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by The London Fire Brigade, put the fire out quickly. But the blaze caused considerable anxiety to the shopkeepers in Old Bond Street which was adjacent to the area. The assurance that extra precautions would be taken assuaged their anxieties. On one occasion a piece of flying metal struck the governor of the gas engine violently and the engine started racing. The mechanic was just in time to turn off the gas and so prevent very serious consequences. Dewar was fond of recounting the incident, always adding that the mechanic who had been through the bombardment of Alexandria said that the explosions at The Royal Institution were worse! On another occasion, after a serious explosion, J. T. Morris tells how next morning he and his brother arrived to find the sensitive Oertling balance had been destroyed and all that could be found among the wreckage were some splinters of mahogany and twisted brass wire. But if there were hazards these were great days, for, adds J. T. Morris, “we were aware that history was being made and that great scientific achievements were being recorded”. Experience is a good schoolmaster but sometimes he charges high fees for his instruction.
During the first week of June 1899 celebrations were held to mark the centenary of The Royal Institution which had been gifted to the nation by Count Rumbold. The various events were attended by scientists from all parts of the civilised world who had come to pay science’s debt of honour for the benefits which the pure research and the splendid results achieved by those who had worked in its laboratories had conferred upon mankind. The real history of The Royal Institution is the story of the discoveries made by the distinguished scientists who have worked there and notably those of its Directors of Scientific Research. There was Thomas Young who had been one of the prime founders of the wave theory of light. There was Sir Humphrey Davy, an eminent chemist, whose work in “the philosophy of flame” led to the famous invention of the miner’s safety lamp which bears his name. There was Michael Faraday who began as a laboratory assistant to Davy and who was often described as Davy’s greatest discovery and who during his fifty years of devoted labour in The Institution did a work which was quite unequalled by any scientist both in extent and quality. There was John Tyndall, remembered not only for his contribution to the theory of heat but for the part he played with Darwin and Huxley in the battle which began in the middle of the nineteenth century to make the new standpoint of science acceptable to the layman. And there was now James Dewar who, continuing the work initiated by Faraday on the liquefaction of gases had succeeded by his experiments in proving that, as had been indicated by theory, there is no such thing as a ‘permanent’ gas for “since his liquefaction of fluorine, helium and hydrogen no known gas remains which has not been reduced to the liquid state”; and who also by his invention of the vacuum jacketed flask had opened entirely new fields for scientific research. As part of the celebrations an interesting exhibition of apparatus used by these and other scientists was staged in the upper library; and a magnificent centenary banquet was held in The Merchant Hall at which the Duke of Newcastle, President of the Royal Institution, presided and at which the principal guest was H.R.H. the Prince of Wales who, in his address of congratulation, recalled that as a boy, along with his father Prince Albert and his brother Prince Alfred, he had attended one of Faraday’s lectures forty-five years previously. There was present a large company of eminent scientists from many countries among whom was Sir James Sivewright from South Africa (note 24) who, a few years later, was to purchase Tulliallan Castle and estate where he spent his retirement years as a loved and highly respected laird. On the evening of 6th June The Lord Mayor of London held a reception for the members of The Royal Institution and their guests. There were also two special lectures where, as on the occasion of the Faraday centenary celebrations the lecturers were Lord Rayleigh and Professor James Dewar. The latter’s lecture was unique in that for the first time liquid hydrogen, at once the lightest and the coldest liquid ever known to exist, was seen outside the laboratory of The Royal Institution and was available in such substantial quantities that vessels full of it were handed round for inspection. The lecture was fascinating. Professor Dewar began by stating that his object was to introduce his audience to a new instrument of research – liquid hydrogen. This he exhibited boiling gently in a vacuum tube immersed in liquid air the access of heat being by this precaution greatly impeded. It was a transparent liquid in which there was a whitish deposit, the latter being sold air. To prove that the liquid which he was handling with such freedom was really liquid hydrogen Professor... NEXT PAGE
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