Chief engineer

“ His foot once upon the ladder, the ascent is easy. There is only one more examination to pass compulsorily, that of chief engineer, although there is, as in the seafaring branch, a voluntary examination which all self-respecting engineers will take, "Chief Engineer Extra." Now he may rise to be chief engineer of the Oceanic or the Lucania, with twenty or thirty engineers under him, and a whole host of firemen and trimmers. ”

“ The chief engineer designs all special machinery and appliances to be manufactured for use in the plant, designs and plans all new products for which there appears to be a demand, and personally supervises the experimental department. ”

“ They set in earnest about this development, and took out of their polytechnic schools the brightest young men to put them on foreign-built vessels and in foreign shops to learn the business, with the wonderful results we are now witnessing, and the chief engineer was one of those lads. ”

“ The Chief Engineer is assisted by the Assistant Chief Engineer, who considers and reports upon all engineering questions submitted for final action. The Assistant Chief Engineers have charge of the designs of the locks, dams, and spillways, and the supervision of these particular parts of the work. There is also attached to the Chief Engineer an assistant who looks after mechanical forces on the Isthmus, and has supervision over the22 machine shops, the cost-keeping branch of the work, the apportionment of appropriations, and the preparation of the estimates. ”

“ The chief engineer is required to attend all fires, and all orders proceed from him. The most rigid discipline is preserved, and the work goes on with a rapidity and precision which are in striking contrast to the inefficiency of the old system. ”

“ As soon as an infant railway can run alone—we mean as soon as its works are all constructed, its permanent way finished, its buildings executed, its locomotive engines as well as its carriages constructed, and its whole establishment of officers and men appointed and organised—the chief engineer, like a month-nurse, usually departs to new troubles, leaving the maintenance of the way to those of his assistants whom he considers, and who in the opinion of the Directors of the Company are deemed, the most competent to execute its various details. ”

“ The chief engineer should also be a superior man, selected more for his general qualifications as a good director of men and machinery, than as a mere marine engineer. These should form a staff, and be of a standing to live and mess with the commander ”

“ Chief Engineer. A vast intellect. The greatest of Scientists.
2nd Engineer. Nothing serves the State so much as Science.
Chief Engineer. Great is Science, and it will prevail—there will be war.
Tramp. Why war?
Chief Engineer. Because we shall have a new war machine.
2nd Engineer. Because we still need a bit of the world.
Chief Engineer. A bit of the world from the Birch tree to the Pine tree.
2nd Engineer. The road between the two blades of grass—
Chief Engineer. ”

“ The Engineer-in-Chief is a man whose duties have developed enormously during recent years. The telegraph and the telephone demand mechanical genius and considerable scientific attainments. A huge army of engineers is maintained to keep the telegraph and telephone plant in proper condition, and to organise new lines. The position of Engineer-in-Chief has been held by Sir William Preece and Sir John Gavey, and both men have big reputations in the scientific world. Sir William Preece has done much to popularise the knowledge of the working of electricity by his writings. ”

“ Let us follow him, if he is gracious enough to give permission, in this daily visit to the underground realm ruled over by the chief engineer and steward. In the fleetest of the liners the engineer force numbers nearly two hundred men, divided, as a rule, into three crews, with a double allowance of officers for duty. An engineer keeps watch in each fire-room, and two are stationed on each engine-room platform. Watches depend upon the weather. ”

“ At first there was some difficulty in figuring out a secure attachment, but the chief engineer, a resourceful type, managed to find a pair of U bolts somewhere in the hangars. They did the job nicely. ”

“ He will stroll up to the microphone (still pipe in mouth) and make a few noises like a milk-can in an empty tram, and call it "That Freedom." (This, ladies and gentlemen, is the finest example extant of broadcasting in ancient history.)
The Chief Engineer's position is no sinecure. He is head of a very large department and bears heavy responsibility for a satisfactory transmission every night at each of the stations. ”

“ They serve apprenticeship in the Company’s engineering shops for five years. If their conduct has been satisfactory they will be graded as improvers. Next they may be drafted on a river boat as third engineers, rising to second or to chief engineer. ”

“ Then by the following steamers there would, it is stated, be despatched in succession an inspector of telegraphs, an engineer for making gas, an engineer to be charged with the fabrication of the iron way, an agriculturist-in-chief, a scientific commission for geology, mineralogy, meteorology, and natural history in general. And attached to all the engineers will come—or now long since should have come—the conductors of works and special masters of men, who are joined with them in their operations. ”

“ In 1838 and 1839 the sections from Edenbridge to Redhill and from Headcorn to Folkestone were placed in his hands; in 1840 he became resident engineer of the whole line; and subsequently he was appointed engineer-in-chief. ”

“ Meanwhile the directors were deluged with projects, plans, and advice for running their road. Scheme upon scheme was let loose upon them. Some engines to go by water-power; some by gas; some by cog-wheels. All the engineering science in the kingdom was ready to engineer for them in its own way ”

“ The author therefore suggests that the services of a competent expert be retained by those who intend to install a gas-engine in their plants.
The Duty of a Consulting Engineer.—An expert fills the same office as an architect, and impartially selects the engine best suited to his client's peculiar needs. ”

“ The inventor is something else—a wilding in the profession—and as such cannot be considered in a paper of this kind, save only as to say that he is the presiding genius among engineers, the Shakespeare or Milton among his kind, a man whose path to the heights is nowhere known of men. The consulting engineer, on the contrary, representing, as he does, the zenith of slowly attained power in some certain branch of engineering, a vantage—point open freely to all, is the embodiment of the goal toward which all graduates should strive. ”

“ For all Nature is, as it were, a grand workshop, ruled over by an ever present Almighty Master,—of whose perfect designs and works we are as yet only permitted to obtain hasty and imperfect glimpses.
To return to my own humbler progress. From an early period of my efforts as a mechanical engineer, I had been impressed with the great advantages that would result from the employment of small high-pressure steam-engines of a simple and compact construction. ”

“ In the mines, the mills, the quarries, the foundry, the machine-shop, the pattern-shop, the drafting-room, the engineering offices, the consulting divisions—all these, necessitating as they do the employment of one or more engineers in at least a supervising capacity, will have urgent need for his services. Constructive work always, he will grow as his work grows, and because the growth of his work under these abnormal conditions will be of itself abnormal, his own growth under these conditions will be abnormal. He will find himself a full engineer before his rightful time. ”

“ In the pursuit of his profession he spends much of his time supervising the design of mechanical units, and is the one man responsible for correct construction and security against fracture of the machine itself when in operation. Actually the mechanical engineer has more opportunities in his daily routine for the exercise of his creative faculties than has any one of the other kinds of engineers, for the simple reason that no two machines even for the same purpose—speaking of types, always—are exactly similar in construction. ”

“ The diversity of the mechanical work around a refinery is remarkable, and the engineer in charge must be a man of exceptional mechanical ability, as his duties include not only steam, electrical and civil engineering, but construction engineering of an advanced character. ”

“ The man wanted to exercise his authority over all things within his department—not the least of which was machine design—with the result that the young graduate's normally practical viewpoint on matters of construction became warped into that of the man over him, and continued warped for so long as he remained under this man, and frequently longer, indeed, to the end of his engineering career. The young engineer must pick his boss as our young men are facetiously advised to pick their parents. ”

“ Thus, as we have seen, experimental investigation and analytical research have together created a new science, and the philosophy of the steam-engine has at last been given a complete and well-defined form, enabling the intelligent engineer to comprehend the operation of the machine, to perceive the conditions of efficiency, and to look forward in a well-settled direction for further advances in its improvement and in the increase of its efficiency. ”

“ Sixty years ago they would have stayed on at Oxford or Cambridge, and led the life already described of the Scholar, the Fellow, and the College Tutor.
Another new profession, though to the younger men it seems an old profession, is that of engineering. There are many branches of engineering: one constructs piers, jetties, railways, bridges, great works like the Forth Bridge, or smaller bridges, tunnels, roads, embankments, and the like. Another devises and constructs machinery of all kinds, another controls electricity: there must be an engineer in every factory as in every little steamer. ”

“ It is not enough that he should be able to compute the stresses on the various members of a bridge y and even to produce a creditable design; he must know how to erect it without killing his men and without ruining the contractor. If he is a mechanical engineer, he must have that practical knowledge of workshop methods that will enable him to design an engine or machine that will not only work when made, but which can be constructed at a reasonable cost. ”

“ The original function of the engineer, especially in the first days of his systematic training, was to deal scientifically with purely mechanical problems. Thus the oft quoted definition of the British Institution of Civil Engineers that “Engineering is the art of directing the great sources of power in nature for the use and convenience of man” reveals quite clearly the legitimate field within which the engineer was supposed to operate. He was to harness the untamed energies of nature. ”

“ Hence, while well equipped physical and chemical laboratories are still a necessary part of the communication engineer's equipment, he is equally active in pushing his investigations in many other directions. Questions involved in the making of proper rate schedules and adequate fundamental plans for new construction are originating profound researches in such fields as political science, psychology and mathematics. ”

“ The term ‘Consulting Engineer’ is a very vague one, and in practice has been too much used to mean a man who for a consideration sells his name, but nothing more. Now I never connect myself with an engineering work except as the Directing Engineer, who, under the Directors, has the sole responsibility and control of the engineering, and is therefore ‘The Engineer;’ and I have always objected to the term ‘Consulting Engineer.’ ...
In a railway the only works to be constructed are engineering works, and there can really be only one engineer ”

“ He who strictly observes them wins; he who don't, loses. With the latter all is uncertainty; the hand trembles upon the regulator, the eye watches with painful anxiety the needle of the pressure gauge, and gazes into the fire to find [Pg 21] out its deficiencies, but gains nothing but blindness by the attempt.
With the engineer who has a reason for every act performed, either by himself or his fireman, all is different. He works by rules and principles that have proved themselves a thousand times over to be safe, practical and certain in their results. ”

“ Two lathes of like size and scope, if manufactured by two separate organizations, will be different in their minor features, and each in some particular will be the work of a mechanical engineer whose ideas are at variance with those of the mechanical engineer who designed the other type. Engineers, like doctors, often disagree, which accounts for the many different types of machinery serving the same purpose which are found on the market.
Electrical engineering is, as its name implies, a profession embracing all construction whose basis is the electrical current. ”

“ Of course the state of the steam depends altogether upon the way the fires are managed, but for us to give directions how to manage a locomotive fire-box to the best advantage would require pages of description which could scarcely be understood unless one had had previous practical experience.
Remember one thing, the engineer is responsible for the fire, even if he does not make it. He must therefore know when a fire is good and when it is bad, why and what to do. ”