ABSTRACT
The Manchester Academy proved more durable than the College of Arts and Sciences for it continues to this day although it has long since moved from Manchester and is now in Oxford. Two hundred years ago, the Percival group met as the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society to hear the first paper read. In 1796 the Society set up a Board of Health to study and advice on the health problems of the working population. Details of this were later published in the journal that the Society had launched in 1785 The Memoirs and Proceedings of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society. After World War I the Society instituted the Joule and Dalton Memorial Lectures and took over the entire membership of the Manchester Chemical Society to form a new Chemical Section. Dalton's contemporaries in chemistry were not meterologists with contacts in chemical industry.
