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Rh 's shop, for two years consecutively; that he should be examined in the appointed sciences; in smith's work, turning, filing, and fitting, pattern-making, and molding, "as already established"; and that after 1875 each holder of a scholarship should be required to produce satisfactory evidence, by examination, at the termination of every year, that he had made proper advances in the sciences and practice of mechanical engineering. Additional prizes were offered for the best evidences of scholarship) at the annual and final examination, so that it became possible for the best of the scholars at the end of his tenure of the scholarship to have obtained £800, and the others in proportion. The benefaction was added to, in 1875, by the foundation of a number of "Whitworth exhibitions."

Mr. Whitworth was made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1857; he received degrees from Trinity College, Dublin, and the University of Oxford; obtained, in 1867, for his collection of engineer's tools and rifled ordnance and projectiles, at the Paris Exhibition, one of the five "Grando Prix "allotted to England; had conferred upon him by Napoleon III, in 1868, the decoration of the Legion of Honor; was awarded the Albert Gold Medal of the Society of Arts" for the invention and manufacture of instruments of measurement and uniform standards, by which the production of machinery has been brought to a degree of perfection hitherto unapproached"; and, in 1860, he was created a baronet, and became Sir Joseph Whitworth. He suffered for several years from the severities of the English winter, and went every year to the Riviera. Two years before his death he had built a winter-garden at Stanley Dale, to which he was confined for several months; but on the approach of cold weather in the fall of 1886, be determined, although he was so weak that his friends saw him depart with much misgiving, to try the Mediterranean coast again." He leaves behind him," says the "London Times," "a reputation unapproached in his department, and he was scarcely less remarkable for the sagacity which he brought to bear upon great public questions, than for the severity with which he saw his conclusions put aside by men in official positions, whose minds were not mechanical, and toward whom his feelings scarcely rose to the level of contempt. The characteristics of his intellect were peculiar in that he was distinctly an experimentalist as opposed to a reasoner. When a problem in mechanics was presented to him, it was his habit to say, 'Let us try,' and he possessed the rare gift of being able to devise conclusive experiments." His principal published book was a collection of "Essays on Mechanical Subjects," including true planes, screw-threads, and standard measures, which was published in 1882. He left a large part of his estate to be applied to purposes of instruction in mechanical engineering.