ABSTRACT
I may surely plead that all the forlorn and destitute machines which, after the death of their human parents, are cast like orphans upon the pitiless world, should be provided with houses of refuge. I am much more anxious to plead that such engines should be preserved than solicitous to urge the claims of one city or house of refuge rather than another. This Society, however, must often have it in its power to prevent the destruction of choice machines, and has a Museum where they might find room. Many other institutions are similarly circumstanced, and have peculiar claims over certain classes of instruments. Without seeking to interfere with the Society’s Museum, or that of any other institution, I would remind all that one end which the establishment of an Industrial Museum contemplates is the conservation of models and machines. Many such are lost, not from wanton destruction or culpable neglect, but from their passing as property into the hands of those who either do not know their value, or have no means of storing them, on account of their bulk. The inheritors of machines are not seldom like the gentleman who received the gift of a living elephant bigger than his backgreen, and could neither cut down the one nor enlarge the other. The Industrial Museum will try to find space for the most elephantine machines; and as all gifts to it will be national property, formally catalogued, free to the public, yearly reported on, and officially inspected, it is as likely as most institutions to preserve for the public the objects confided to its care. But at least let all those instruments which, as at once infants and parents, are especially memorable, be preserved. The spectacle of such things ministers only to the good impulses of humanity. Isaac Newton’s telescope at the Royal Society of London; Otto Guericke’s air-pump in the library at Berlin, James Watt’s repaired Newcomen steam-engine in the Natural Philosophy class-room of the College at Glasgow; Fahrenheit’s thermometer in 538the corresponding class-room of the University here, Sir Humphry Davy’s great voltaic battery at the Royal Institution, London, and his safety lamp in the Jermyn Street Museum; Joseph Black’s pneumatic trough in Dr Gregory’s possession, the first wire which Faraday made rotate electro-magnetically, at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, Dalton’s atomic models at Manchester; and Kemp’s liquefied gases in the Industrial Museum of Scotland, are alike personal relics, historical monuments, and objects of instruction which grow more and more precious every year, and of which we can never have too many. When, therefore, we recall that, to secure their possession, we only require that the hand of destruction be with-held, surely I may, through you, ask all our countrymen to preserve them.
