The law with respect to Patents has been greatly simplified and improved by the statute 15 and 16 Vict. c. 83: the fees payable for a Patent have been reduced, and the payment of spread over several years. One Patent now suffices for the United Kingdom, and is no longer void, as formerly, for trifling inaccuracies in the Specification, as these may be now disclaimed.
Before quitting the subject of Patents it may, perhaps, be serviceable to call attention to the admirable Abridgments of Specifications now publishing by the Patent Commissioners. In a few minutes one can get exact information there which cannot otherwise be obtained in as many hours. These Abridgments are in the form of small 8vo volumes.
Hereafter we hope to see provided out of the revenues of the Patent-office, a public library and museum, to constitute a historical and educational institution for the benefit and instruction of the skilled workman of the kingdom. Exact models of machinery are to be exhibited in the subjects, showing the progressive steps of improvement.
Theory and Practice.—Watt and Telford.
James Watt was a highly accomplished theorist, on every point on which he worked; yet his name has been frequently cited, as a proof that theory could be dispensed with. And his career, when compared with that of Telford, will illustrate theory applied to practice, as distinguished from practice alone, however acute. It is impossible to contemplate the career of Telford without a feeling of high interest, created by the comparison of his apparently inadequate education with his startling successes. Looking at the individual himself, there is everything for his age to admire; and as long as his structures last, each of them is the monumentum, but not ære perennius. The time will come when his name shall be like that of the builder of the old London bridge, who was, no doubt, the Telford of the day,—a stimulus to his contemporaries, useful and honoured, but not the remembered of succeeding ages. On the other hand, the discoveries of Watt, though equally startling in what is called the practical point of view, have the mind of the discoverer impressed upon them, and have been, and must be, the guide of his successors, not merely to repetitions of what he did himself, but to the enlargement of ideas, and the conversion of principles into forms useful in art. Take away the honourable qualities which enabled the two men to outstrip their contemporaries, each in his line; qualities which are the properties of the individual minds, and consider what is left, namely their modes of proceeding: consider the effect of these two modes on men in general, and there is nothing in that of Telford which would raise a workman above a workman; while in that of Watt there is the vital principle to which we owe all the mechanical triumphs of civilization, and all the theoretical successes of philosophy.—Penny Cyclopædia.
Practical Science.—Mechanical Arts.
It seems impossible to exclude from a review, however slight, of contemporary progress in the exact Sciences, the advantages which have accrued to them, both directly, and as it were reflexively, by the astonishing progress of the Mechanical Arts. The causes, indeed, which called them forth are somewhat different from those which are active in more abstract, though scarcely more difficult, studies. Increasing national wealth, numbers, and enterprise, are stimulants unlike the laurels, or even the gold medals, of academies, and the quiet applause of a few studious men. But the result is not less real, and the advance of knowledge scarcely more indirect. The masterpieces of civil engineering—the steam-engine, the locomotive-engine, and the tubular bridge—are only experiments on the powers of nature on a gigantic scale, and are not to be compassed without inductive skill, as remarkable and as truly philosophic as any effort which the man of science exerts, save only the origination of great theories, of which one or two in a hundred years may be considered as a liberal allowance. Whilst, then, we claim for Watt a place amongst the eminent contributors to the progress of science in the eighteenth century, we must reserve a similar claim for the Stephensons and the Brunels of the present; and whilst we are proud of the changes wrought by the increase of knowledge during the last twenty-five years on the face of society, we must recollect that these very changes, and the inventions which have occasioned them, have stamped perhaps the most characteristic feature—its intense practicalness—on the science itself of the same period.
It has long been the fashion of one party to lament “the Decline of Science” in England; whilst another section has gravely declared that Science in this country is but the growth of yesterday, having been imported from Germany, and tenderly nurtured by the magnates of the realm. In the House of Commons, in the Session of 1863, a member stood up, and, with exultation, announced that Science had at length found its way into that democratic assembly through the individual exertions and influence of one now no more. From the language which this scion of a great house employed it might be inferred that Science had been previously almost unknown in England. The member, no doubt, spoke according to his knowledge; but it possibly escaped his memory that a man named Isaac Newton once existed. Without justly exposing ourselves to the charge of presumption, we might also boast of a few other names of distinction among the dead as well as the living.
There is another point upon which the public appear to be much misinformed—namely, that Science is in the receipt of large sums from the State. The annual amount voted out of the taxes for Science and Art is unquestionably large; but it should be borne in mind that, comparatively, only a small portion is really devoted to Science, while Art takes the lion’s share. Let it be so by all means. True Science to be worth anything must never become the creature of State bounty. We want no Institute with its salaried members and its eternal jobbing. We need no patronizing Mecænas, whether from the high-born or the self-exalted. What Science earnestly desires is to be let alone, that she may follow her destined course quietly, modestly, and without molestation. She especially loathes the Pythonic embrace of meddlesome persons who, knowing nothing of her, yet profess an intimate acquaintance with her and a tender regard for her welfare, solely with the object of puffing themselves into notoriety. She disdains them utterly.—Times journal.
We hear much, too, of “Science and Art” now-a-days coupled together, as if the strongest affinity existed between them; although no two things can be more unlike each other. The Arctic Circle and the Torrid Zone cannot be wider apart or in stronger contrast; for Science is frigidly logical, and Art hotly emotional.