Gentlemen of the Academy: The foundation of this Society, you all know, dates back but four years less than a century. It followed close upon the adoption of the form of government of the State itself. Further than this privilege of a corporation, I am not aware that the State has since bestowed any aid on it whatever. During the long period that has intervened, the individual members have steadily and honestly contributed their labors and their money to the advancement of science and of the arts, the evidence of which is to be found as well in the collections of the library as in the long series of their published transactions. We have not been so lucky as to earn the favor of the generous and wealthy at all in the proportion given to some other institutions of the same general character. In point of fact, we have to ascribe our success more to our own energies than to the assistance of patrons. This is no bad sign for the future. The Academy was never in more healthy and vigorous condition than at this moment. The meetings are constantly attended by members who appear to give or to receive with interest the many valuable contributions to knowledge which ultimately take their place in the formidable volumes open to the inspection of the world.
Yet it is not to be understood from what I have said that the institution has been altogether without liberal assistance from several sources. The most remarkable instance of a benefaction was perhaps the earliest, that of Benjamin Thompson, better known under the name of Count Rumford, who, eighty years ago, presented to the Academy the sum of five thousand dollars, to be devoted to the stimulation of the study of the various phenomena connected with light and heat, by the presentation of medals of value as honorary rewards to successful research. It is to the credit of the Academy, in these degenerate days, to find that its administration of this property has fully justified the confidence of the donor, the original sum having increased more than fourfold over and above the cost of the medals which have from time to time been awarded to successful investigation of the great subjects proposed for study and examination.
It now becomes my agreeable duty to announce the fact that, after a careful review of the meritorious service of Prof. Draper in this great field of inquiry, the committee having the subject in their charge have, for reasons given by them, recommended through their chairman, that the medals prescribed in the deed of trust should be presented to him as having fully deserved them. It falls to my lot only to recapitulate in brief some of these reasons.
In 1840 Dr. Draper independently discovered the peculiar phenomena commonly known as Moser's images, which are formed when a medal or coin is placed upon a polished surface of glass or metal. These images remain, as it were, latent, until a vapor is allowed to condense upon the surface, when the image is developed and becomes visible.
