A GREAT SCIENTIST.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1695, 24 August 1904, Page 79 (Supplement)

A GREAT SCIENTIST.

LOUD KELVIN ATTAINS THE AGE OF 80. Often you may see a carriage driving siowiy. through London streets, in which is seated Lord Kelvin, sometimes alert vo notice anything peculiar in the passing traffic, at other times with his ©yes closed and with the calm of quietude on his striking face. His lameness, which was the result of an accident when enjoying the Scots recreation of curling, has led him to drive, or one is quite sure so energetic a man. even at 81), would bo striding along with the indedent swing of John Stuart Blackie. Ho seems to like the stirring life of London, for it probably sets in motion more waves of mental energy than when he is staying at his home in Ayrshire; and yes probably few Londoners recognise his personality as he passes through the city. Scientists do not expect popular fame, but Lord Kelvin has added so much to our knowledge and has achieved so much in life-saving inventions that he deserves to he honoured (says “The daily Chronicle”,) by the “man in the street” as well as by his fellow labourers in scion o© and physics who can estimate his remarkable work. Yet he said noit long ago that despite 50 years of experimental investigation he could not help feeling thaOie really knew no more .i he knew 50 years before. VIES OF HIS DISCOVERIES. .. Some interesting tales are told of Lord Kelvin’s discoveries, and how the ideas of them have come to his quicx mind. For instance, this is said to have been the way m which he found the mirror galvanometer. He was puzzling over the difficulty of perfecting the ordinary telegraphic apparatus used on overhead wires, which was not suited for tha varying current passing along cables. The lagging of the electric currents had the effect of making them run together into one bottom current, with surf a© 3 ripples, which correspond to the separate signals of the message. The problem was how to invent a means of clearly and easily all the deiioate fluctuations. One day Lord Kelvin’s eyeglass fell off and swung in front of the magnet, reflecting its movements, and instantly the idea of the mirror suggested itself. So a monocle has had a direct effect on science! Thirty years ago an article appeared in “Good .Words” from his pan on the subject of the mariner’s compass. The second article did not follow, for in the interval Lord Kelvin had invented a far superior mariner’s compass. That is one of many cases where directly he hart begun to investigate he has been led to improve. When wireless telegraphy was still treated as a questionable discovery Lord Kelvin sent a message from the Isle of Wight to Bournemouth to his old friend the late Sir George Stokes, for transmission from Bournemouth to Cambridge. It was in the following terms: “Stokes, Lensfieid Cottage, Cambridge. This i'i sent commercially paid at Alum Bay for transmission through ether (Is) to Bournemouth, and thence by postal telegraph (15d) to Cambridge.— Kelvin.” Few things have interested the veteran teacher so much as the development of wireless telegraphy since that experimental message of six years ago.