Abstract
IN glancing over the early history of mechanics' institutes in this country, it is not at all clear that their founders believed that the maintenance of the position of Britain as an industrial nation was likely to depend in any direct way on the more scientific education of the working classes. The industrial position of the nation was still unchallenged, British labour was still as efficient as that of any other country, the organisers of industry were second to none in shrewdness and enterprise, and the rising suns of America and Germany were still below the industrial horizon. While the exact date at which these orbs arose may be uncertain, there can be no doubt that early in the last quarter of the nineteenth century they were already well above the horizon, and were beginning to cast sharp shadows across the industrial fields of Great Britain. Long before these signs had become obvious to the commercial and industrial classes, a number of far-seeing men, some of them industrial leaders, but the majority men of science or education, had raised the cry of more extended and popular education in science. Thanks to their advocacy this policy of reform began to make itself felt, and before the final decades of the century were spent the modern technical education movement was well under way.
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The Functions of Technical Colleges 1 . Nature 80, 22–26 (1909). https://doi.org/10.1038/080022a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/080022a0