Abstract
THOUGH an admirable President had been secured in Sir John Wolfe Barry, the proceedings in this Section were not up to the usual standard either in interest or importance to the profession. The fact of the matter is that, as in other Sections, too many papers are accepted, involving inordinately long sittings and often tending to hinder due discussion of really valuable papers. Unless the communications are mere notes of some scientific discovery or fact, the programme should be so arranged that not more than four papers are put down for any one day. The organising committee should insist that at least half a dozen copies of any paper intended for reading should be in the hands of the recorder a month before the opening of the meeting: the recorder could then circulate these copies, with a note of the day on which the paper would be taken, amongst those engineers most capable of discussing satisfactorily the facts and conclusions of the author, with a request from the organising committee that they should attend and take part in the discussion. The President would thus have a list of those he could call upon to speak on any paper, and the speakers having had an opportunity of preparing their remarks beforehand, a really valuable discussion would be secured. Few men are able to get up and discuss off-hand a scientific paper, which they have had no opportunity of studying, especially when it has been read often at great speed in an almost inaudible tone; the result is that we have the poor discussions which so often take all the life out of the proceedings in Section G.
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Mechanics at the British Association. Nature 58, 607–609 (1898). https://doi.org/10.1038/058607a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/058607a0