Abstract
AT the annual general meeting of the North-East Coast Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders held at Newcastle-upon-Tyne on October 19, the report for 1933-34 was submitted, and Mr. J. T. Batey delivered his presidential address. In spite of the severe depression in the shipbuilding industries, the membership of the Institution has been well main tained, several valuable papers have been read and attendance at meetings during the past year was the highest recorded. Among other matters referred to were the grant of armorial bearings, the Sir Charles Parsons Memorial and the opening on July 20, 1933, of the Municipal Museum of Science and Industry, the formation of which the Institution did much to promote. The honorary curator of the Museum is Capt. E. W. Swan, a member of the Institution. A part of Mr. Batey's address was devoted to the problem of using technical progress. Technical progress, he said, is like a fine machine; it has to be properly used or it may be dangerous. Mechanical science has outstripped progress in the science of living, and it is evident that in this field there will be many and startling developments before the Institution is a century old. To the question whether the suspension of scientific progress is conceivable, it might be replied that the advance of science is so inevitable that for all practical purposes we may regard it as one of the laws of life. The Institution's purpose, “the advance ment of the sciences of engineering and shipbuilding”, is a definite function of the organised form of society ruling to-day. The responsibility for the misuse or oversight of technical progress must be accepted by finance, commerce and the State, internationally. In the session just opening, the Institution, he said, would commemorate its jubilee, and he continued:“I feel that if it were possible for those far-seeing men who founded this Institution to come amongst us to-day, they would consider that the great heritage which they left us has been fully preserved.”
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The North-East Coast Institution. Nature 134, 656–657 (1934). https://doi.org/10.1038/134656c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/134656c0