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len and silken tissues, naphtha, sugar, sulphuric acid, soap, bleaching powder, lucifer matches, and the like. Secondly, all the intermediate bodies which intervene between such products and their raw materials: for example, between iron ore and steel, between sand and glass, between clay and porcelain, between rags and paper, between skins and leather, between textile fibre and cloth, between coals and naphtha, cane juice and loaf sugar, sulphur and oil of vitriol, palm oil and soap, common salt and bleaching powder, burnt bones and lucifer matches. Thirdly, the tools, machines, and apparatus required for the conversion of raw materials into finished products, such, in full size or in model, as agricultural, mining, and paper-making machinery, furnaces, mills, lathes, moulds, looms, gas retorts, stills, printing presses, and all the manipulative implements of handicraft trades.
Fourthly, those forms of apparatus which are employed in the application to useful purposes of finished products, and in the exercise of what may be called the dynamical industrial arts. Such instruments are pens, pencils, brushes, thermometers, barometers, lamps for burning solid, liquid, and gaseous fuels; the batteries and other requisites for producing and maintaining the electric light, the whole machinery of the electric telegraph, the whole apparatus of the photographer, and much else.
The Laboratory of the Industrial Museum forms part of the suite of medical class rooms within the gate of the Royal College of Surgeons, Nicolson-street. It is of service to the Museum in four ways:—1. As a school of analytical chemistry, where, for moderate fees, young men learn the art of chemical analysis as applied to industrial objects. 2. As an analytical laboratory, where, likewise for moderate fees, merchants and others have confidential analyses made of substances, whose composition they seek for their own guidance to know, and where the officers of the Museum may be consulted by those engaged in legal contests, or in other transactions requiring the services of scientific advisers. 3. As furnishing the means for prosecuting, at the cost of the Museum, researches on subjects of public economic interest by the director and assistant chemist. Thus an inquiry into the qualities of some of the more important building sandstones of Scotland has already been published, and an investigation into certain of the varieties of glass is in progress. 4. As affording the means of illustrating, by experiments in progress, those departments of industrial science which require experimental illustration in the lecture room. It is hoped that in the new Museum an engineering workshop will be furnished as the complement of the chemical laboratory.
The Library is in a quite rudimentary state, and is at the service only of the officers of the Museum and the more advanced students. Its more immediate guide is to purpose those in charge of the Museum in acquiring, classifying, labelling, and describing the contents of the collections; and to assist the analysts of the Laboratory in the prosecution of researches of public economic interest. The hope, however, is indulged, that when fully developed it will contain a collection of books on applied science in at least French, German, and English, including the records of the patent offices or similar institutions of the civilized countries of the world; geographical, geological, and mining maps and sections, illustrated works on architecture, shipbuilding, machinery, and the like, so arranged as to be accessible for reference and consultation by practical men.
The Lectures delivered in connexion with the Industrial Museum are given by the Director in his capacity of Regius Professor of Technology in the University of Edinburgh; but in default of convenient accommodation within the University, his prelections, with the exception of the introductory one for each year, have been delivered in one of the class-rooms adjoining the Laboratory, five lectures being given weekly during the winter six months' session. The lectures are strictly systematic, the full course on technology embracing three sessions, in each of which different industrial arts are discussed, prominence being given to mineral, vegetable, and animal technology in successive years, whilst the general principles common to all are taught each session. The third course is now in progress. The lectures are illustrated by the contents of the Museum, by diagrams, drawings, chemical and physical experiments, the exhibition on the small scale of manufacturing processes, and of models and machines at work.
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