Читать книгу Nordenholt's Million онлайн

2 страница из 89

Although at the time of which I speak I had become more a director than a designer, I was originally by profession a mechanical engineer; and in my student days I had had a scientific training, some remnants of which still fluttered in tatters in odd corners of my mind. I could check the newspaper accounts of new discoveries in chemistry and physics well enough to know when the reporters blundered grossly; geology I remembered vaguely, though I could barely have distinguished augite from muscovite under a microscope: but the biological group of subjects had never come within my ken. The medical side of science was a closed book as far as I was concerned.

Yet, like many educated men of that time, I took a certain interest in scientific affairs. I read the accounts of the British Association in the newspapers year by year; I bought a copy of Nature now and again when a new line of research caught my attention; and occasionally I glanced through some of these popular réchauffés of various scientific topics by means of which people like myself were able to persuade themselves that they were keeping in touch with the advance of knowledge.