Many of these inventions were made by manual workers who, by intuitive genius, saw what was needed to meet the requirements that arose in practice.

There was not then that fund of accumulated scientific knowledge and experience in existence which anyone must have before he can make any advance or improvement to-day.

There was an interesting print published some forty years ago giving portraits of the Englishmen who had made contributions to practical science and who might have been assembled together in one room in 1808.

It included many who made their inventions as manual workers.

Murdock, who invented a new lathe, and developed the use of coal gas, worked until over forty years old for a wage of a pound a week; Davy had been apprenticed to an apothecary; Bramah, who invented a new hydraulic press, once worked with a village carpenter; Bolton and Watt and Nasmyth, the inventor of the steam hammer, were practical engineers.