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year 1887-88. During his year of office he submitted to the London section a paper on “The Process for the manufacture of chlorine from chlorine of magnesium” which was described by Professor David Howard as “a most beautiful exemplification of the fact that the highest science may find its application in technical chemistry”. On 4th July 1888, at the close of his twelve months’ chairmanship Professor Dewar delivered, as was customary, the inaugural address at the annual conference held on this occasion for the first time in Scotland. The venue was Glasgow. Speaking to the assembled members in the university’s Bute Hall he began by commenting on the appropriateness of the choice of Glasgow for the conference for “within a very short radius of the city, the industrial metropolis of Scotland, we have the most varied chemical manufacturers probably that can be met within the United Kingdom – not the largest but for variety, for interest and for the ingenuity with which it has been exhibited in connection with their progress during recent years does great credit to Scotland”. Stressing, as he was wont to do in his public speeches, the importance of impressing on the community as a whole the fact that our present industrial supremacy is not an inalienable possession which one generation can hand down to another with perfect security, he went on to say that “it is, on the contrary, an unstable possession which can only be maintained and held through scientific intelligence and cultivated industry”. Scotland had a great deal to do with the development of chemistry and taking that as his main theme he outlined the contributions of Black, Hutton, James Hall, Dalton, Thomson and Dr Anderson of Glasgow. Referring to the paraffin industry in Scotland and the work of Young he spoke also of the closer attention which was being paid to the utilisation of waste products and nowhere more than in Glasgow. “More and more,” he concluded, “we are struck with the idea of this becoming either the petroleum age or the natural gas age, as we can see from the vast petroleum regions in America; and sooner or later we must realise that the supply of energy will be the most telling agents as regards the successful conduct of all our manufactures.” Spoken in 1888 these were prophetic words indeed. “Our Society’s success is clear from the fact that we have now more than two thousand four hundred members and that it is the largest scientific society in the United Kingdom, omnipresent in most manufacturing areas – a testimony that it is wanted.” The speaker was thanked by Professor Dittmar and Sir John N. Cuthbertson and the vote of thanks was carried by acclamation. For the entertainment of the visitors conducted tours of the Art Galleries, of many firms in the area and of The Glasgow International Exhibition were arranged. The Annual Dinner was held in the banqueting hall of the Grand Hotel. Professor Dewar was in the Chair with the Lord Provost seated on his right hand and on his left Professor McKendrick, with whom he had collaborated so happily and fruitfully when James Dewar was a professor in the Veterinary College, Clyde Street, Edinburgh. Lord Provost Sir James King was a director of George McIntosh and Co. which was the oldest chemical firm in Glasgow being founded in 1784 for the manufacture of cudbear (note 26), which was then a novelty in Glasgow. The toast to the President was proposed by Professor Stanford who described James Dewar as “one of the most distinguished of living chemists, who wherever he might be was a Scotchman first and everything else afterwards”. Replying to the toast, Professor Dewar recalled that “many years ago he, as a small boy clad in a kilt had stood admiring Dr Stanford stepping off a steamer – at Kincardine”. That he was held in high esteem for his scientific achievements is evident from the fact that The Society presented him with their silver medal in 1918 and when he died the president, Dr E. F. Armstrong, spoke of James Dewar as “perhaps the most brilliant experimentalist of this or any time. … He was an artist in himself, a connoisseur with a love for the good, the beautiful, the uncommon, the interesting and above all for the genuine. As my father – Dr H. E. Armstrong, a colleague and contemporary of James Dewar – wrote me on the news of his death, ‘How much our atmosphere has lost of its charm and colour will only be gradually noticed’. Dewar’s incursions into industry were many, probably all of the fruitful: ‘If we had more Dewars our chemical industry would, today, stand on a different footing’.”
The question of water supply to large communities was one which, during the latter decades of the nineteenth century, exercised the minds not only of the civic authorities but of scientists also. The latter were concerned not with quantity and means of distribution but with quality. The discovery of germ life in water and its connection with epidemic disease were matters requiring careful scientific investigation. Experiments on the subject of bacteria... NEXT PAGE
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