TECHNOLOGY AND ENGINEERING,

From the days of John Milton, in 1608, to the end of the eighteenth century, university training culminated in a preparation for the professions of law, medicine, and theology, and in the training of the nobility for the duties and responsibilities of government and elegant society.

But when alchemy developed into chemistry; when physics became an experimental science; when Leibnitz and Newton elaborated the infinitesimal calculus; when Watts invented an efficient steam engine: when Fulton built a successful steamboat; when Stephenson devised the locomotive and constructed a road with smooth rails, and, finally, when Siemens and Gramme produced the electric motor, vast fields of fascinating and useful material were opened for study and research. Mathematical analysis and the principles of mechanics, which had previously been devoted to the problems of physical astronomy, were now directed to the study of the transformation and transmission of energy, the theory of structures, and the phenomena of electricity. The theory of evolution has given a new meaning to all vital phenomena, and the doctrine of the conservation of energy has permeated all our study of motion and force.

In the earlier days Alexander Pope voiced the popular notion that ** The proper study of mankind is man." "Nature study," which to-day is the bright, attractive feature of the primary school, and equally the inspiring field of the savant, was not countenanced by polite society. For centuries it was held to be little short of blasphemy to wound the earth by digging for ores which were intended to be hidden away from our sight and touch, or to attempt in any way to improve upon God's workmanship. When in 1680 a Spanish engineer proposed to deepen the channels of certain rivers and to restrain their overflows in the interest of navigation, the Spanish council decreed as follows: “If it had pleased God that those rivers should have been navigable, He would not have needed human assistance to make them so; but as He has not done it, it is plain that He does not want it done," and the improvements were forbidden.

The modern thought of the creation is that it was and is a part of the all-wise plan to fill the earth with unsolved problems, the study and solution of which should develop our best powers and at the same time cultivate our highest instincts of reverence for the Creator and of love and devotion for His creatures. It has taken many centuries for the world to discover that the great forces of nature are neither sacred nor profane, neither kind nor cruel, that they neither love nor hate, and that they are more unchangeable than the stars; that shrines and temples, priests and priestesses, tripods and oracles have been in vain, except so far as they reacted upon the human heart and satisfied its natural craving for the worship of a superior being. Instead of building a temple to the far-darting Apollo or to Zeus the Thunderer, we now stretch over our cities a network for artificial lightning; and all the winds that blow and all the waters that flow are made to furnish their tribute to our comfort and pleasure. We tap the sources of endless energy and transmit it through all the ramifications of our social order, relieving mankind from heavy burdens and creating hundreds of occupations hitherto all unknown.

Out of this vast extension of the horizon of human activities and this multiplication of occupations has come an imperative demand for technically educated men. In our industrial system the crying want has been and is for men who can both plan and execute. The secret of our recent success in foreign markets lies in the fact that we have put educated brains into our products and into our methods of manufacture. Hence a score of professions unthought of one hundred years ago have been called into being, and the standards of these new professions are intellectually not one whit lower or less humane than the old. This demand for trained men of action has been followed by only a partial supply.

The first engineering course in the United States was organized at Troy, N. Y., in 1835. The Sheffield Scientific School of Yale was established in 1847 and the Lawrence Scientific School of Harvard in 1848. Both of these schools organized engineering courses a few years later. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology was opened in 1865. There are now engineering courses in every State in the Union, with equipments and appointments of every grade and quality.

Thus do the technical features add strength and dignity and breadth to the university. The department of letters, philosophy, and pure science still holds the center, the venerable mother of all the arts; but the younger members of her numerous and growing family will ever flock loyally and lovingly by her side. Architecture dates back from beyond the Christian era. Engineering is the product of modern scientific progress, a union of mathematical analysis and an intimate knowledge of the materials of construction. Architecture has always been regarded as one of the fine arts, and in ancient times skill in architecture and in sculpture were usually combined. The builder of the Parthenon, "the Fand that rounded Peter's dome," and the architect of St. Sophia have earned immortal fame for exquisite skill and refined taste.

For centuries the only building materials were brick and stone, and the styles were limited to constructions which relied almost wholly upon compressive stresses. It was a daring innovation when, in 1851, the gardener of the Duke of Devonshire was called upon to construct for the first world's exposition a crystal palace of iron and glass. Since that day the introduction of a material whose strength in tension and compression is practically the same has added immensely to the scope and the possibilities of architecture. This is the age of steel, and the demands upon the architect are something amazing. He must be both an artist and an engineer. There is nothing which the architect must not know and know well. He must know thoroughly the nature and limitations of his materials. He must be able to apply mechanical analysis to every detail of his structure, whether foundations, columns, arches, trusses, or girders. His building must combine stability, comfort, fitness, and grace. He must study the laws of light, heat, and the transmission of power. He must be familiar with the best usage as regards the supplies of water, gas, and electricity and the best methods of purification and drainage. The architect must be many kinds of an artist, and last, but by no means least, he must be a man of refinement and literary culture. Refined taste and good judgment come only from study and comparison. So our architect must be familiar with the ancient types, but he must not be their slave. The classic beauty of the Greek temples, the awful grandeur of the English cathedrals, and the towering splendor of Cologne must serve but to lead him to the essential architectural features of an age which is more and more building in steel. The structure which shares with Notre Dame the admiration and wonder of every visitor to Paris to-day is the steel tower of M. Eiffel. Of course it breaks nearly every canon of the old masters, but it lays down some of the laws of a new style to which a new material gives timely birth. Gustave Eiffel was no accident, no sudden growth, no inspiration of the moment; he was already the most distinguished engineer in France. He had built hundreds of steel bridges before he set out to design the most remarkable architectural structure of the century.

How naturally I have been carried over from architecture to engineering. How closely allied are the arts. I sometimes feel as though we ought to class engineering with the fine arts, its masterpieces are so well balanced, so luminous with human intelligence, so full of that splendor of truth which is said to be the essence of beauty. Study the great superstructure of the Eads Bridge; note in every detail those slender ribs, with every necessary and sufficient provision for security under all possible loads, amid the shocks of fields of ice, under all conditions of

temperature, and you will find them not only beautiful but, like the pages of a book, full of human thought, of achievement through human experience.

We have been told that studies and pursuits make men sordid and narrow. The statement is not true. It is true that such studies make one feel the weigh: of coming responsibilities, as well as the absolute necessity of mastering fundamental principles. Engineering students rarely feel at liberty to burn their old text-books. They have been thought to be somewhat lacking in reverence and unpoetical. I must confess they are generally iconoclasts, not given to the worship of the ancients, but they are not without poetic instincts.

Let no one suppose that all knowledge is contained in books, or that all art is to be found in museums, or that all poetry is written with pens. To a mind filed with a sympathy that is born of intimate knowledge, there is in a mighty moving mechanism and in the proportions and grandeur of a great superstructure that obeys all the laws of science a beauty which delights the eye, a harmony and bond of thought, a rhythm and rhyme of reason that falls upon the inward ear like heavenly music.

The words "engine" and "enginery" are very old. They are of classic origin and are kin to "genius" and "ingenuity." In their descent through the French the initial "i" of “ingenium was changed to "e." Twenty-two hundred years ago Archimedes was a famous engineer, and the marvelous mechanisms by means of which he destroyed the enemy's ships in the harbor of Syracuse are called "engines" by the historians.

Naturally the first engineers were military, as the earliest functions of organized society were those of attack and defense. But when nations began to learn the arts of peace and fixed public works became necessary the civil engineer, as distinguished from the military and the naval engineer, came into being. During the last fifty years engineering has been differentiated and has thrown off, as distinct departments, mining engineering, mechanical engineering, and electrical engineering. Still more recently each one of these in actual practice has been subdivided many times, as the necessity has arisen and as special lines of research and experience have been opened. At present it is the civil engineer who designs and constructs our railways, whether in our streets, underground, or overhead, across our prairies, or among the mountains; he constructs our bridges and tunnels; our canals and locks; our light-houses, breakwaters, and jetties; our dams, reservoirs, and aqueducts; our highways, streets, and sewers. It is the civil engineer who rescues our swamp lands from ruinous overflow and deadly miasına; who liberates our lowlands from the grasp of ocean; who by extensive irrigation converts a desert into a garden.

What boundless and attractive fields of human activity are here! Every one of these specialties calls up the names of men who have served humanity and helped build the civilization of to-day. When I mention canals you will think of a score of engineers, from the English Brindley to the French De Lesseps; you will recall the German ship canal across Holstein, and you will stop only with the Panama Canal, the most stupendous ever planned. If I speak of redeeming lowlands you think of parts of Holland, recovered or so n to be recovered by fine engineering, from the Zuider Zee. The mention of dams brings up the great dams in Egypt to regulate the flow of the Nile and the reservoir dams in New England and in old England that store up pure water for the millions. The word “bridges" brings up a hundred names, from Telford and Robert Stephenson to James B. Eads, Sir Benjamin Baker, and George S. Morrison. And so on almost without limit. These are engineers, and these are some of the achievements which give inspiration and direction and scope to the peculiar kind of higher education to be gained in engineering schools.

Though greatly diversified in practice, all these special lines of engineering

science and art require the same mastery of mathematics, the same knowledge of physics, the same graphical skill, the same familiarity with the theory and use of instruments of precision, the same readiness of analysis, and the same personal experience of the strength and elasticity of materials.

Equally the mechanical, electrical, and marine engineers are breaking all precedents and filling the world with new wonders. Machinery on land and on the sea, in the gorges of lofty mountains or deep in the earth at the base of a Niagara fall, the engineer is turning the stored-up energy of nature to the service of man, in manufacture, commerce, and social well-being. All this has come about through applied science as taught and illustrated in our engineering schools. As mathematical analysis and the principles of physics, chemistry, and biology are applied to practical problems and good usage is established, engineering is differentiated more and more. Hydraulic engineering, sanitary, chemical, architectural, railroad, street railway, steam engineering, etc., indicate special lines of development, each opening up an important field of study and practice. Some institutions encourage early differentiation; others discourage it, preferring to lay a broad foundation upon which the young engineer may erect at will the structure of his choice and opportunity.

The growth of engineering schools in number and size, great as it is, should not surprise us. It would indeed be surprising did they not multiply and be strong. Nothing more forcibly invites the youth who is blest with a healthy body and a clear intellect than engineering triumphs already achieved and the still greater triumphs the future has in store, and nothing is more fascinating to the student than the keen sense of mastery which he feels when he realizes that he has at last discovered the grand purpose and justification for his prolonged studies in mathematics and physics.

Engineering studies are intensely interesting and reassuring. The student does not ask why or wherefore; he sees their bearing in all the world around, and he studies with a zeal and relish which is a continual surprise to one whose studies have appeared pointless and remote.

Modern engineering laboratories have greatly stimulated interest and promoted efficiency. The most expensive part of a modern engineering building is its collection of experimental and illustrative apparatus. Engines of all types, electrical machinery, so arranged as to permit of a great variety of quantitative tests illustrative of both theory and practice, hydraulic apparatus of every nature and degree-all these in connection with appliances for exact measurements in every field where precise results are desired.

Were I to mention the engineering schools of America where such advantages are to be had, the list would be a long one. Their name is legion, and in that fact lies the explanation of the remarkable success of American engineers, whether they build bridges in India, railroads over the Andes, or steel buildings in the hearts of London and New York; whether they plan and organize rolling mills, locomotive works, or water supplies. I have been asked by an English manufacturer to explain the success of American manufacturers and engineers. I answer, the explanation is to be found in our outfit of engineering schools and in their methods of rational training.

At present the number of engineering students is small compared with those in the traditional classical courses, but their relative increase is greater, and the future is destined to see still greater gain.

Nothing better illustrates the strength and character of the engineering progress of the last twenty-five years than the great societies into which the engineering professions are gathered.

The American Society of Civil Engineers has a membership, carefully guarded, of 2,954. The American Society of Mechanical Engineers has a membership of

2,573. The American Institute of Mining Engineers has a membership of 3,025, The American Institute of Electrical Engineers has a membership of 2,778.

The Society for the Promotion of Engineering Education is the most noteworthy development of the last decade. It has a membership of 326, of whom 279 are teachers in engineering schools. The society has had great influence in raising the standards of admission and graduation, in securing better laboratory equipments, and in the diffusion of a knowledge of the best methods of teaching both theory and practice. The membership represents 81 colleges or universities and 11 manual-training schools. The president for the present year is Prof. C. Frank Allen, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston. The secretary is Prof. Clarence A. Waldo, of Purdue University, Lafayette, Ind.

The eleven volumes of “Proceedings" of this society contain much of value both to the teacher and the engineer.

THE DIGNITY AND WORTH OF ENGINEERING.

Finally, we must not fail to stand up for the dignity and intrinsic worth of knowledge and skill which is directly useful. To quote Sir Oliver again: "Whatever subjects are studied should be pursued up to the useful point." There was, not so very long ago, a disposition among schoolmen to underestimate the disciplinary and culture value of applied science, for the reason that it was useful. They questioned the motives of one who asked a training which was going to be directly valuable to him in making a living, and in the way of business. They feared his motives must be sordid and low. On the other hand, they seemed forced to conclude that when one asked for something which was not likely to be of any use in practical affairs his motives must be pure and high.

Let us stontly maintain that no students are more high-minded, none more unsel sh, noe more patriotic, none more altruistic, than ours; that the measure of one's werth in the world lies in his usefulness to himself, his family, his community; and that no class of citizens are more honorable, more trustworthy, better fitted to serve the state and the nation, than the accomplished engineers. The new education is a high and noble education, and we need not hesitate to champion it in all places and at all times with confidence and pride.