Page:Memoirs of Royal Astronomical Society Volume 01.djvu/532

 ADDRESSES OP HENRY THOMAS COLEBROOKE, Esq.. F.R.S. President of the Astronomical Society of London, ON PRESENTING THE HONORARY MEDALS OF THE SOCIETY TO THE SEVERAL PERSONS TO WHOM THEY HAD BEEN AWARDED. On presenting the Gold Medal to Charles Bab babe, Esq. F.R.S. THIS country and the present age have been pre-eminently distinguished for ingenuity in the contrivance, or in the improvement, of machinery. In none has that been more singularly evinced, than in the instance to which I have the gratification of now calling the attention of the Society. The inven- tion is as novel, as the ingenuity manifested by it is extraordinary. In other cases, mechanical devices have substituted machines for simpler tools or for bodily labour. The artist has been furnished with command of power beyond human strength, joined with precision surpassing any ordi- nary attainment of dexterity. He is enabled to perform singly the work of a multitude, with the accuracy of a select few, by mechanism which takes the place of manual labour or assists its efforts. But the invention, to which I am adverting, comes in place of mental exertion : it substitutes mechanical per- formance for an intellectual process : and that performance is effected with celerity and exactness unattainable inordinary methods, even by incessant practice and undiverted attention. The invention is in scope, as in execution, unlike any thing before accoin- pkshed to assist operose computations. I pass by, as what is obviously quite different, the Shwanpan, or Chinese abacus, the tangible arithmetic of Frend, Napier's rods, with the ruder devices of antiquity, the tallies, the checque, Digitized by