[412]
The most striking beginnings of this movement had been seen
when, in the darkest period of the French Revolution, there was
founded at Paris the great Conservatory of Arts and Trades, and
when, in the early years of the nineteenth century, scientific
and technical education spread quietly upon the Continent. By
the middle of the century France and Germany were dotted with
well-equipped technical and scientific schools, each having
chemical and physical laboratories.
The English-speaking lands lagged behind. In England, Oxford and
Cambridge showed few if any signs of this movement, and in the
United States, down to 1850, evidences of it were few and
feeble. Very significant is it that, at that period, while Yale
College had in its faculty Silliman and Olmsted--the professor
of chemistry and the professor of physics most widely known in
the United States--it had no physical or chemical laboratory in
the modern sense, and confined its instruction in these subjects
to examinations upon a text-book and the presentation of a few
lectures.
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