Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/499

Rh Grubb siderostat, a spectro-bolometer constructed by Grunow & Son, and a galvanometer. These instruments, in the hands of Prof. Langley, are producing remarkable results, considering the inferior building and unsatisfactory site. It is to be hoped that these conditions will speedily be improved through Congressional appropriations.

—Previous to the year 1891 the Smithsonian Fund had received only two small additions by gifts or bequests: one thousand dollars from Mr. James Hamilton in 1875, and five hundred dollars from Mr. Simeon Habel in 1880. In the year 1891, however, Mr. Thomas G. Hodgkins, of Setauket, N. Y., made the handsome donation of two hundred thousand dollars to the general fund, with certain conditions. In the formal statement of Mr. Hodgkins, dated September 22, 1891, he used these words: "This fund, to be called the Hodgkins Fund, and all premiums, prizes, grants, or publications made at its cost, are to be designated by this name; the interest of one hundred thousand dollars of this fund to be permanently devoted to the increase and diffusion of more exact knowledge in regard to the nature and properties of atmospheric air, in connection with the welfare of man in his daily life, and in his relations to his Creator, the same to be effected by the offering of prizes, for which competition shall be open to the world, for essays in which important truths regarding the phenomena on which life, health, and human happiness depend shall be embodied, or by such other means as in years to come may appear to the Regents of the Smithsonian Institution calculated to produce the most beneficent results."

To carry out the wishes of the donor, the following provisions for prizes, essays, and the Hodgkins medal were adopted by the institution, and announced in a circular issued in March, 1892:

1. A prize of ten thousand dollars for a treatise embodying some new and important discovery in regard to the nature or properties of atmospheric air.