He goes on to say:
One of the most interesting details of the Institution still remains to be mentioned. It is the repository. The measures necessary for forming it have not been neglected, but from its nature it cannot be finished, nor indeed can it be begun, till the establishment is quite complete in all its other essential parts. Models of mechanical inventions and contrivances, in order to their being really useful, must be so made as to serve for imitation; consequently they must be constructed with the greatest care, and they cannot be made in the workshops of the Royal Institution till those shops are fitted up and furnished with the best tools and the best workmen. These workshops will soon be completed and properly manned. In the meantime a spacious and elegant room, 44 feet long and 32 feet wide, with the ceiling supported by two rows of columns, has been built for the repository, and will be finished in a month and ready to receive machines for public inspection. [This was the room beneath the theatre.] It may be useful to observe here that it never was the intention of the managers, nor of any of them, to expose to public view models of machines of all kinds indiscriminately. Considerable alarms have, it is said, been occasioned among some of our principal manufacturers from an idea that the construction of their machines and the valuable secrets of their trade, on which the excellence of their manufactures depend, are in danger of being disclosed by means of the public lectures and exhibitions of the Royal Institution, but the event will show that these apprehensions are without foundation.
The measure lately adopted by the managers for completing the attic story will be finished before the end of November.
As soon as this addition to the buildings shall be completed, and not before, there will be room in the house for the accommodation of a certain number of young men, from eighteen to twenty in number, of different mechanical professions, who, at the recommendation of proprietors, will be taken into the house to be instructed; who will be boarded and lodged in the house and be employed in the workshops, and for whose improvement in drawing, practical geometry, and mathematics an evening school, under the direction of the Clerk of the Works (Mr. Webster), who was formerly a teacher in such a school, will be established in the house in a room adjoining the workshops. As most of the young men who will be admitted to this seminary will probably come from distant parts of the country, and will return home after a residence of three or four months at the Institution, carrying with them a perfect knowledge of such new and useful inventions applicable to the common purposes of life as may be deserving of being generally known and adopted, it is easy to foresee that this arrangement will be of great and extensive public utility. It is, perhaps, that part of the establishment precisely which will be the most interesting, and which will contribute the most powerfully to the attainment of the principal object of the Institution—the diffusing the knowledge and facilitating the general introduction of useful mechanical inventions and improvements.
The proprietors, he says, were 325; life subscribers, 268; and annual subscribers, 527.
He concludes thus:
We may safely look forward with confidence to a period not far distant when the Royal Institution of Great Britain, complete in all its details, and in full activity, will become so interesting that every person of liberality and discernment who takes pleasure in contemplating the process of human improvement, will be desirous of belonging to it and willing to assist in promoting its permanent prosperity.
In June Davy was made Lecturer, instead of Assistant Lecturer, in Chemistry, and in a few days Dr. Garnett resigned. A permanent committee, consisting of Charles Hatchett, chairman, Lord Dundas, Mr. Howard, Mr. Chenevix, Mr. Pepys, Dr. G. Pearson, Mr. Nicholson, and Mr. Carlisle, was appointed for the purposes of chemical investigation and analysis; to make such experiments in the laboratory of the Institution as they think useful; Messrs. Hatchett, Howard, and Nicholson were requested to draw up a few short rules for the ordinary meetings and manner of conducting the business of the committee; and once a month or once a fortnight the committee was to be allowed to dine together at the house of the Institution.
The managers resolved that on November 2 Mr. Davy should begin a course of lectures on Tanning; that he should have leave of absence in July, August, and September, to learn the practical part of the business; and that respectable persons of the trade, if recommended by proprietors of the Institution, should be admitted gratis.
In order to obtain more support Count Rumford drew up in his own name a letter to be sent as a circular with a printed fly-leaf. The heading of it ran thus:
Being desirous of becoming a member of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, I request that Count Rumford would propose me to the managers of the said Institution as a candidate for election in the class pointed out in the column below, in which my name is subscribed.
1st class proprietors, who up to May 1802 pay seventy guineas; 2nd class life subscribers, who pay twenty guineas; 3rd class annual subscribers, three guineas.