Royal Indian Engineering College Research Articles

Richard Hornsey, Imperial Engineers: The Royal Indian Engineering College, Coopers Hill

Richard Hornsey, Imperial Engineers: The Royal Indian Engineering College, Coopers Hill

A Questionable Project: Herbert McLeod and the Making of the Fourth series of the Royal Society Catalogue of Scientific Papers, 1901–25

Summary Many people were involved in producing the seven volumes that make up the fourth series of the Royal Society catalogue of scientific papers. Included were about two hundred volunteers and about one hundred people working either on short-term contracts or carrying out piece work. At the Royal Society there was a small, largely female, secretariat working full-time. It included both clerical and bibliographic staff. Coordinating all the work was the chemist Herbert McLeod, appointed director of the catalogue in 1901. As is discussed, the position of director was created especially for him after his forced retirement from the Royal Indian Engineering College. The paper shows the complexity of the work involved in producing the catalogue, as well as something of the office culture at the Royal Society in the early twentieth century. The working conditions of the women employees, and prevailing attitudes toward the largely female clerical and bibliographic staff, are briefly discussed.

The military influence on engineering education in Britain and India, 1848–1906

The original colleges for military engineers—the Royal Military Academy (RMA) Woolwich and the East India Company (EIC) Seminary at Addiscombe—were the only outlet for a curriculum based on the theory and practice of engineering taught within an academically orientated institution in Britain during the nineteenth century. Overall, engineering in Britain was taught through work-related traditional apprenticeship systems that focused on the ‘practical man’ concept, supported from 1853 onwards with funding based on a payments-by-results system administered by the Department of Science and Art. This trend continued despite the introduction of modest engineering faculties within the British university system. In India, matters were different: there were four colleges of civil engineering, the oldest, Thomason College, having been founded in 1847. Their role was to provide civil engineers for the Indian Public Works Department. Both in Britain and in India, the administration and management of science, technical and engineering education was undertaken by officers from the Royal Engineers and the Indian Army equivalent, (commonly referred to as sapper officers). This trend in civil/military relationships continued with the establishment of the Royal Indian Engineering College (also known as Cooper’s Hill College) in 1870, specifically to train civil engineers in England for duties with the Indian Public Works Department. The comparisons between engineering education in Britain and India during the nineteenth century are stark. The role of the military in the development of engineering education both in Britain and India was crucial. The Indian Public Works Department, although technically a civilian organisation, relied on military engineers during its life until 1947. An examination of the topic from both the British and Indian perspective gives an insight not only into comparative engineering education but also into the civil/military relationships that existed in Britain and India during the latter half of the nineteenth century.

A more vigorous prosecution of public works: the reforms of the Indian Public Works Department

The aim of this paper is to extend the current knowledge and understanding of public sector accountancy and management in its historical context, through the examination of the reforms of the Indian Public Works Department (PWD) from 1858 and the founding of the Royal Indian Engineering College (RIEC) in 1870. The architect of these reforms was General Sir George Tomkyns Chesney, who was the first Accountant-General of the PWD. Chesney was influential in the founding of the RIEC, also known as Cooper's Hill College, and became its first president. The role of this College was to train civil engineers for the reformed PWD. The College synthesised management training for the public sector in India and was perhaps the first academic institution in Britain to offer a curriculum relating to engineering technology and management, including a designated course in public sector accounting.

Engineers for India: The Royal Indian Engineering College at Cooper's Hill

(1994). Engineers for India: The Royal Indian Engineering College at Cooper's Hill. History of Education: Vol. 23, No. 1, pp. 107-123.

Biographical and Historical Notes on the Pioneers of Photometry in Ireland

As the circumstances of the early electrical measurements of starlight in Ireland are not widely known we wish to take this opportunity to set down the facts, as far as they are known to us. Corrections or new information will be welcomed.The observations made in Dublin in 1892 were the result of a collaboration between four graduates of Trinity College: George M. Minchin, William H.S. Monck, Stephen M. Dixon and George F. Fitzgerald. The observations in 1895 were made at Daramona Observatory, Co. Westmeath with a 24-inch reflector by Minchin, Fitzgerald and the owner of the telescope, William E. Wilson. In 1875 Minchin was appointed Professor of Applied Mechanics at the Royal Indian Engineering College at Coopers Hill, near Staines in London. In 1877 he started a long series of investigations of photoelectricity using a small optical laboratory at Coopers Hill and the laboratories of University College London. His initial aim was to transmit images electrically but he became skilled in making photovoltaic cells of selenium.By September 1891 Minchin had succeeded in making some working cells and he wished “to test them on the stars”. He contacted his friend Monck who had recently set up an observatory in his back garden in Dublin. Monck in turn asked Fitzgerald for the loan of a galvanometer or electrometer and for advice in its use. As Fitzgerald did not have a suitable instrument, he ordered Clifton’s form of Thomson’s quadrant electrometer, which arrived near the end of the year. It seems that Minchin also sent some of his cells to Dr Boeddicker in the spring of 1892 for trials on the 72-inch telescope but no reports are available.

Mr. F. W. Harbord, C.B.E

MR. FRANK WILLIAM HABBOBD, who died on December 27, at the age of eighty-two, after a long and active career as a metallurgist, was born in Norwich and studied at the Royal School of Mines. After holding posts in iron and steel works in Staffordshire he became consulting metallurgist to the Indian Government, and from 1892 until 1905 he was at the Royal Indian Engineering College at Coopers Hill. In 1905 he took up private consulting practice in London, and the firm of Riley and Harbord (later Riley, Harbord and Law) has always enjoyed a high reputation in the metallurgical world. Although greatly hampered in later years by failing eyesight, he retained his position as senior partner until his death.

Prof. R. S. Troup, C.M.G., C.I.E., F.R.S.

THE death of Prof. R. S. Troup on October 1, at the age of sixty-four years, removes one of the outstanding figures in the development of forestry in the Empire. He passed the competitive examination into the Royal Indian Engineering College at Coopers Hill in 1894, and ever since then his profession had been his predominant interest. Endowed with more than the usual amount of Scottish common sense and with a good deal of Aberdonian caution, his mentality was peculiarly adapted to the orderly collection and presentation of facts.

Prof. Alfred Lodge

ALFRED LODGE, who died at Oxford on December 1 of last year, so far outlived his contemporaries that it is scarcely possible now to see him through their eyes. Born in 1854, educated at Horncastle Grammar School and Magdalen College, Oxford, he was elected to a Fereday fellowship at St. John's College, Oxford, in 1876, and appointed in 1884 to the staff of the Royal Indian Engineering College, Coopers Hill, where he presently succeeded Wolstenholme as professor of pure mathematics ; on the dissolution of the College in 1904 he became a master at Charterhouse, and there he remained until after the Great War.

Sir George Hart, K.B.E., C.I.E.

WE regret to record the death, at Barberton, Transvaal, on April 16, of Sir George Hart, formerly inspector-general of forests to the Government of India. Born on April 14, 1866, he was educated at St. Paul's School and at the Royal Indian Engineering College, Coopers Hill. He joined the Indian Forest Service in 1887, and was posted as assistant conservator in the Punjab, where he served until 1906, when he was transferred to the Central Provinces as conservator of forests. Two years later, he went to Bengal as conservator, and in 1910 was re-transferred to the Central Provinces as chief conservator. In 1913 he was appointed inspector-general of forests, in which capacity he served until 1921, when he retired. He was made C.I.E. in 1911 and K.B.E. in 1919. On retiring from India he settled down at Coolmore, in the White River district, Transvaal, where he stayed until his death.

Sir William Schlich, K.C.I.E., F.R.S

THE death of Sir William Schlich, who succumbed to an attack of bronchitis on September 27, at eighty-five years of age, removes from the world of forestry one of its outstanding figures of the past half-century. A native of Hesse-Darmstadt, Schlich studied at the University of Giessen, taking his degree of Ph.D. in 1866. The same year he was offered and accepted a post in the Indian Forest Department, then in its infancy, and was posted to Burma, where he served as deputy conservator of forests until 1870, when he was transferred to Sind, where he remained for two years. In 1872 he was promoted to the conservatorship of Bengal, which in those days comprised the present provinces of Bengal, Assam, and Behar and Orissa. For seven years he threw himself with energy and conspicuous success into the arduous work of organising forest operations in this huge tract. After a spell of leave to Europe, followed by a short period of service as conservator of forests in the Punjab, he was appointed towards the end of 1881 to act as inspector-general of forests to the Government of India: he was confirmed in this appointment in 1883, when his predecessor, Dr. Brandis, retired from the service, and held it until 1885, when he proceeded to England to take up the post of professor of forestry in the newly created forestry branch at the Royal Indian Engineering College at Coopers Hill.

The Royal Indian Engineering College, Coopers Hill

The Royal Indian Engineering College, Coopers Hill

The Royal Indian Engineering College

The Royal Indian Engineering College

The Royal Indian Engineering College

ALL the members of the teaching staff at Coopers Hill must be gratified at the expression of public opinion in support of the cause of the seven gentlemen who have received notice of dismissal. Since our remarks upon the matter were written last week, leaders and letters have appeared in the Times, Daily News and other newspapers, expressing astonishment at the condition of things which permits distinguished men of science to be treated with indignity, and demanding that an inquiry shall be made not only into the present case of injustice, but also into the whole system which renders it possible for scientific service to be belittled by the action of an official unable to appreciate its value.

The Royal Indian Engineering College

IT is evident from the letters and comments which have appeared in the Times and other papers, that the osummary notice of dismissal of a large part of the scientific staff of the Royal Indian Engineering College, Coopers Hill, is regarded as an act of injustice which, if permitted to take effect, would be distinctly detrimental to the interests of science. The facts of the case were stated in these columns last week, and an examination of othem is sufficient to convince any one that the seven gentlemen who have received notice that their services will not be required after the end of the Easter term have been treated with little courtesy and no consideration. That it should be possible for men of scientific eminence to be dismissed from their posts more easily than if they were civil service messengers or clerks, is one of the many indications we have of the small value attached by the official mind to scientific work and distinction. Perhaps Lord Kelvin's letter, which we reprint below from the Times, will show that the matter is not to be permitted to rest in its present unsatisfactory position.

On the Distal End of a Mammalian Humerus from Tonbridge ( Hemiomus major )

M r . R. D'A. A nderson , of the Royal Indian Engineering College, has submitted to me the distal end of the right humerus of a mammal for determination. The bone was found in August 1898 by Mr. Grenville Anderson, on the bank of the River Medway near Tonbridge (at a time when the river was running very low), when it was seen projecting from the reconstructed rock. The locality is not far from Messrs. Curtis & Harvey's gunpowder-mills, at a point between a broken and disused lock-basin and an old bridge near the ballast-pit. On visiting the spot I found fragments of flints among the materials which form the river-banks; but although this might support a reference of the specimen to any geological period of subsequent date, there are conditions of mineral structure and osteological character which incline me to believe that the bone has been derived from the Weald Clay. When the fossil came under my notice, the distal end was broken from the shaft; and the shaft was split, showing the very thin condition of the bone of the shaft, and the hard, sandy, calcareous matter which filled the medullary cavity. Traces of matrix at the distal end show that the specimen has been derived from quartz-sand bound together with limonite, such as might occur in the Hastings Sand, Weald Clay, or Lower Greensand, but the character of this matrix is opposed to the possibility of the specimen being of post-Tertiary age. The fossil, as preserved, is 4 inches long

Book Reviews

THIS little book fills a distinct gap, as it is the first time that a primer intended specially for students of forestry has been issued in England. Prof. Marshall Ward has been for many years the Lecturer on Botany at the Royal Indian Engineering College at Cooper's Hill, and therefore understands thoroughly what is required. He has followed for his plan the taking of a single tree—the oak—and dealing with it exhaustively. After a general introduction, he deals first with the acorn and its germination, describing fully the embryo and its epidermis, the vascular bundles of the former and its cells, and the character of their contents. He tells us that two years elapse before the supply of food stored up in the two thick cotyledons is exhausted, and it is not until the tree is from sixty to a hundred years old that good seeds are obtained from it. Then he describes the seedling and young plant—first the root and its tissues, and then the stem, buds, and leaves, and their microscopic structure. Then he turns to the full-grown tree, and describes its root-system, shoot-system, inflorescence, flowers, fruit, and seed. Next he deals with the timber of the oak, its structure, and technological peculiarities. Then he treats of the cultivation of the tree, and the injuries and diseases to which it is liable from the attacks of insects and fungi. He concludes with a short chapter on the relationships of the oaks and their distribution in space and time. The genus is characterized by the cupule, in which the acorn is inclosed, which represents a one-flowered involucre. There are three cells in the ovary, and two ovules in each; but nearly always two of the cells and five of the ovules are obliterated before the seed is perfected. About 300 species of the genus Quercus are known. It is spread universally through the north temperate zone. Prof. M. Ward is mistaken in supposing there are no oaks in South America. Two species have long been known in the Northern Andes—Quercus tolimensis and Quercus Humboldtii—both of which are described and figured in Humboldt and Bonpland's “Plantes Equinoxiales.” There are nearly sixty species in India, and it is there that we get the genus connected with the other Cupuliferæ by passing through Castanopsis into Castanea. The oaks go back to the Cretaceous period, and a large number of fossil forms are known. Their delimitation into species is very difficult. In Britain we have only a single species, Quercus Robur, with two sub species Q. pedunculata and sessiliflora, well enough marked in their extreme forms, but passing into one another by gradual stages of transition, which constitute what has been called Quercus intermedia. The book is clear and well arranged, and will be found thoroughly adapted to fulfil its purpose, and is illustrated by a large number of excellent figures, some of which are original and some borrowed from German text-books. The Oak: a Popular Introduction to Forest Botany. By H. Marshall Ward “Modern Science Series,” edited by Sir John Lubbock, Bart., M.P. 171 pages, and Index, 2 Plates, and 51 Woodcuts. (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, and Co., Ltd., 1892.)

Societies and Academies.

LONDON. Royal Society, December 17.—“The ‘Ginger-beer Plant, and the Organisms composing it: a Contribution to the Study of Fermentation-yeasts and Bacteria.” By H. Marshall Ward, Sc.D., F.R.S., F.L.S., Professor of Botany at the Forest School, Royal Indian Engineering College, Cooper's Hill.

New Books

New Books Get access Naturae Veritas. By GEORGE M. MINOHIN, Professor of Applied Mathematics in the Royal Indian Engineering College, Cooper's HilL. London and New York : Macmillan & Co., 1887. Pp. 67. Mind, Volume os-12, Issue 47, 1 July 1887, Page 467, https://doi.org/10.1093/mind/os-12.47.467a Published: 01 July 1887