Engineer

“ With this boat Lake demonstrated to a skeptical world for all time that he was neither a visionary nor a dreamer, but a practical doer among men—an engineer.
Of such stuff, then, were, and are, engineers made. Whether they realized it or not, whether the world at large realized it or not, each represented a noble calling, each was a professional man, each was chiseling his name for all time into the granite foundations of a wonderful profession even yet only in the building—engineering. ”

“ Now the inventor and engineer type do not exist only in the world of engineering and mechanics, though it is in that world that they are the most clearly recognized; for they exist in all walks of life. In literature, inventors write novels; in business life, they project railroads; in strategy, they map out new lines of effort. In literature, the engineer writes cyclopædias; in business, he makes the projected railroads a success; in strategy, he works out logistics and does the quantitative work. ”

“ The engineer can do much around his own home, if he so choose, that of itself is a source of great satisfaction. Engineers can swing doors, build fireplaces, landscape, erect fences, make garden, and can perform these tasks with a degree of neatness and skill that brings favorable comment from journeymen whose vocations this work is, and do the work without training whatsoever in the work. Wall-papering, painting, carpentering, laying up of brick, or the placing of a dry wall—plastering, glazing—the list is endless that as side-plays are possible to the man with an engineering training. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Without wishing for a moment to depreciate the merits of any other body of men, I think it will be conceded that the objects proposed by the engineer, and the acquirements, knowledge, and experience that he must possess before he can practise successfully, are at least equal to those of any other profession, particularly after the practical examples exhibited to the world of the great benefits that engineering has already conferred upon mankind. ”

“ By having this little book at hand, the engineer will be saved the trouble of many a long calculation.
How to become a Successful Engineer. By Bernard Stuart. New York: D. Van Nostrand. 127 pp., 18mo. Price, 50 cents.
This little work, which is designed particularly for the mechanical engineer, but, in a more general way, also for the civil engineer, is more indicative than instructive. That is, it points out the studies to be pursued without explaining their nature, and it tells the apprentice what work he will find in the machine-shop, without detailing the method in which it is done. ”

“ All engineers look alike in their working clothes, I have observed. An engineer opened the door, passed mistily through the gloom, removed the lamp from its bracket and lit his pipe at the flame. To my drowsy eyes he was the image of that Mobile and Ohio freight engineer, and the illusion brought back the scene so vividly that I had to put the pipe aside and go out into the air to shake myself together. ”

“ The black-faced, oily man one figures emerging from the engine-room serves well enough, until one recalls the sanitary engineer with his additions of crockery and plumbing, the electrical engineer with his little tests and wires, the mining engineer, the railway maker, the motor builder, and the irrigation expert. ”

“ No other branch so overlaps the other branches as does mechanical engineering. The work of the mechanical engineer is seen in almost every piece of construction reared by the civil man, just as it is seen in every bit of construction work of the mining and the electrical engineers. ”

“ The duty of the engineer is twofold—to design the work, and to see the work done. We have seen already something of the vociferous thoroughness of the man, upon the cleaning of lamps and the polishing of reflectors. In building, in road-making, in the construction of bridges, in every detail and byway of his employments, he pursued the same ideal. ”

“ When the engineer learns in detail how the task is executed, and imitates it with success; he will escape the tax now imposed on every engine which sets its fuel on fire as the first step in converting latent into actual motion. ”

“ The Engineer, in a strange and subtle way, stands near to God. His work is done hand-in-hand with God. He takes the forces of nature and the laws of the material world, and bends them to the needs and use of man. ”

“ While to a fourth group of prospective students the quiet career, as represented in that of mechanical engineering, always a more or less thoughtful, studious life, may hold out its inviting side. The mechanical engineer, like the electrical engineer, is a man who generally commutes, a man who comes and goes daily between office and home, doing his work at regular hours within the four walls of his office—a quiet, professional man. ”

“ Before going to his engine an engineer should, for his own safety, as well as that of the public, visit the special and general notice boards and post himself fully upon the running of the trains for the day. By neglecting this more than one engineer has lost his life. ”

“ The one idead man will not make a successful engineer. The good engineer can stand by and at a glance take in the entire engine, from tank to top of smoke stack. He has the faculty of noting mentally, what he sees, and what he hears, and by combining the results of the two, he is enabled to size up the condition of the engine at a glance. ”

“ Called in as an expert in the matter of heating and lighting a building, say, the heating and lighting engineer will rigidly confine himself to this phase of the engineering venture and to no other, however he may find his work again and again overlapping the work of the structural engineer or the industrial engineer—phases concerning which he may possess important knowledge. ”

“ The professional engineer, in writing a book for young engineers, is likely to forget that the novice is unfamiliar with many terms which are like daily bread to him. The present writers have tried to avoid that pitfall, and to define each term as it naturally needs definition. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He immediately characterized the engineer as a completely base and designing person, one of whom all decent and honest men might well beware. He proved his contentions quite to his own satisfaction by physiognomy, by phrenology, by chiromancy, by the sixth sense and by the fourth dimension. ”

“ As is seen above, the course of instruction in mechanical engineering includes some trade education. The engineer is dependent upon the machinist, the founder, the patternmaker, and other workers at the trades, for the proper construction of the machinery and structures designed by him. He is himself, in so far as he is an engineer, a designer of constructions, not a constructor. ”

“ The constructing engineer is to our industrial, commercial, and mechanical development all that the statesman and student of sociology is to our moral, social, and political progress. If in a convention of engineers a verified report had been made that bridges of accepted form were showing visible signs of weakness, the report would have been listened to with the greatest consternation and dismay. ”

“ Your first position is that of a master mechanic, who is capable of drawing plans and writing minutely a specification whereby the engineer may know what a well constructed machine is in every particular. He knows the parts and relations of both as constructor and operator, and you are supposed to be the foreman in the shop of repairs. The living person is the engine, nature the engineer, and you the master mechanic. ”

“ No matter in which branch a man may go, always he will find evidence of the presence some time of the mechanical engineer. The mechanical engineer dominates all the other branches,37 as has been said before. He is given second place in the order of the branches merely because the civil engineer happened to be the first and oldest kind of engineer to be given recognition as a profession. ”

“ Entering a house for the first time, and trained as a mechanical engineer, he will note the character of the woodwork, the decorations, the atmosphere, the arrangement of the furnishings, all with the same facility that he will note details upon entering for the first time a power-station or a manufacturing plant—things within his own province. ”

“ The engineer is the how-to-do-it man. This technical man of action comes in many varieties—mechanical, electrical, [Pg 16] metallurgical, ceramic, industrial, civil, instrument, and chemical, to name a few. ”

“ Engineers comprise various grades from the chief engineer of some large establishment, who is usually an accomplished mechanic, carrying along grave responsibilities, to the mere stopper and starter, who is engineer by courtesy only, and whose place is likely to be soon filled by quite another man, so far as qualifications are concerned. ”

“ As the result we now have almost as many kinds of engineers as there are classes of industry. There is the civil engineer, the mining engineer, the construction, the irrigation, the drainage, the sewage disposal, the gas production, the hydraulic, the chemical, the electrical, the mechanical, the industrial, the efficiency, the production, the illuminating, the automobile, the aeroplane, the marine, the submarine, and who knows how many other kinds. Indeed, there are also social engineers, merchandising engineers, advertising engineers, and even religious engineers. ”

“ The engineer as the ‘consulting mind’ of industry must be the leader in this work. It is he who determines the site of the plant and its construction. Inside the plant again, the engineer has much to do with efficiency methods. No efficiency methods that are unrelated to the men in the plant can prosper permanently. ”

“ It is only while an engine is in steam and going at good speed that the rocks, coral-reefs and sand-banks on railways can be seen and learned, and the value of and the rank acquired by an engineer are in exact proportion to the pains he takes to find them out, and to remark their dangerous position on his chart. ”

“ The designing engineer takes his measures on the basis of ascertained quantitative fact. He knows the forces employed, and, indeed, he can employ only such as he knows and only so far as he knows them ”

“ If you will watch the poor engineer when he stops his engine, he will, if he does anything, pick up a wrench, go around to the wrist pin, strike the key a little crack, draw a nut or peck away at something else, and can't see anything for grease and dirt. ”

“ It will not make an engineer of you. But read it carefully, use good judgment and common sense, do as it tells you, and my word for it, in one month, you, for all practical purposes, will be a better engineer than four-fifths of the so-called engineers today, who think what they don't know would not make much of a book. ”

“ Moreover, the description of parts and the definitions of terms have preceded any suggestions on operation, the authors believing that the young engineer should become thoroughly familiar with his engine and its manner of working, before he is told what is best to do and not to do. If he is forced on too fast he is likely to get mixed. ”

“ We have a degree of civil engineer, regarded in its narrowest sense, of mining engineer, mechanical engineer, electrical engineer, and by necessity it would seem as if we should shortly add some particular title to designate the engineer who flies. ”

“ The trained engineer, on the other hand, could design from the standpoint of determining the entire load and then proportioning each element according to the increment of stress upon it and to the unit capacity of the material. ”

“ When these are answered the engineer is ready to begin work, which starts with the selection of materials and does not end till the man who is to use it has had specific instruction as to its peculiarities and care and protection. ”

“ The engineer speaks with authority on engineering questions, the lawyer on legal questions, the transportation man on the practical working out of the project; and, normally, the criticisms and contribution of each are confined to his own function. ”

“ A clean engineer frequently scales the ladder of progress much faster than a dirty one, although the latter may have everything else in his favor.
A model engineer runs the most important trains, and he is never the man who wore the greasy, dirty cap or the coat and trousers all smeared with oil. ”

“ He who would accomplish most in the profession of the mechanical engineer must best combine scientific attainments—and especially experimental knowledge—with mechanical taste and ability and a good judgment refined by engineering experience. ”