Genre:

Essay, Drollery

Relevant illustrations:

wdct.

Subjects:

Exhibitions, Amusement, Invention, Electricity, Instruments, Manufactories, Microscopy, Nutrition

    Reports on the dining rooms at the Royal Polytechnic Institution. Observes that the 'Professors of Chemistry and Experimental Philosophy will be appointed the chief cooks' and that the steam-engine in the Hall of Manufactures will 'cook the potatoes'. Reassures readers that the oxy-hydrogen microscope will be used to check for deposits in the drinking water, and that the diving bell will be used to see 'if it is possible to pickle trout alive'. Other innovations include the weighing of visitors on the patent dial machine (which will determine how much they pay), the preservation of fruit in the institution's air-pump, the conversion of grass and buttercups into milk and cream by Kreüzer's 'artificial gastric machine', and seats 'formed by Leyden jars, attached to Armstrong's Hydro-electric machine' for exciting the liver 'to its proper sense of duty'. The illustration shows a thin and a fat man being weighed on dial machines at the entrance and exit of the Royal Polytechnic Institution.