For elementary laboratories no extensive and peculiar structural features are required in the building. Suitable brackets firmly fastened to brick furnish supports for the more sensi tive apparatus, and convenient sinks and water and gas piping and electric fittings are provid ed. In most colleges and universities, however, these elementary laboratories are in the sauce building as research laboratories for the staff and advanced students, and as a result they con tain many features not absolutely essential for work of this description. In building physical laboratories for research work, every other con sideration is, or should be, sacrificed to direct utility. Stone piers on which such instruments as galvanometers are set are independently found ed and carried up through one or more floors, without any connection whatsoever with other parts of the building. Stone tables or slabs for similar purposes are built in the brick structural walls of the building. High towers for experi ments with pendulums, pressures of liquids, and falling bodies are another feature of a modern laboratory, and in most cases they, too, are built on an independent foundation. The build ing is usually arranged so that it has the best possible light, especially as regards direct sun light. For certain work electrical or other power is desirable, and a system of pipes, wiring. and shafting is carried about the building. Another feature is a constant-temperature room in the cellar, usually where the astronomical clocks and other instruments which must be maintained at or near the same temperature the year around are installed. In short, the greatest care is observed in adapting the building for its use as a place of research, and every convenience is placed at the disposal of the student. It must be stated, however, that many physicists do not altogether approve of such refinements of laboratory eon struction, and think that the ability to overcome difficulties is a valuable part of the training. Furthermore, the very nature of the refinements may in some cases constitute serious causes of -error. For example, an independent tower or Icier may act as an inverted pendulum and have -a period of vibration of its own. But he this as it may, it is undoubtedly true that at the Ger man universities, where the greatest facilities have been introduced into the buildings and are put at the disposal of the students, the best work is carried on. The laboratory belonging to the University at strassburg, and that of the Poly technikum at Zurich. are typical of the best prog ress in modern laboratory construction. although Berlin and a number of other German universities are not far behind.
But important physical research has also been carried on in laboratories outside of edueational institutions, and the more celebrated of these deserve brief mention. The laboratory of the Royal Institution in London was founded in ISOO by Count Rumford. and although the orig inal intention of its founder was the furtherance of applied science, it, soon became the home of the most brilliant and original investigations in the realm of pure science. earried on by smell men as Sir Humphry Davy. Faraday, Tyndall, Ray leigh, and Dewar. In 1896 the research facilities of the Royal Institution were increased by the opening of the Davy-Faraday Research Labora tory. which has been most successfully conducted
by Lord Rayleigh and Prof. James Dewar. In Germany the most important work lias been car ried on at the Jeiticscnstalt. or physico-techni cal institution. at Charlottenburg, near Berlin. Through the munificence of Werner Siemens, who in 1884 gave about $125,000 to the institution, and through appropriations by the Reichstag, suitable buildings were erected, and from ISSS to 1894 the laboratory was directed by Helmholtz. The influence of the Beichsonstall on industrial conditions in Germany has been most valuable. Various standards are here made, instruments are calibrated, and certificates which have a world-wide acceptance are given to the apparatus which complies with the standards of the bureau. Technical research is also carried on, and many papers are published from time to time from the bureau. Various instruments of glass are examined, and the work of the Germans in this field has been raised to a high degree of ex cellence, with the result that the manufacture of optical instruments has greatly increased. The same holds true in the case of electrical appara tus, and the standards of resistance and other apparatus also have been made of a high grade of precision. In Paris there is the Conserratoire des Arts et Metiers. With the purchase of a physical cabinet, a department of physics was or ganized in 1829, which has since been increased and developed, and furnished a home for important researches. Perhaps the most celebrated labora tory in France is the International Bureau of Weights and Measures, organized in 1875 by the eotiperation of eighteen different nations. Here are prepared for distribution to the subscribing nations the various metric standards of length and mass; the meter and kilogram of the ar chives with which the secondary or natural stand ards have been compared are preserved. In this laboratory are carried on the most elaborate com parisons of standards and instruments. and the work of this bureau has been invaluable to work ers in science in many departments. A national physical laboratory was established in Great Britain during the closing years of the nineteenth cAtury. and to it in 1900 was given a building and site near London, its control being given to the Royal tsociety. here a beginning has been made of supplying means for important physieal in vestigations, and the equipment is being rapidly increased. In the United States, in 1901. the National Bureau of Standards was established by act of Congress, approved March 3, 1901; it is designed to possess a similar function to the Reielisanstalt and the National Physical Labora tory of England. In 1903 a buildnie• was being erected for the laboratory of this bureau. and plans had been made for its investigations. 11y law it is given the custody of the national and will issue secondary standards for the use of industrial and seientific worker-. So valuable and important has been the work of similar institutions in Europe that the National Bureau of Standards was demanded by united scientific. and manufacturing interests.