give him his right- 
 ful place in the Pantheon of scientific 
 immortals. I am sure, however, that 
 we all believe his place will be among 
 the highest. 
 
 My own training and habits of thought 
 are such, that (like many others here 
 probably) his mathematical genius in 
 solving problems of extreme difficulty 
 arouses deep admiration, even wonder, 
 but without the appreciation which can 
 come only from a kindred mind, of which 
 there are very few indeed. But that is 
 only one aspect of his genius. More 
 wonderful still to me is the fact that, 
 this mighty intellect, which was not 
 daunted by the problem of forecasting 
 the life of the world, could also turn 
 itself to practical problems of the most 
 concrete kind, and give us solutions 
 which, when they have not remained 
 unchanged, are still the essential fea- 
 ture of the latest form of the apparatus. 
 
 Is it going" too far to say that the 
 success of the trans-oceanic cables is 
 due to Lord Kelvin. He was the engi- 
 neer of the first ones which were success- 
 ful, and while his mathematical skill 
 foretold the conditions as they were 
 proved to be, his practical talent as a 
 physicist and mechanician developed the 
 mirror galvanometer and the siphon re- 
 corder, without which the feeble energy 
 transmitted could not have been uti- 
 lized. What must be the feelings of a 
 man who, for forty years, could reflect 
 that the whole course of government, 
 business life and the daily information 
 of the " man on the street " had been 
 absolutely revolutionized by his work. 
 In ancient times an ambassador was in 
 a very real sense the representative of his 
 sovereign, and on his skill alone, often 
 depended the issue of war and peace. 
 But the work of this quiet scientist has 
 made him little more than a messenger 
 boy in a gilded coat. We all know how 
 the battle of New Orleans in 1815 was 
 fought two weeks after the treaty of 
 
 peace had been signed; but the result of 
 the treaty of Portsmouth was known in 
 a few minutes in Tokio and St. Peters- 
 burg. 
 
 This almost instantaneous transmis- 
 sion of intelligence has linked the na- 
 tions of the earth until they are far 
 closer than provinces of the same coun- 
 try were a century ago. It has brought 
 nearer to fruition Bobby Bums's proph- 
 esy that " Man to man, the world o'er, 
 shall brothers be for a' that". We have 
 had it exemplified within the last few 
 months when Europe was shipping us 
 gold within a day of its need being de- 
 termined here. 
 
 Lord Kelvin's practical application of 
 keen mathematical analysis gave us 
 an improved mariner's compass to meet 
 the conditions brought about, when iron 
 and steel supplanted wood in shipbuild- 
 ing, and at first seemed to threaten the 
 usefulness and reliability of that best 
 friend of the mariner. The details have 
 now been worked out, so that the ad- 
 justments can be made by men of or- 
 dinary ability, thus again illustrating 
 his wonderful capacity for the practical 
 utilization of abstract theories. 
 
 Still another of his contributions to im- 
 provement in maritime affairs is the 
 sounding machine for determining ocean 
 depths. Before this, it was a difficult, 
 uncertain and laborious task to attempt 
 to ascertain great depths, some of which, 
 as you doubtless know, are m.ore than 
 five miles. We have in this apparatus 
 simple but ingenious applications of sci- 
 ence all through. It can readily be im- 
 agined that the wire, in passing through 
 such great depths, may be diverted by 
 submarine currents, so the actual de- 
 termination of the depth is by the regis- 
 tration in a protected tube, which is 
 carried clear to the bottom. 
 
 I have referred to the intensely scien- 
 tific side of Lord Kelvin's genius as 
 though it were somewhat surprising, 
 and, unfortunately, we all know that it 
 is far from common to find it in com- 
 bination with the genius for abstract 
 reasoning, such as he possessed. We 
 may remember, however, that the great 
 
LV HONOR OF LORD KELVIX 
 
 25 
 
 Newton was master of the mint for 
 many years, where he did splendid work 
 in the reformation of the coinage. I 
 think perhaps the condition is a sur- 
 vival of that kind of education which 
 considered the utilities as beneath no- 
 tice, and that mental training, as such, 
 was the great end. Even in our era, 
 when the engineer is such a mighty fac- 
 tor, we shall occasionally hear some 
 college president, trained in the old 
 school, who wants education to be 
 somewhat procrustean, and to compel 
 all students to go through a dreary 
 grind of dead languages on the alleged 
 groimd that it broadens them. Such 
 men call their favorite studies " the 
 humanities ", yet what have they really 
 done for humanity, compared to the 
 work of such men as Lord Kelvin ? 
 
 Perhaps in our day we do not need 
 to regard seriously these efforts to gal- 
 vanize a decadent worship, but it is 
 well to emphasize the lesson of Lord 
 Kelvin's life in its devotion to the prac- 
 tical and the useful, and to pay our 
 tribute to his memory for having made 
 our world better and happier, and all our 
 lives broader and more fruitful. 
 
 In conclusion I am pleased to say that 
 Great Britain knew her duty toward this 
 mighty mind. They have laid him to 
 rest in their glorious Pantheon, West- 
 minster Abbey, where for a thousand 
 years all that is great, high, holy, or 
 worthy of a nation's gratitude is gath- 
 ered for their last long sleep. 
 
 I believe it was Britain's greatest 
 admiral who said before the battle of 
 Trafalgar, " Here is for the peerage or 
 Westminster Abbey ". The great soul 
 that is laid to rest with the best of 
 Britain's heroes had no such thoughts 
 in his mind. He won his peerage and 
 rest in Westminster, not by destroying 
 his fellowman, but by that higher, 
 holier duty as he saw it by making the 
 world better for man to live in. And 
 the whole world is better because he 
 had lived. 
 
 The President: I will now call on 
 Mr. T. C. Martin, editor of the Electrical 
 
 World, and past-president of the In- 
 stitute, to speak of " Lord Kelvin and 
 the American Institute of Electrical 
 Engineers ". 
 
 Thomas Commerford Martin 
 Although Sir William Thomson first 
 landed on the shores of this continent 
 in 1866, it was not until ten years later 
 that he first came in contact with Amer- 
 ican electrical engineering, when in 
 1876, at the ever famous Philadelphia 
 Centennial Exposition, he heard through 
 the telephone and to use his own lan- 
 guage, got inspiration from meeting its 
 inventor, Alexander Graham Bell, our 
 past-president. At that time our fellow 
 members, Elihu Thomson, C. F. Brush, 
 Edward Weston, and Thomas Alva Ed- 
 ison, were still low on the horizon, but 
 they were well aloft in the firmament 
 when this great European comrade 
 came back in 1884. In the mean- 
 time, the phonograph had been added 
 to the telephone; and it was perhaps 
 logical and typical that the two greatest 
 talking devices of all the ages should 
 have been bom in America. 
 
 But what pleased Sir William best in 
 1884, aside from the foundation in that 
 year of our own Institute, was the mar- 
 velous development of electric lighting. 
 Not only were the brilliant arcs of Brush 
 and Thomson resplendent on the high- 
 ways, " insistent sisters of the day ", to 
 use Shelley's phrase, but he found, in 
 his own phrase, " Edison's great inven- 
 tion perfected ", and that which he had 
 regarded dubiously, the " subdivision of 
 the electric light ", applied successfully 
 for interior illumination in New York 
 and other great cities. To the conquest 
 of transmitted and recorded speech, 
 America had added electric light for 
 street and home, with lamps that like 
 stars differed from each other only in 
 their glory. And again the great-hearted 
 representative of English science re- 
 joiced, and again he filled up several 
 more of those little green note-books 
 with the answers to his ceaseless ques- 
 tions. 
 
 That year, 1884, the American Insti- 
 
iG 
 
 MEMORIAL EXERCISES 
 
 tute of Electrical Engineers struggled 
 into existence, and he who was thrice 
 president of our kindred society in 
 Great Britain, gave those of us who 
 worked anxiously for its foundation, the 
 warmest support and sympathy. Even 
 to-day, we are inclined to suppose, in 
 spite of all our American chauvinism 
 and national pride, that in things tech- 
 nical and scientific, leadership or su- 
 premacy belongs in Europe. What ever 
 of truth or fallacy lurks in this idea, it 
 was at least gratifying to us, to have 
 Sir William predict a splendid outflower- 
 ing of the electrical arts in America, 
 with an Institute that would in a few 
 years excel in membership any sister 
 society throughout the world. His be- 
 lief in our success did much to make us 
 successful, did much to help us in de- 
 veloping along right lines, did much to 
 help create this unequalled home and 
 center of engineering. 
 
 In 1896, I was delegated by the In- 
 stitute as your past-president, to rep- 
 resent it at the jubilee of Lord Kelvin 
 at Glasgow University, when we could 
 reciprocate some of his courtesies to us. 
 Never shall I forget the stately and 
 lively exercises of that glorious June 
 morning, when in the big chapel above 
 the tiny brook from which he took his 
 title, that simple, good, gray old man, 
 pioneer, inventor, physicist and thinker 
 beyond any other contemporary of our 
 race, received the plaudits of a notable 
 assemblage and the addresses of every 
 great university and every learned so- 
 ciety throughout the world. The pile 
 of engrossed resolutions rose ever higher 
 on the platform, hiding the dignitaries, 
 and as I sat with Hopkinson and Ayrton 
 and Perry and Mascart we wondered 
 whether the scrolls we carried might not 
 presently tip the pile over to the intense 
 delight of the cheering, surging mob of 
 students up in the galleries. That night 
 at the grand banquet to which the royal 
 felicitations were sent, we heard this 
 man so honored, avow with tears and 
 almost with the note of tragedy in his 
 voice, that his life had been a failure — 
 that striving as he had for fifty years. 
 
 he knew no more of electricity and mag- 
 netism, and was no nearer solving the 
 deep problems of nature than when he 
 began toiling up the ladder of knowl- 
 edge. 
 
 Only as an evidence of his kindly dis- 
 position and unwearied interest in Amer- 
 ican development, I mention the fact 
 that the same week, instead of resting 
 after such memorable exercises, he made 
 the long, weary trip from Glasgow to 
 London to preside at a lecture I deliv- 
 ered before the Royal Institution on 
 the utilization of Niagara, a project 
 which he always encouraged, saying 
 that the great cataract would never be 
 beautiful, until it had ceased to be such 
 an awful and ujilovely example of waste. 
 
 In 1902 Lord Kelvin came back to 
 this country, and in April with the co- 
 operation of other societies, we gave him 
 and Lady Kelvin a reception at Colum- 
 bia University, attended by over 2000 
 members and friends. Whether there 
 was a premonition or not, that it was 
 his last visit to America I do not know, 
 but it is the fact, that the throng of 
 friends and acquaintances who crowded 
 around to say personal good-bye, sim- 
 ply swamped the spacious platform 
 and carried the guests of the evening 
 off their feet. We had an electric 
 coup^ in waiting, and as they rode 
 away I told Lord Kelvin jokingly 
 that it was his chariot of fire. Many 
 an idle word has the aspect of 
 prophecy. Equally interesting as a 
 souvenir of that last trip, was the last 
 public function, the dinner given in his 
 honor by Anthony Brady on behalf of 
 the New York Edison Company at 
 Delmonico's, when he spoke of the 
 wonderful growth of the lighting system 
 in this city since 1884, and said that old 
 as he was, he always got new inspiration 
 when he came to this country. Before 
 he left for the other shore forever, he 
 heard and was enthusiastic over the 
 Cahill telharmonium, invented by one 
 of our members, wherein the sound 
 theories of his old friend Helmholtz 
 were justified by electrical inventions, 
 and where dynamos take the place 
 
IN HONOR OF LORD KELVIN 
 
 27 
 
 of organ pipe and violin string, and give 
 us literally the music of the spheres. 
 
 One of the conceptions we associate 
 with Lord Kelvin is that of a universe 
 where the driving power, the energy, is 
 always the same, but where in regard 
 to such a solar system as ours there is 
 a constant slowing down, an inevitable 
 tendency to degeneration, and at last 
 cessation and death. True in all prob- 
 ability of the physical world and mortal 
 man, but as for the spiritual world in 
 which he had so profound a faith, the 
 converse is equally true, and the heirs 
 of all the ages, the generation that fol- 
 
 lows us will be lifted to loftier insight, 
 to finer ideals, to broader principles, to 
 higher peaks of philosophic vision, to a 
 keener perception of divinity itself, be- 
 cause Kelvin lived. No man felt more 
 intimately and reverently than he, the 
 fellow member to whom we now pay 
 this last tribute, the sentiment of Tenny- 
 son's beautiful lines: 
 
 " Our little systems have their day, 
 They have their day and cease to be, 
 They are but broken lights of thee, 
 And thou, O Lord, art more than they ! " 
 
 Benediction was pronounced by Dr. 
 Manning and the meeting adjourned. 
 
 Societies ©fHciaKis TRepreeenteO 
 
 Organizations 
 American Association for the Advance- 
 ment of Science 
 American Electrochemical Society 
 
 American Institute of Mining Engineers 
 American Philosophical Society 
 
 American Physical Society 
 American Mathematical Society 
 American Society of Civil Engineers 
 American Society of Mechanical Engi- 
 neers. 
 American Street and Interurban Rail- 
 way Association 
 Association of Edison Illuminating Com- 
 panies 
 Franklin Institute 
 
 Representatives 
 Edward L. Nichols, retiring president. 
 
 E. F. Roeber, chariman, executive com- 
 mittee. 
 Joseph W. Richards, secretary. 
 
 A. R. Ledoux, past-president 
 Andrew Carnegie. 
 
 Michael I. Pupin. 
 Ernest Fox Nichols. 
 J. Howard Van Amringe. 
 Charles Macdonald. 
 
 Rear Admiral George W. Melville, U.S.N 
 past-president and Hon. Member. 
 
 B. V. Swenson, secretary. 
 
 W. W. Freeman, president. 
 
 John W. Lieb, Jr., past-president. 
 
 Edwin J. Houston. 
 
 T. Commerford Martin, corresponding 
 
 member. 
 George G. Ward, honorary secretary and 
 
 treasurer for U. S. A. 
 Clayton H. Sharp. 
 Arthur H. Elliott. 
 Dudley Farrand, president. 
 W. W. Freeman, secretary. 
 Albert F. Ganz, president. 
 George H. Guy, secretary. 
 
 The audience numbered 355 in which the American Institute of Electrical En- 
 gineers, the American Institute of Mining Engineers, and the American Society 
 of Mechanical Engineers were largely represented by their officers and members, 
 accompanied by many ladies. 
 
 Institution of Electrical Engineers 
 
 (Great Britain) 
 Illuminating Engineering Society 
 
 National Electric Light Association 
 
 New York Electrical Society 
 
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 31 
 
Zo %ovb Ikelvin. 
 
 Peace and the grace of God abide with thee, 
 Fallen with weight of over-ripened days ! 
 Thoa canst not hear how men forbear to praise 
 For grief the world has lost thy majesty. 
 
 How shall we more exalt thy fame's degree, 
 Or to thy memory enduring raise 
 More lofty tribute than thy Learning lays 
 Upon thy tomb ? What words of eulogy 
 
 Are needed more to save thy cherished name 
 From unremembered annals of the dead ? 
 But with the great of every land we bow 
 
 In sorrow, while with loftiest acclaim 
 Thou to thine everlasting rest art laid 
 With crown of noble works upon thy brow. 
 
 Wilbur Morris Stine, 
 
 Associate A. I. E. E. 
 
 33