Abstract
WHEN I was honoured by the invitation to deliver this lecture I felt some doubt as to my ability to find a subject which should be suitable, for there is a prevailing idea that in addressing the operative classes, it is necessary to speak only of some practical subject which bears immediately upon the most important industry of the place in which the lecture is being delivered; but it seems to me that this is a polite suggestion that the audience are unable to be interested by any subject except that particular one which occupies them daily. Now though I am a comparative stranger in Scotland I have heard quite enough, and I know quite enough, of the superiority of the education of you, who have the good fortune to live in this the most beautiful half of Great Britain, to be aware that, as is the case with all highly-educated men, you are able to take a keen and genuine interest in many subjects, and that I had better choose one to which I have specially devoted myself, if I do not wish to expose myself to the risk of being corrected. I will ask you therefore in imagination to leave your daily occupation and come with me into the physical laboratory, where, by the exercise of the art of the experimentalist, problems which might seem to be impossible are continually being solved. I wish as an experimentalist to present to you an example of experimental enquiry.
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See NATURE, vol. xlii. p. 250.
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On Electric Spark Photographs; or, Photography of Flying Bullets, &c., by the Light of the Electric Spark1. Nature 47, 415–421 (1893). https://doi.org/10.1038/047415a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/047415a0
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