The second number of the Journal did not appear for nearly fourteen months.
In May Mr. Savage was engaged as printer; and ‘a good cook for the improvement of culinary advancement, one object, and not the least important, for the Royal Institution.’ A resolution was passed that as Count Rumford had, at the request of the managers, undertaken to superintend the house, no new works should be undertaken in it, nor any alterations made in it, nor any furniture ordered for it, or brought into it, or placed or displaced in it unless it be with his knowledge, and by his orders; and he was requested, whilst he continued to lodge in the house, to superintend all the servants, to preserve order and decorum, and to control the expenses of housekeeping. It is most probable that this resolution was intended to control Dr. Garnett. A printing-press was bought. Sir John Hippesley was elected treasurer.
Count Rumford wrote to Sir Joseph Banks:
Royal Institution, May 29, 1800.
I am very sorry to find, on making inquiry of Doctor Garnett, that your information was accurate respecting his having ascribed the late discoveries of our friend Volta to the French. Had I been apprised of his intention to mention this discovery at his lectures, I should certainly have taken care that he should have mentioned it in a proper manner; but I knew nothing of the matter until it was too late to prevent the mistake. I have, however, insisted on its being rectified as far as it is possible in some future lecture, and I am promised that it will be done. I know not from whom the Doctor procured his information respecting his discovery, but I learnt by accident late last evening that he borrowed the apparatus with which he exhibited the experiments at the lecture from Mr. Howard. I dined out and did not come home till his lecture was nearly over.
The next day Rumford wrote again:
Royal Institution, May 30, 1800.
Doctor Garnett is perfectly ready to make the following public declaration this evening at his lecture at the Institution, or he will say anything else on the subject in question which you may think will be more proper for him to say to atone for his mistake and to make amends to Professor Volta:
‘Having by mistake on Wednesday, in the course of my public lecture, ascribed to the French philosophers a new and interesting discovery relative to galvanism, which, on inquiry, I find belongs to Professor Volta, of Milan, I feel it to be my duty to state this fact in a public manner, in order that Professor Volta may not be deprived in any degree of the honour of a discovery which so justly belongs to him and to him alone. The first news of this discovery, which arrived in this country in the beginning of last month, was communicated in a letter from Professor Volta to the President of the Royal Society, and it was in consequence of the information contained in that letter that Dr. Carlisle, Mr. Nicholson, Mr. Howard, and others have been enabled to construct the necessary apparatus, and to repeat the ingenious Professor’s very interesting experiments.’
Any alterations you may wish in the above shall be made, if you will point them out.
In June Count Rumford reported that, in consequence of the request of the managers, he had transmitted through the envoy of the United States of North America to each of the philosophical societies, academies, universities, &c., in that country a copy of the prospectus, charter, ordinances, bye-laws, and regulations of the Royal Institution of Great Britain.
Copies were sent to different public institutions abroad.
Dr. Garnett finished his lectures on June 10. He then wrote to the managers to say that he proposed to go into the country, but would at all times be ready to obey the summons of the managers if his attendance should be wanted before the commencement of the lectures.
On June 12, 1800, Count Rumford wrote to Sir Joseph Banks:
Royal Institution, Thursday Morning, 6 o’clock.
I hope you can make it convenient to come and give me a lift this morning at our meeting, for I want you very much. Our treasurer[16] has not qualified, and he does not seem to be in any hurry to do so. I mentioned to him at our last meeting the embarrassments we were under for the want of a treasurer to furnish money to the new Committee of Expenditure; but he proposed, as an expedient, that I should draw on Ransom and Co., who he said would not refuse my draft. I see no reason why business should be done in this irregular way, when it may and ought to be done in the manner specially and clearly pointed out in our bye-laws. Our lectures are over for this season, and Garnett is going into the country to stay there till January next. I see no good reason why we should keep up our present numerous and expensive establishment of servants, especially as a great part of the house is coming down, and we shall soon have no place in the house to lodge them.
All we can possibly want till January next are—
Our clerk of the works Webster Our clerk Savage Our messenger, who may act
as porter and messenger⎱
⎰And one housemaid Blanchett This arrangement will enable us to discharge—
Dr. Garnett’s assistant Sadler The porter Wharton The housekeeper Mrs. Wharton And one housemaid If this scheme should meet with your approbation, I beg that you would move the necessary resolutions to-day, and there will be more than one difficulty removed. As soon as this disagreeable business shall be completed, and everything in the house belonging to the Institution delivered over to the care of those persons who are to take and have the charge of them, my mind will be at rest, and I can go to Harrogate and give these waters a fair trial, which, as things are now circumstanced, would be impossible.
The expensive establishment was at once ordered to be reduced, and the assistant to the Professor was discharged.
The agreement for building the new premises was this month sealed and signed, the treasurer qualified, and the weekly meetings of managers ceased to be held.
As soon as the basement of the new building was finished, it must have been apparent that it was much too dark and low for a laboratory, and this part of the intended plan was given up.
Many years afterwards Mr. Webster said of the present laboratory: ‘I may perhaps just mention that the chemical laboratory in which so many valuable discoveries have been made was not only designed and built by me, but owes to me its very existence, for, though I inserted it in my plans, the managers did not at first consider it necessary.’
In August Mr. Webster thus wrote to Count Rumford, who was then at Harrogate:
I have deferred writing to you so long in expectation of being able to send you drawings of the proposed mode of building the laboratory. Mr. Hatchett has been several times at the Institution and has given his opinion respecting it, from which the drawings have been made out. There was a meeting of managers on Monday last, at which Mr. Saunders laid before them the drawings and an estimate of several works which he proposed to do, and which were not included in the original contract. These are the engine and reservoir on the staircase, the removal of the water-closet from the place where it now stands to the roof of the laboratory; taking down the present stack of chimneys from the great kitchen, together with the breast-work in the kitchen which contains the range, roasters, and oven, which he considers necessary in order to fit up a strong closet in the managers’ room; together with a small addition to the fitting up of the laboratory itself, which it is proposed to do in a more complete and more expensive way than was provided for by the contract. All these additions, Mr. Saunders informs me, the managers approved of, and he is accordingly preparing the necessary agreements with Mr. Hancock for executing them.
Everything in the new building goes on briskly and well. We have got as high as the lecture-room floor, and I expect in a month we shall be ready for the roof. No deviation whatever has been made from the plans, and all the works hitherto done have been executed to the satisfaction of Mr. Saunders.
I wished to send you the drawings of the laboratory, but they not being quite ready, I shall take the next opportunity.
In September he wrote again:
The timbers of the roof are on, and we are beginning to board it for slating. The brickwork of the laboratory is also nearly completed.
Hitherto I have found employment for Mr. Wincks, the model-maker; when I had nothing else for him to do he has been at work upon the model of the pile engine, which will now be finished in a day or two; and, as I have not any further occasion for him to assist me, I shall be happy if you will write whether there is anything he might be employed upon until you come to town.
In another letter he says:
The buildings are advancing rapidly, and I hope the lecture room at least will be ready by the 1st of January. The laboratory will, I think, be found very convenient, being airy and well lighted.
During his stay at Harrogate Rumford made careful experiments on himself with regard to the warm bath. These are given in his thirteenth essay, on the ‘Salubrity of Warm Bathing.’ He found that a daily bath at ninety-six degrees or ninety-seven for half-an-hour two hours before dinner for five weeks increased the appetite, the digestion, the spirits, the strength, and the insensibility to cold.
On leaving Harrogate he went to Scotland.
A visit of ceremony was paid him by the magistrates of Edinburgh; he was consulted respecting the abolition of mendicity, and the measures which he recommended were speedily executed with complete success.
He was made an honorary member of the Royal Society and of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, and he received a gold snuff-box as a compliment for his assistance in reforming the culinary establishment of Heriot’s Hospital, and was elected a member of the Society of Scotland for Bettering the Condition of the Poor. His letters of thanks for these last honours are preserved.
To the Lord Provost of Edinburgh he wrote:
I shall always remember with pleasure, and with the most sincere gratitude, the kind and flattering attentions I received in Edinburgh during my stay there. The public honours that were conferred on me by the corporation of the city and by the University were highly gratifying to me; but nothing affected me so deeply as the deference which was paid to my opinions and advice on subjects of public utility by men in the highest stations and of the most respectable character and abilities, and the liberality, zeal, and perseverance with which the measures I took the liberty to recommend were adopted and pursued.
May the important undertaking in which the inhabitants of Edinburgh are now engaged—the prevention of that most disgusting and disgraceful of public evils, mendicity—and the formation of a permanent establishment for the instruction and employment of the poor be completely successful, and may it serve as a model for imitation to every city and every town in Great Britain and Ireland.
To the Rev. George Baird, Principal of the University of Edinburgh, he wrote from the Royal Institution, March 21, 1801, thanking him for the honour which the Society in Scotland for Bettering the Condition and Improving the Comfort of the Poor had conferred on him by electing him a member.
During the autumn Webster wrote to Dr. Garnett to ask if he would help him to become his assistant. He wished this place in order to make himself a better teacher of operatives, and to have employment when the additional buildings were finished. Dr. Garnett, in his reply, says ‘an operator’s time ought to be dedicated to natural philosophy.’ ‘Nevertheless,’ he said, ‘the School of Mechanics might perhaps be carried on by the operator.’ In Webster’s answer to Dr. Garnett the position of the School of Design at the end of September 1800 is seen.
When I mentioned that teaching mechanics might probably form a part of my employment I did not speak from any certain knowledge on the subject, but merely because such a thing had once been in agitation. I have now very little reason for supposing that such a plan will be at all put in practice, but if ever it should, no doubt the managers will take care that it shall not prove any inconvenience to you. I could not myself engage in it upon any other conditions. Setting that aside, therefore, as extremely uncertain if not improbable....
At the end of the year hot-water pipes were ordered for warming the theatre.
The chief events in the history of the Institution during the year 1800 may be thus summed up: The new theatre was built; large committees for scientific investigation were formed; and the first number of the Journal was published. No advance was made in the formation of a repository for models; or in the foundation of a school of design. The lectures of Dr. Garnett were successful, but he was refused permission to practise his profession as a physician and to bring his children to live at the Institution. Count Rumford himself ordered and superintended everything in the house. Early the next year there was a visible rupture between him and Dr. Garnett regarding the prospectus of the lectures for the season, and in June 1801 Dr. Garnett resigned.
The causes of this will be best seen by a short sketch of his life.
Dr. Thomas Garnett was born in 1766 in Westmoreland. He was apprenticed to a medical man in the country and graduated as a physician in Edinburgh in 1788. Dr. Brown at that time was teaching his new theory of medicine, and Dr. Garnett became a strong Brunonian. In an inaugural essay on Health, which was published ultimately, he showed with great clearness how the doctrine of accumulated and exhausted excitability could be applied to explain the movements in the body in health and disease.
He left Edinburgh to study medicine in London, and in 1790 he went to Bradford to practise his profession; there he gave some private lessons in natural philosophy and chemistry.
In 1791, when twenty-five, he thought he should succeed better by practising at Knaresborough in the winter and at Harrogate in the summer. He analysed the waters at Harrogate, and in 1794 he built a house there and determined to practise only at Harrogate. An engagement to be married made him form a new plan for success. He persuaded his intended wife reluctantly to agree to emigrate to America after their marriage, which took place in the following year. Then he sold his house in Harrogate and purchased apparatus for lectures on natural philosophy and chemistry. On their way to America they went to Liverpool. There, whilst waiting for a ship, he was persuaded to give a course of lectures. This was successful, and he was invited to give the same course on chemistry and experimental philosophy at Manchester. He was still more successful, and invitations came to him from Warrington, Lancaster, Birmingham, and Dublin. He did not give up his intention of emigrating until he was offered the professorship in Anderson’s Institution at Glasgow. His wife had borne him a daughter, and she earnestly urged him to settle in Glasgow.
In November 1796, when thirty, he published the ‘Outlines of a Course of Lectures on Natural and Experimental Philosophy.’ His subjects were the properties of matter, astronomy, electricity, magnetism, pneumatics, hydrostatics and hydraulics, optics and mechanics.
When the session at Glasgow was over he went to Liverpool to repeat his course of lectures. In the autumn he returned to Glasgow and made known his intention of practising as a physician there. Fortune continued to favour him; his reputation increased and he soon had the best prospect of the leading practice in Glasgow.
In 1797, when thirty-one, he published his ‘Outlines of a Course of Lectures on Chemistry.’ His twenty-seventh lecture was on Agriculture; his twenty-eighth on Bleaching; his twenty-ninth on Dyeing and on Calico Printing; and his last on the Analysis of Mineral Waters.
On Christmas Day, 1798, his wife died in childbirth, and on New Year’s Day he wrote this feeling letter:
Oh! my dear cousin, little did I expect that I should begin the new year with telling you that I am now deprived of all earthly comforts; yes, the dear companion of my studies, the friend of my heart, the partner of my bosom, is now a piece of cold clay. The senseless earth is closed on that form which was so lately animated by every virtue, and whose only wish was to make me happy.
Is there anything which can now afford me any consolation? Yes, she is not lost, but gone before; but still it is hard to have all our schemes of happiness wrecked when our bark was within sight of port. When we were promising ourselves more than common felicity it struck upon a rock; my only treasure went to the bottom, and I am cast ashore friendless and deprived of every comfort. My poor dead love had been as well as usual during the two or three last months, and even on the dreadful evening (Christmas Eve) she spoke with pleasure of the approaching event. My spirits were elevated to so uncommon a pitch by the birth of a lovely daughter, that they were by no means prepared for the succeeding scene; and they have been so overwhelmed that I sometimes hope it may be a dream out of which I wish to awake. The little infant is well, and I have called it Catherine, a name which must ever be dear to me, and which I wish to be able to apply to some object whom I love; for, though it caused the death of my hopes, it is dear to me as being the last precious relic of her whom everybody, who knew her, esteemed, and I loved. I must now bid adieu to every comfort and live only for the sweet babes. Oh! ’tis hard, very hard!
Thomas Garnett.
In the summer of 1799 Count Rumford wrote to Dr. Garnett, to whom he was then an entire stranger, for information regarding the nature and economy of Anderson’s Institution and the plan of the lectures given there. This led finally to the proposal that Dr. Garnett should become the first lecturer at Rumford’s new Institution in London.
On October 15 Dr. Garnett informed a special meeting of the managers of Anderson’s Institution of his wish to resign his situation in order to go to London. When Dr. Garnett arrived, December 23, the managers of the Royal Institution resolved that he should be styled Professor of Natural Philosophy and Chemistry to the Royal Institution. He sent to the board a letter from which a view of the earliest lectures at the Institution can be obtained.
PROFESSOR GARNETT TO THE MANAGERS.
December 23, 1799.
To the Managers of the Royal Institution.—Count Rumford requested me to arrange and put on paper my ideas concerning the plan and economy of the Royal Institution for the perusal of the managers. On looking over the prospectus, however, I find the plan so well digested that I cannot make any improvement or even advantageous alteration. I shall therefore confine myself in the following observations to what I conceive to belong more particularly to my department—I mean the arrangement of the lectures—and shall propose a plan which, from experience, I think most likely to be useful; but I propose it with the utmost deference to the opinions of the managers, and shall be ready to make any alterations which they may think proper to point out.
Our object ought undoubtedly to be both amusement and instruction. We shall have two classes of auditors, the one consisting of those who will come chiefly for amusement or because it may be fashionable. These it is our business to amuse, while at the same time I hope we shall be able to interest them in the subjects, and communicate considerable knowledge without any trouble to themselves.
For these I would propose a popular course of experimental philosophy, in which all abstract reasoning shall be avoided, the most entertaining and interesting experiments introduced, and the whole calculated to afford pleasure and instruction to those who have not had an opportunity of examining these subjects and to refresh the memory of those who have.
On the supposition that the lectures of the Institution should open the first week in February, if we appropriate one evening a week to it, we can comprise this course in eighteen or twenty lectures, each lecture to continue only an hour, that the attention may not be fatigued.
A course of lectures on chemistry, popular and amusing, at the same time sufficiently scientific, might be given twice a week. This course would contain the elements of chemistry and the application of this science to the arts and manufactures, and would be illustrated by interesting and pleasing experiments.
For the sake of the second class of auditors, which would not at first be the most numerous, but which would continually increase in number, even though the auditors of the other course should diminish—I mean those attached to scientific pursuits—I would propose a full and scientific course of experimental philosophy on the plan generally adopted in universities. In this course particular attention should be paid to mechanics, hydrostatics, hydraulics, and pneumatics, which are the most useful branches of mechanical philosophy. The mathematical demonstration of the propositions would first be given, next the experimental proof, and lastly the application of each to the mechanical and chemical arts.
In this way those who could follow the mathematical demonstration would see the coincidence between theory and experiment, and those who could not would be satisfied with the experimental proof.
As an instance we may take one proposition.
The momentum or force of a moving body is proportioned to the quantity of matter multiplied by its velocity; this will first be demonstrated mathematically, then experimentally, and afterwards applied to the explanation of mechanical powers in machinery, projectiles, &c., illustrated by familiar examples and calculations.
If we suppose that five mornings in the week should be devoted to this course, we shall be enabled to go through one hundred lectures before the conclusion of the session.
It is scarcely necessary to observe that in this course opportunity will be taken to show working models of machinery and chemical processes in their proper places.
This would be the most useful course, and, as was before observed, the numbers who attend it would gradually increase. At least this was the case at Glasgow. A morning hour would probably be best for this course.
My apparatus is elegant and good. It was made for me by the late Mr. Adams. What the Institution will chiefly want will be of the supplementary kind, and will not, I apprehend, cost more than 150l. or 200l., supposing we purchase the most complete and elegant instruments, which I would strongly advise. My own apparatus shall be at the service of the Institution while I continue among you, which I hope will be while I live, and it is my intention eventually to bequeath it to the Institution. As it will be necessary to come to an arrangement as speedily as possible, Mr. Webster and myself, after having carefully surveyed the house, are of opinion that the apparatus should be placed in cases with glass doors, and that the best situation for it would be round the large room[17] on the same floor with the lecture room, and what could not conveniently be placed there, either on account of their bulk or inelegant appearance, might be put in the small room[18] adjoining to it. This would render this room very interesting to strangers, and, even considering it as a lounging room, it would be much better to have an elegant apparatus to look at than bare walls. It would likewise be much the most convenient as an apparatus and model room with respect to its vicinity to the lecture room—a circumstance of no small importance.
With respect to a lounging room, in which persons might meet before the lecture, or to which they could retire during the lecture, I assume with submission that such a place should not on any account be allowed. Wherever I have had accidentally such a convenient room in the vicinity of a lecture room I have been obliged to lock it up; otherwise the disturbance to the company by persons coming in and going out is intolerable. The lectures will always begin at a certain hour to a minute. If any find themselves a few minutes too soon, they will find an elegant lecture room, well warmed. This will prevent their coming into the room in a body and disturbing the audience and the lecturer after the lecture is begun.
That matters might be put in a proper train it would, I think, be best to agree immediately upon the arrangement of the house, and to give Mr. Webster and myself, with one or more of the managers, the power of seeing the arrangement executed.
I am, with much respect, your most obedient Servant,
Thos. Garnett.
On January 6, 1800, the managers resolved that the morning lectures of Dr. Garnett should be given on Tuesday and Thursday at two, and the evening lectures at eight, on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
The first lecture was on Tuesday, March 4. The two rooms which now make the upper library formed the theatre. It had been fitted up to accommodate the greatest possible number of auditors, ‘with a greater deference to their curiosity than to their convenience.’
In the first number of the Journal of the Institution the account of Dr. Garnett’s lectures for the week beginning April 7 shows the arrangements that then existed.
Morning Lectures.—On Tuesday, the 8th, the lecture will be on Charged Electrics and the Theory of the Leyden Phial, with experiments. On Thursday, Respiration and Animal Heat will be continued, with the Effects of Oxygen in the Blood. On Saturday, on Hydrogen Gas and the Composition of Water, Sulphurated and Phosphorated Hydrogen; and a specimen of the philosophical fireworks with the inflammable air will be exhibited.
Evening Lectures.—On Monday evening, the 7th, the subject will be Spontaneous Evaporation, Ignition, and Inflammation, with some Remarks on Light. On Wednesday evening, the Different Powers of Bodies as Conductors of Heat; and some Experiments with the Passage Thermometer. The method of confining heat and applying it to useful purposes with economy.
Friday being Good Friday, no lecture will be given on that day.
Those who come to the lectures in carriages are requested to give orders to their coachmen to set down and take up with their horses’ heads towards Grafton Street.
A contemporary account says:
During the winter the lecture room was crowded with persons of the first distinction and fashion, as well as by those who had individually contributed much to the promotion of science, and although the northern accent, which he still retained in a slight degree, rendered his voice somewhat inharmonious to a London audience, his modest and unaffected manner of delivering his opinions, his familiar and at the same time elegant language rendered him the object of almost universal kindness and approbation.
Dr. Garnett left Glasgow with the expectation that he should have accommodation for his family in the house of the Institution, and the first disappointment he met with was the opposition to his wishes in this respect. When he gave up his position in Glasgow he fully intended to enter into practice as a physician in London, but from this also he was restrained in great measure by the managers of the Institution.
His biographer says:
The exertions of the winter in some degree injured his health, and the uncertainty he saw in his prospects tended greatly to depress his spirits. He determined, however, to keep his place at the Institution.
In the summer he rejoined his children in Westmoreland, but his anxiety of mind was not diminished or consequently his health improved by the relaxation from active employment. He walked over the same ground and viewed the same prospects that he had formerly enjoyed in the company of his wife. He had not resolution to check the impressions as they arose, and thus, instead of being solaced by the beauties which surrounded him, he gave the reins to his melancholy fancy, which, unchecked by any other remembrance, dwelt only on the affection and virtues of her whose loss he had ever to deplore, the want of whose society he imagined to be the chief source of his misery.
Dr. Garnett showed his own position when he answered the application of Webster for his recommendation as chemical operator.
Kirkby-Lonsdale, September 27, 1800.
Dear Sir,—I have received your letter, and, in answer to it, must observe that such is my opinion of both your industry and abilities that it would give me pleasure to serve you, and I should with the greatest willingness recommend you to any situation for which I knew you qualified. That you could in time qualify yourself for the situation of operator there is not the smallest doubt, but still it must have been evident to you that if you had acted in that capacity last year, imperfect as the lectures were, they must have been much more so; for though I had an operator capable of preparing any experiments that could be made, still it was with the greatest difficulty that I could get through it. How, then, could I have done had my time been taken up with instructing an operator? And, having the greatest number of chemical things to prepare, I could not have got through it with any credit to myself or satisfaction to the managers. You are better acquainted with the duty of an operator than you were before the commencement of the lectures, and can therefore form some judgment concerning the knowledge requisite and the labour which it requires. It is unnecessary to say that an operator must give up his whole time to it; and, as we are to have a good laboratory, it seems to me necessary that he should be a good practical chemist, which he cannot be without working some years in a laboratory. Sadler could do anything in that way, and, were he a little more steady, would be invaluable in the Institution. You say nothing what has become of him. I was in hopes he might have been employed again next year. Indeed, the managers ought, in my opinion, to endeavour to have an operating chemist who would be permanent.
That you could in time do everything required I am very far from doubting, and, should it be the wish of the managers, I shall be far from opposing it; on the contrary, were you qualified, there is not one person whom I should so much wish to have it. But, before you come to a determination, you must well consider whether you would relish the many dirty jobs to which it will subject you as well as the labour; and, if it be still your wish and determination, it would certainly be proper to attend an autumnal course of lectures. If it be your intention to remain in the Institution and to continue as operator, which probably might be carried on along with the School of Mechanics (though of this I am not certain, as an operator’s time ought to be dedicated to natural philosophy), I would do all in my power to instruct you properly; but to have the weight upon myself without the prospect of being relieved from it another year is what I dare scarce look at.
In deciding put everything out of the question but the good of the Institution, for unless you can promote that you cannot promote your own by its means. You will, I hope, excuse my having spoken thus freely on the subject which so much concerns us both; consider it well and favour me with your sentiments again. I suppose that I shall be in town in about a month, but I should wish to hear from you before. There are probably some of my objections which you can remove.
I am, dear Sir, yours sincerely,
Thos. Garnett.
Towards the latter end of the autumn Dr. Garnett returned to the Institution. The differences between him and the managers soon appeared. He prepared the outlines of a course of lectures on Natural and Experimental Philosophy, to be delivered in 1801, and he printed this preface: ‘This pamphlet contains the outlines of the popular course on Natural and Experimental Philosophy, delivered at the Royal Institution every Tuesday at two o’clock during the present session.—Royal Institution, February 2, 1801.’
At the same time he printed another pamphlet—‘Outlines of a Course of Lectures on Chemistry delivered at the Royal Institution,’ and to it he put this preface: ‘This work contains the outlines of the course of chemistry delivered at the Royal Institution by the Professor of Natural Philosophy and Chemistry, every Thursday and Saturday at two o’clock during the present season.—Royal Institution, February 2, 1801.’
In the table of contents he gave thirty lectures, and it was almost exactly a reprint of the table of contents of the lectures on chemistry published by him in 1797.
There can be no doubt that Dr. Garnett printed these pamphlets, the one of twelve and the other of two hundred and sixteen pages, without consulting the managers; for at their meeting on February 2, 1801, they resolved that the annual courses of philosophical and chemical lectures at the Royal Institution should commence ‘as soon as the new theatre can be got ready for them, and that Count Rumford be authorised to take all such steps on the part of the managers as shall be necessary in that business;’ and they also resolved that Sir Joseph Banks, Henry Cavendish, and Count Rumford be a committee to superintend the drawing up and publication of a suitable syllabus or account of the philosophical and chemical lectures given at the Royal Institution. They further resolved that no syllabus of lectures or other account of what is doing or done, or to be done, at the Royal Institution, be published by any person or persons without the permission of the aforesaid committee, or the express leave of the managers formally signified in writing. This last resolution shows that Count Rumford had then probably determined that Dr. Garnett should give up his professorship at the Royal Institution.
On February 16 the managers resolved that their resolutions of February 2 should be communicated to Dr. Garnett, and on this day they determined to engage Mr. Humphry Davy as Assistant Lecturer on Chemistry. Still the managers did not decide on the removal of Professor Garnett, for the following letter shows that Count Rumford at this time had some conversation with him as to the terms upon which he would give up his rooms in the house. On February 22 Dr. Garnett wrote to Count Rumford:
Sir,—I have considered the matter you did me the honour to desire I would deliberate upon, and I place much confidence that when you and the other managers of the Royal Institution reflect upon the necessary expenditure for rent, coals, and candles, domestics and other out-goings, the sum of 100l. per annum will not be considered as an improper allowance for giving up the apartments and advantages assigned me in the house of the Institution by the honourable managers.
You will allow me to add that I have also considered the possibility of my residing out of the house occasioning any inconvenience to the interests of the Institution, and that if upon the maturest consideration I was not confident no such inconvenience could arise, there is no personal compensation that could tempt me to quit my residence in the house of the Institution.
It is with great deference I take the advantage at the same time to submit to your and the other managers’ consideration whether the funds of the Institution are in your and their judgment in a condition to authorise any of that gradual increase of my salary of 300l. which the resolution of September 14, 1799, gave me well-founded reason to hope for, and which I now most cheerfully and with perfect confidence beg to leave to the candour and liberality of yourself and the managers.
I have the honour to be, with the greatest respect, Sir, your very obedient Servant,
Thos. Garnett.
On February 23 it was resolved that the consideration of Dr. Garnett’s letter be postponed till the annual accounts of the Institution for the present year be made up and the state of its finances ascertained.
The lectures began in February. His biographer says: ‘The transactions of the winter almost completely undermined his constitution. He became sallow, listless, melancholy. A gloomy day or the smallest disappointment gave him inconceivable distress.
‘The effect produced upon his lecturing was remarkable. Debility of body as well as uneasiness of mind incapacitated him. His spirited and, at the same time modest, method of delivery was changed into one languid and hesitating. He would have resigned in the middle of his course, and on one occasion at least Count Rumford, at a few hours’ notice, found a substitute to lecture for him.’ This was on the evening of March 2, when with the shortest possible notice Count Rumford got Dr. Crichton to give the lecture on account of the illness of Dr. Garnett.
He again wrote to the managers on May 11, and on the 25th a special meeting of the managers was held, and it was resolved that ‘the managers, taking into consideration the two applications of Dr. Garnett, are unanimously of opinion that they cannot agree to make any alteration in his present salary and situation.’
On June 1 Davy was appointed Lecturer on Chemistry.
On June 15 it was resolved by the managers unanimously that Dr. Garnett’s resignation should be accepted, that his salary up to the end of the year should be paid to him by the Committee of Expenditure, and that his letter of resignation should be preserved. Unfortunately this letter does not exist now.
‘Dr. Garnett had long determined to apply himself to medical practice, and at the same time to give private lectures, to secure that income of which he seemed fated to be disappointed.’
In the summer of 1801 he removed to Great Marlborough Street, and brought his family to London, and he sought for practice as a physician. He built a lecture room; he made arrangements for editing the ‘Annals of Philosophy, Natural History, Chemistry, Literature, Agriculture, and Fine Arts’ for the year 1800, intending to continue it yearly; and he prepared himself to give not less than eight courses of lectures during the winter. At his own house he gave two courses on Chemistry, one on Mineralogy, one on Botany, two on Experimental Philosophy, and a private course on this subject also; he gave a course on Botany at Brompton, and in a room at Tom’s Coffee House, in the City, a course of popular lectures on Zoonomia, or the Laws of Animal Life in Health and Disease. This was for the convenience of medical students and others in that part of the town.
A return of ill health prevented him from completing some of these courses, but he used every means to increase his private practice. In May 1802 he was elected physician to the Marylebone Dispensary, which he thought would bring the success which he seemed never able to obtain. Very weak in body and not exempt from anxiety of mind, he began the hard work of his Dispensary. He caught typhus fever from one of the patients in June, and died on the 28th of that month.
He left his children penniless.
On August 2 Dr. Garnett’s executor, Mr. Parker, asked permission to have the popular lectures on the Laws of Animal Life, the Zoonomia, printed at the press of the Royal Institution, and that the printer to the Institution, Mr. W. Savage, might receive subscriptions for the publication of the work. The managers resolved to subscribe for the Institution 50l., and in 1804, when the work was published in quarto, they allowed it to be dedicated to them, a privilege which they refused on many occasions afterwards. The dedication was in these words:
To the Right Honourable and Honourable the Managers of the Royal Institution of Great Britain these Lectures, composed by a man who, in his lifetime, was honoured by their selection as their first lecturer, and whose infant family have since experienced their benevolence and protection, are, with permission, dedicated by the trustees of the subscription in favour of these orphans.
The amount of the subscription was nearly two thousand guineas.
In 1801 Count Rumford continued to carry out his plans at the Institution. In February he engaged Mr. Humphry Davy as Assistant Lecturer on Chemistry, Director of the Chemical Laboratory, and Assistant Editor of the Journals. On March 11 Davy arrived at the Institution and took possession of his situation, and in April he began to lecture.
In this month the managers decided to build five new bed-rooms, forming the south attics, equalising the height of the house.
Sir John Hippesley declined to continue the treasurership. He drew up the following abstract of accounts from the commencement to April 30 of this year: Receipts, 19,257l. 8s.; Expenditure, 12,601l. 2s. 1d.; Consols, costing 4,471l. 5s.; Balance at Banker’s, 2,185l. 0s. 11d.; Debts due, 4,400l.: making a disposable sum of between 10,000l. and 11,000l. ‘Now, as all bills are paid, there are sufficient grounds to hope that the managers will be able not only to finish all the new works, but also to furnish the different apartments and workshops, and complete the arrangement of the establishment in all its details, without incurring any permanent debt, or calling upon the subscribers for any part of the 7,000l. which was generously offered for defraying the expense of the new buildings.’ Lord Kinnaird was elected treasurer.
In May Count Rumford reported that, ‘as a Master of the Workshops will soon be wanted, he had taken considerable pains to find out some person qualified for that office, and he had found a sober, steady, single, mathematical instrument maker, to whom he proposed to give 80l. a year and a room in the house.’
Sir Joseph Banks recommended Mr. Böekman, a German chemist, to be engaged in the laboratory at 50l. a year and a room in the house.
On May 25 Count Rumford laid before the managers his report on the progress, present state, and probable future prosperity and utility of the Institution. This was ordered to be printed in the Journals of the Institution, and this report, with a paper by Count Rumford—‘Observations Relative to the Means of Increasing the Quantities of Heat Obtained in the Combustion of Fuel’—forms the second number of the Journals edited by Rumford alone.
In this paper a picture is seen of the Institution as Rumford wished it to be. Except when prevented by illness and care for his health, he had worked night and day with all his energy to make his prospectus of February 1799 a realised fact. After twenty-eight months the idea was carried out. Rumford’s Institution was formed. He gives a long account of all he had done and of all he intended to do. Hence this report is a record of his mind as well as a record of the Institution.
He dismisses the professors, and lectures, and lecture rooms with four lines. He dwells at more length on the spacious and complete chemical laboratory, furnished for carrying on upon a large scale all the various processes of practical chemistry and chemical analysis and for making new and interesting experiments. He speaks of a director of the laboratory, a chemical operator, and an assistant in the laboratory (a very ingenious German chemist), who will devote his whole time to the business of it. Nearly a page is given to the workshops of the Institution, ‘where models of new and useful inventions will be constructed and sold at reasonable prices to professors and subscribers.’ ‘These are quite finished, and are now furnished with the most complete set of tools that can be procured.’
He speaks of the Master of the Workshops, who will take care of the philosophical apparatus and direct the workmen, and says he will likewise superintend and instruct all such ingenious and well-behaved young men as may, at the recommendation of the professors, be admitted into the workshops of the Institution to receive instruction and to complete their education in any one or more of the mechanic arts. The following workmen, he says, are already engaged for the workshops of the Institution, viz.—
A mathematical instrument maker, a model maker, a cabinet maker, a carpenter, a worker in brass and copper, a tin-plate worker, and an iron-plate worker. To these will soon be added bricklayers and stonemasons, who will be instructed and enabled to instruct others in setting new-invented grates, roasters, ovens, boilers, &c.
A complete kitchen for a small family has been put up for examination in the housekeeper’s room. The principal kitchen will be begun in a few weeks. It will contain roasters, ovens, boilers, steamers on the newest and most improved construction, and will be kept in daily use. In order that the proprietors and inventors may be enabled to judge from actual experiment of the merit of any new-method of cooking, or any new dish that may be proposed, a dining room has been built, and will soon be ready for use, at the house of the Institution, in which the managers will occasionally order experimental dinners, to which the proprietors and subscribers will be invited, in as far as the accommodations will admit. The expense of such dinners to be defrayed by those who partake of them.
A conversation room has been set apart, so that silence may be kept in the reading rooms. There will be maps, pens, and ink in the conversation room, and as soon as some necessary previous arrangements (which are now actually making) shall be finished, those who frequent this room will be furnished at the most reasonable prices from the housekeepers room below with soups of various kinds, tea, coffee, chocolate, and other refreshments.
Two letter-boxes have been established in the great hall.
A complete printing office exists. The Journals will appear at regular intervals, probably once a week. The reports of the various committees for specific scientific investigations (which will soon be appointed by the managers) will no doubt furnish much interesting matter for the Journals of the Institution.
Twenty-five foreign periodical scientific publications, and twenty-four domestic periodical scientific and literary publications are regularly taken in. Twenty-four new foreign publications on scientific subjects have been purchased for the library, and many valuable books have been presented. Nine daily newspapers are taken in.
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.
The letter states that, as the Institution will certainly become more interesting and more useful in proportion as it is made more complete and more extensive in all its numerous details, it is very desirable that as great a number as possible of respectable individuals should be induced to unite in its support and interest themselves in its prosperity; and then, after mentioning that its plan has been much praised abroad, it says:
And if some persons in this country, influenced by misrepresentation or by groundless apprehensions or other motives, have been withheld from giving to the undertaking their countenance and support, the character, reputation, and distinguished rank of many of those who have been most active in promoting it, and who certainly may be supposed to be best acquainted with its nature and tendency, and above all the ostensible patronage of our most gracious Sovereign, who has given so many proofs of his solicitude to encourage useful improvements and to discourage dangerous and doubtful innovations, ought to be sufficient to relieve the doubts of all, and to recommend the Royal Institution of Great Britain to the support of all those who take pleasure in contributing to the diffusion of useful knowledge and the encouragement of industry and ingenuity.
The postscript says:
Any one or more gentlemen of your acquaintance whom you shall recommend will be proposed to the managers, and will no doubt be elected.
Soon after the third number of the Journal was edited by Rumford alone. It contained a paper on the ‘Use of Steam as a Vehicle for Conveying Heat from one Place to another,’ by Count Rumford, and ‘An Account of a New Eudyometer,’ by Mr. Davy.
In July Count Rumford returned to his own house, but he was requested to continue his general superintendence of the works in the same manner as if he had continued to reside in the house. Dr. Young, at the recommendation of Sir Joseph Banks, was made Professor of Natural Philosophy, Editor of the Journals, and Superintendent of the House, with 300l. a year and rooms. In the autumn Dr. Young alone edited the fourth number of the Journal, which consisted only of the outlines of a view of galvanism, which Davy had made his first course of lectures.
In August the Committee of Chemistry agreed to the following rules: To meet by summons the third Wednesday of every month at 7 P.M. That all decisions should be by ballot. The decisions respecting experiments to be undertaken should be made by a majority, consisting of three or more members. That the orders to the proper officers of the Institution concerning experiments should be strictly attended to, and be immediately carried into effect. That by unanimous ballot the Committee should elect new members. That every question should be put in writing, proposed, and seconded. That apparatus or materials, if immediately required, should be obtained without reference to the Committee of Managers. That the clerk should attend and take notes of all the proceedings of the Committee.
The managers immediately agreed that no person should be added to any committee without previous consultation with the committee on the qualification of the candidate proposed for election.
In the autumn Count Rumford went to Paris and Germany, and made the acquaintance of Madame Lavoisier. He returned by Paris. The clerk, Mr. W. Savage, wrote to him, probably in December:
In obedience to your commands, I annex an account of the present state of the works at the Royal Institution.
He then gives the state of the laboratory, the workshops for iron and copper, the joiners’ workshops, the kitchen, the library, the hall, and passage to the conversation room.
He then says:
The repository is in the same state you left it; indeed, it has been, and is at present, a workshop for the plumbers and glaziers.
The printing office. We are busy printing Dr. Young’s syllabus and beginning Mr. Davy’s. Dr. Young’s is expected to make 10 or 12 sheets. Of Mr. Davy’s there is none printed off. It is meant to be 6 sheets. We print 1,000 on common paper and 100 on large paper of Dr. Young’s, and 500 on common paper and 50 large of Mr. Davy’s. We have printed one sheet for a number of the Journals which contains part of Mr. Davy’s paper on Galvanism, but it appears very uncertain when we shall publish it. [This was No. 4.]
The apparatus for warming the lecture room is fitted up. They have tried it, but have not yet been able to raise the temperature more than 5 degrees. It is considerably hotter under the seats, and they have bored a great number of holes through the front of them to admit the hot air into the room.
Mr. Davy’s rooms are fitted up; he does not mean to give separate courses of lectures on tanning, and on staining and printing cotton, but purposes to incorporate them in his general course. The attic floor is far from being finished; they have not yet begun to plaster it, but it is all lathed. There are three additional annual subscribers, one of them through your letter (the circular). The Committee of Chemistry have resolved to recommend to the managers to provide apparatus to the amount of 314l. 11s. for the laboratory, and to stop the passage through and attach the servants’ hall to the laboratory.[19]
He ends his letter thus:
I anxiously wish for your return, as I can perceive that the Institution begins to feel the want of you. I have the honour to be, with the greatest respect, Sir, your most humble Servant,
W. S.
The energy of supervision and the power of organisation of Count Rumford enabled him in 1801 to work out most of his plan; but to keep it in action far more money was wanted than he had obtained, and to perfect it he must have continued much longer to act the part of a dictator. Before 1801 was ended a new and powerful interest began to draw him away from his Institution and from England.
In three years he had made more or less perfect working models of an industrial school for mechanics; of a society for diffusing useful knowledge by publications and lectures; of a mechanical exhibition of things useful to the poor and to the rich; of an association for the promotion of scientific investigation by means of different committees of workers; and of a convenient modern club, with a school of cookery attached to it. He had included all these objects in one design, and had placed them under one roof.
He was not yet fifty years old, and after the events through which his energy had carried him he saw no difficulty, and thought it would be easy to make his most complicated Institution prove to the world how scientific knowledge might be useful to the lower as well as to the higher classes. He expected to gain the support of the whole nation. He wished that his Institution should be approved by all the world.
The difficulties and dangers that arose as he worked out his plan became only stimulants to his energy, and if engagements at Munich and attractions at Paris had not interfered, he would not have allowed his original Institution to fail from any want of support or from any opposition to his designs.
Already he had made enemies and met with difficulties, and early in 1802 political necessity and private interest led him abroad, and made him agree to changes which affected the foundations of his Institution, and caused it to approach in some respects nearer to its present form. Thus the year 1802 saw the first great change in the management of the Royal Institution.
In the sixth number of the Journal of the Institution the lectures of Young, and in the seventh number the lectures of Davy, which began on January 21, are mentioned by Young thus:
As the object of the Journals is to present to their readers discussions tending either to practical utility or to the illustrations of the principles of science, so particulars of any mode of demonstration either new or not commonly known that may occur in the lectures will be noticed.
Not that anything like an abstract is intended, for this may be found in the compendiums already published; but it may be the more proper to notice some experiments as it has not been possible to introduce an enumeration of experiments into those compendiums.
In a meeting of the Committee of Chemistry of the Institution on the 20th of January it was resolved that—
The Committee of Chemistry, having taken into consideration the present state of knowledge respecting the history of metallic alloys, and being of opinion that this branch of chemistry (so eminently important to science and so useful to various arts) has not been hitherto investigated with due accuracy, resolve that a series of experiments shall be made in the laboratory of the Royal Institution, in order to ascertain with all possible precision the physical and chemical properties of these metallic compounds.
This is probably the germ of Faraday’s investigation of the alloys of steel.
Count Rumford moved that all the stock 7,000l. in the funds belonging to the Institution should be sold out to pay for the new buildings and other debts.
Early in February it was resolved that each proprietor should have an extra transferable ticket, ‘to facilitate the admission of such artists and mechanics as may derive advantage from the public lectures delivered at the Institution, which will give admittance to the gallery only of the great lecture room and to no other part of the house.
‘Resolved,—That this new arrangement, which is intended as an experiment, do continue as long as the managers shall deem it expedient.’
On April 12 Count Rumford passed a resolution to increase the payments of life subscribers to forty guineas and of annual subscribers to four guineas, and to elect a new class of subscribers to the lectures only, the payment being two guineas. A requisition had been drawn up and signed to call a general meeting of the proprietors to enlarge the body of managers and visitors to fifteen, and to stop the election of more proprietors. Count Rumford did not sign this requisition. The managers who signed it were Winchelsea, Morton, Pelham, Banks, Sullivan, and Hatchett.
That the management of the Institution at this time was by no means harmonious is seen by a letter of Mr. Webster to his mother, and by his recollections, written some time afterwards, of the failure of the school for mechanics, of which he was to have been master.
January 8, 1802.
I wish I could give you a more favourable account of my situation at the Institution. I believe I told you it did not by any means answer my expectations; the men who conduct it at present cannot always be its managers, and its very system may and probably will be very much altered at some future period.... Except some change takes place in the domestic arrangements of the Institution, I do not think that I shall sleep there again; I am sorry to say that whatever good qualities the managers possess—and they are by no means deficient in them—they have shown very little attention to the comforts of those employed in it.
In his recollections he says:
But this project for improving mechanics, well intended as it was, which promised to be so useful, and which had already gained for the Institution ‘golden opinions,’ was doomed to be crushed by the timidity (for I shall forbear to speak more harshly) of a few. I was asked rudely (by an individual whom I shall not now name) what I meant by instructing the lower classes in science. I was told likewise that it was resolved upon that the plan must be dropped as quietly as possible. It was thought to have a dangerous political tendency, and I was told that if I persisted I would become a marked man! It was in vain to argue—the time was unfavourable—and I found the necessity of yielding. No notice was ever given publicly that the idea of instructing the mechanic was abandoned, and I have no doubt but that in many parts of the kingdom the Institution got the credit of great liberality long after the mechanics’ school had become extinct.
I have no wish to detail now a thousand circumstances curious enough in a historical point of view connected with my residence in the house of the Royal Institution; suffice it to say that, notwithstanding I became much known and had many friends, yet my chief views being evidently thwarted, and there being no prospect of my situation becoming valuable in a pecuniary way, I thought it was high time to think of my own interest, and I determined on becoming a landscape painter, a profession which then offered considerable prospects in a very agreeable and independent occupation. Count Rumford left England about the same time, certainly neither rewarded nor thanked in proportion to the good he had done.
The management of the Institution now fell into other hands, and, from what appeared to me very erroneous reasoning, my mechanics’ stone staircase was pulled down at a considerable expense. All the culinary and other contrivances which the Count and I had taken so much trouble to fit up in the kitchen as an exhibition—and many of them were really good things—were put away. The workmen employed in the house to make models were discharged, there being no one to direct them. The lecture room had been warmed by steam and satisfactorily. When the boiler was worn out (as things will in time) the whole steam apparatus was taken away by the ironmonger then employed, and something of his own was put up, which for years was an annoyance to Mr. Faraday, who did not even know that steam had ever been employed till I informed him. In short, it might seem as if the then managers had resolved that the Institution should not be for the application of science to the common purposes of life.
On April 26 Mr. Webster was allowed leave of absence for the benefit of his health until December 1, and he was given 50l. on account of his salary. This was his retirement from the Institution. In 1826 he was appointed house secretary of the Geological Society, and Curator of the Museum. He died in 1844, Professor of Geology in the (then) London University.
At the meeting of managers and visitors on the same day Count Rumford made a report on the present state of the Institution. This was the last meeting of the managers that he ever attended.
He said: ‘I shall briefly state what has been accomplished since my last report on May 25, 1801, and what still remains to be done to complete this great and interesting establishment in all its details.’
He spoke of the new lecture room as holding nine hundred persons; ‘a whisper may be distinctly heard from one extremity to the other, and no echo is ever perceived in it on any occasion.’
This theatre is warmed in cold weather by steam, which, coming in covered and concealed tubes from the lower part of the house, circulates in a large semicircular copper tube eight inches in diameter and above sixty feet long, which is concealed under the rising seats of the pit.
The repository already contains a considerable number of specimens of new and useful mechanical contrivances. The chemical laboratory, in which there is provision made for placing and using no less than sixteen furnaces of different kinds at the same time, is quite finished.
All the workshops of the Institution are now quite finished, and they have been furnished with the most complete sets of tools that could be procured, and several excellent workmen are now employed in them; and a great variety of useful articles designed as models of imitation have already been manufactured in the house, and are ready to be delivered to any of the proprietors or subscribers to the Institution who may be disposed to purchase them.
The great kitchen at the house of the Institution has been furnished, and now contains a variety of new and useful utensils and implements of cookery, many of which are in daily use, and others (which are not) are so exposed to view as to be easily understood and their merit appreciated.