Engineers

“ There is still a great scarcity of engineers. All branches feel the need—civil, mechanical, mining, chemical, automotive, electrical—the call goes out. It is a call just now, owing to the vast reconstruction period confronting the world, lifted in strident voice. ”

“ Of late years the profession of engineering has called to the youth of the land with an almost irresistible voice. The development of steam and gasoline engines, of the electric current, and of a welter of machinery called for engineers. The specialization of engineering practice into production, chemical, industrial, municipal, efficiency, mining, construction, concrete, drainage, irrigation, landscape, and other phases, has still further increased the demand. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The services of erecting engines, operating engineers, supervising engineers—known more properly as industrial engineers—following, as the need will, close upon the heels of the constructing and selling men—will keep the many branches alive and in foreign trade for much more than a decade—or so it seems to the writer. Other nations may, of course, whip into the field and in time crowd out the more distant—meaning American—engineers and engineering products. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ To do this work is to give a great impetus to pure and to applied science.
Two classes of men come to the front in the development of engineering: the one, men of deep scientific knowledge, to whom advance of knowledge is due, the other the great constructive engineers; men who can work in the large and can manage great enterprises with scientific accuracy and practical success. Everywhere the tendency in training is away from mere craftsmanship and towards power of administration. ”

“ STEAM ENGINE PRACTICE $2
“It has been well said that engineers are born, not made; those in demand to fill the positions created by the great installations of power-producing machinery now so common, are men who are familiar with the contents of good books, and as well, are the product of a hard bought practical experience.” ”

“ To design effectively, to provide for contingencies, to be daunted by no difficulties—these qualities help to produce the Triumphs of Engineers, as well as do great inventive skill, the power of adapting principles to varying circumstances, and high-spirited enterprise in planning and conducting noble and useful works. ”

“ All machinery, whether it be printing-presses or automobiles or steam-engines, is the work of mechanical engineers, though in the matter of automobiles this has become a profession by itself, one of the minor branches known as automotive engineering. The mechanical engineer as a rule works26 within doors, just as the civil engineer works out of doors, and his work, consequently, is more confining. ”

“ At the outset of its career it should take a progressive attitude, planting itself upon sound principles of construction, aiming to inspire the engineers of our country with the highest conception of mechanical truth, and to diffuse a correct understanding of the means and methods by which this truth is to be attained. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But the development of engineering works in America has been effected successfully by American engineers [61] only because they have appreciated another side of the problem presented to them. A past president of the American Society of Civil Engineers, a man of rare judgment and remarkable executive ability, the late Ashbel Welch, said, in discussing a great undertaking proposed by an eminent Frenchman: "That is the best engineering, not which makes the most splendid, or even the most perfect, work, but that which makes a work that answers the purpose well, at the least cost." ”

“ Mechanical engineering is a profession whose medium of endeavor lies in the metals. Mechanical engineers shape things out of iron or steel or brass or other metal compositions, and put these things into engines or machines for service. ”

“ The most intelligent engineers, after ascertaining by exhaustive physical tests what they need, present their "requirements" to the iron and steel makers, whose practical experience and science guide them in the protracted metallurgical experiments necessary to find the exact process required. The engineer verifies the product by further tests, and by practical use may find that his "requirement" needs further modifications. ”

“ Yet it is a wonderful profession. I say this with due regard for all other professions.3 For one cannot but ponder the fact that, if engineers started the greatest war the world has ever known—and engineers as a body freely admit that if they did not start it they at least made it possible—they also stopped it, thereby proving themselves possessed of a power greater than that of any other class of professional men—diplomats and lawyers and divinities not excepted. ”

“ These men, for the most part, are engineers embracing all branches of the profession, and each is a man especially well qualified to serve in his branch. In a way he is a specialist. He may represent a giant structural organization, or a machine-tool manufacturer, or an electric-lighting and power concern—any one of the many fields of industrial enterprises whose product is needed to place demoralized France and Belgium back upon a productive basis. ”

“ In all forms of engineering, practise is changing from day to day; the principles remain fixed. In electricity, for example, the field of knowledge 'extends far beyond the direct limits or needs of electrical engineers.'
"The best criticism as to engineering education came formerly almost entirely from professors of science and engineering. To-day the greatest and most wholesome source of such criticism comes from those engaged in practical affairs. ”

“ Those men who became familiar with the natural sciences, and also with the shop methods of making machinery, and who brought both to bear on the problem of the production of machinery for specified conditions, combining the special knowledge of the scientist and the shop mechanic, were the first mechanical engineers; and the profession of mechanical engineering, which is the term applied to this sort of business, was created out of the efforts to improve power systems, so as to make them more efficient and adapted to all classes of service, and to render that service for the least cost. ”

“ If young engineers meet with any difficulty in their studies, I shall be happy to resolve it if I can; and they may communicate with me upon any such point without hesitation, in whatever quarter of the world they may happen to be. ”

“ Usually robust, always active, generally optimistic, engineers as a group swing through life—and have swung through life from the beginnings of the profession—without thought of publicity, for instance, or need or desire for it. ”

“ It is presumed by us that there will be more young men, wishing to become good engineers, read this work than old engineers. We will, therefore, be all the more plain and say as little as possible that will tend to confuse the learner, and what we do say will be said in the same language that we would use if we were in the field, instructing you how to handle your engine. ”

“ Due to the period of reconstruction now confronting the world, a work almost wholly that of the engineering professions, engineers for a period of a decade at least are destined to be overburdened with projects. ”

“ Civil and mechanical engineers are needed, who can wisely and economically construct our bridges and highways of commerce, and who can apply the highest scientific skill to all the constructive enterprises of the country. ”

“ Engineering had, in fact, been reduced to a science that replaced the more or less experimental pursuit which had occupied the previous generation, and the foundation ad been securely laid for the development which to-day distinguishes the profession throughout the world. But it was not alone the early engineers who bequeathed a rich inheritance of experience to their successors. ”

“ He is shown how to handle the shovel, oil feeder and everything else without [Pg 25] blackening himself to such a degree that a boy in the street mistakes him for a chimney sweep. Thanks to such engineers, who deserve much praise for keeping their firemen in proper training, for, just as they are trained so will they turn out engineers, good or bad. ”

“ The average consulting50 engineer is a man who has won to pre-eminence only through protracted study and hard work in one line. He is a specialist with a high reputation for accuracy and skill in that line. The basis of this skill, of course, lies in a broad general engineering experience, upon which is built a peculiar knowledge of a certain, and not infrequently isolated, branch of engineering. Heating and ventilating engineers are but specialists grown to such large numbers as to form a definite branch of engineering. ”

“ The engineers accept this responsibility, but in so doing they demand attention to their advice respecting fundamental economic matters, lest they be unduly hampered in the performance of the professional duties, which they acknowledge. ”

“ The consequence was that the demand for engineering surveyors and assistants was very great. Engineering was considered to be the only profession where immense wealth and fame were to be acquired, and consequently everybody [295] became engineers. It was not the question whether they were educated for it, or competent to undertake it, but simply whether any person chose to dub himself engineer; hence, lawyers’ clerks, surgeons’ apprentices, merchants, tradesmen, officers in the army and navy, private gentlemen, left their professions and became engineers ”

“ Today the number runs into the thousands. It would be practically impossible to make a list of them all. This is the age of specialists. Men no longer call themselves shoemakers but cutters, lasters, welters, sole-makers. Even in the engineering profession we have electrical engineers, civil engineers, mechanical engineers, locomotive engineers, stationary engineers, mining engineers, marine engineers, and chemical engineers. ”

“ However true that may or may not be to-day, certain it is that some day it will be true, for the reason that engineers serve humanity at every practical turn. Engineers make life easier to live—easier in the living ”

“ All apprentices are given instruction by engineers and foremen in physics, chemistry, knowledge of materials, model making, foundry work, algebraic calculation methods, the handling of graphics, curves, statistics, price calculation, machines and tools and particularly the principles and functions of internal combustion engines. ”