Foundation (engineering)

“ The chief engineer of any electric plant, of any municipal water-works, of any railroad, of any steamship must have the most profound and intimate knowledge of the details of construction and the method of operation of the machine committed to his charge. Recognition of this fact by the engineering profession is so complete and perfect as to be almost unconscious; and no man whose reasoning faculties had been trained by the exact methods of engineering could forget it for a moment. ”

“ As a broad definition this would be difficult to improve upon, and it is obvious that until science had developed far enough to be able to enunciate the laws governing the forces of nature it was impossible to have anything but empirical rules to govern engineering design and construction. ”

“ If you will examine any great engineering plan, whether it be the plan for a bridge or a marine engine, you will find that it is a simple bouquet of natural laws, all brought together by the engineer for a definite purpose, and every law is stamped with the + or - stamp of nature. They are the laws of weakness and the laws of strength, and these wonderful laws that preside over matter so interpenetrate one another that you cannot divorce them one from the other. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The second, How shall we construct a machine that shall most efficiently embody and accord with not only known scientific principles, but also with all well-settled principles of engineering practice? ”

“ We know that the larger requirements of modern Engineering demand that its practice should be classified237 under distinct branches, such as harbours, navigations, water works, gas works, lighthouses, or railways, not to mention electrical and sanitary engineering, and other branches of modern growth, all of which cannot possibly be advantageously practised by any one member of the profession; for no one mind can grasp the theoretical knowledge, and no one life can compass the practical experience, to enable a man to attain eminence in all these departments of modern Engineering. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ So rapid has been the development that, out of the earlier comprehensive type of engineering, to-day dozens of specialized types of engineering education and specialization have been evolved, covering such related fields as civil, mechanical, mining, metallurgical, electrical, architectural, chemical, electro-chemical, marine, naval, sanitary, biological, and public-health engineering. ”

“ In trying to define the semiosis of engineering, i.e. how the relation between work we associate with engineering and language evolved, we evidence both continuity-in the form of successive replications-and discontinuity-in the new condition of the current engineering work. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The entire construction was evidently made with a correct knowledge of the strength that was necessary to resist the outward pushing force that was exerted against it. When an engineering work of this nature, so great in proportion to the power and intelligence of its constructors, is examined, and its fitness for the object for which it has been made and for the duty it has to perform, has been ascertained, it occurs to the mind to consider whether such operations are the results of instinct or of some exceptional degree of reasoning faculties. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Of all the pure and applied sciences, engineering alone has the distinction of being the first to have the correct insight into the human problem. The task of engineers was to convert knowledge—brain work—“bound-up time”—into daily bread by means of conserving time and effort. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ ENGINEERING The material prosperity of the last century is due to the co-operation of three classes of men: the man of science, who lives only for truth and the discovery of nature’s laws; the inventor, eager to apply these discoveries to money-making machines and processes, and the engineer, trained in mathematical investigation and in knowledge of the physical conditions which govern his profession, which is the mechanical application of the laws of nature. ”

“ This is the dream of one group of synthetic biologists: that biological engineering truly become engineering, with biological black boxes that perform all of the standard functions of electrical or mechanical engineering—measuring flow, reacting to a high signal by giving out a low signal, or vice versa, starting or terminating a sequence, connecting the energy of one process to another, and so on. ”

“ It is, therefore, not a task for old fashioned philosophical speculation nor for barren metaphysical reasoning in vacuo; it is a scientific task and involves the coordination and cooperation of all the sciences. This is why it is an engineering task.
For engineering, rightly understood, is the coordinated sum-total of human knowledge gathered through the ages, with mathematics as its chief instrument and guide. Human Engineering will embody the theory and practice—the science and [pg 008] art—of all engineering branches united by a common aim—the understanding and welfare of mankind. ”

“ Being self-taught, but with some little ambition, and a determination to improve himself, he was now enabled to stand before them with some pretensions to mechanical knowledge, and the persuasion that he had been a useful contributor to practical science and objects connected with mechanical engineering. ”

“ No longer are such labours classified and grouped in one field, called Civil Engineering, but they have been necessarily divided into great additional new and independent fields, known as Steam Engineering, Mining Engineering, Hydraulic Engineering, Electrical Engineering and Marine Engineering. Within each of these fields are assembled innumerable appliances which are the offspring of the inventive genius of the century just closed. ”

“ In each book of the series the fundamental principles of some sub-division of engineering technology are treated in a practical manner, providing the student with a handy survey of the particular branch of technology with which he is concerned. They should prove invaluable to the busy practical man who has not the time for more elaborate treatises. ”

“ In fact, all truly great advances are thus derived from fundamental science, and the future progress of the world will be largely dependent upon the provision made for scientific research, especially in the fields of physics and chemistry, which underlie all branches of engineering. ”

“ The wonderful progress in this field made within the past twenty years is one of the marvels of the engineering profession. Dynamos, motors, arc-lights, alternating current, the X-ray—these are a few of the things which followers of the profession have created for the uses of mankind. The field is yet practically unexplored, and offers to engineering students an outlet for their energies—provided they enter this branch of engineering—second to none of the other branches. ”

“ But that is no reason why we should do nothing. No one in touch with engineering practice will deny that there are plenty of problems that S.A. engineers would like to have solved, many of them, like that of our brown coals, being local problems that we can scarcely expect outsiders to solve for us.
Let me illustrate the value to the nation of scientific research, combined with engineering invention, by a story from our own recent history. ”

“ Your works on Civil Engineering, Machinery, and Millwork, &c., each exhibit the powerful intellect that is invariably found in all your productions, and that place them on an eminence peculiarly your own. All your books possess a value which we, who are practical men engaged in performing many of the varied works which fall to engineers, feel to be of the very highest importance. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It’s like this: engineering is all about constraint. Given a span of foo feet and materials of tensile strength of bar, build a bridge that doesn’t go all fubared. Write a fun video-game for an eight-bit console that’ll fit in 32K. Build the fastest airplane, or the one with the largest carrying capacity... But these days, there’s not much traditional constraint. I’ve got the engineer’s most dangerous luxury: plenty. All the computational cycles I’ll ever need. Easy and rapid prototyping. Precision tools. ”

“ Another point of analogy between modern engineering and modern management lies in the fact that modern engineering proceeds with comparative certainty to the design and construction of a machine or structure of the maximum efficiency with the minimum weight and cost of materials, while the old style engineering at best only approximated these results and then only after a series of breakdowns, involving the practical reconstruction of the machine and the lapse of a long period of time. ”

“ It shows the progress of the World in respect to New Discoveries and Improvements, embracing Machinery, Mechanical Works, Engineering in all its branches, Chemistry, Metallurgy, Electricity, Light, Heat, Architecture, Domestic Economy, Agriculture, Natural History, etc. ”

“ The scientific and engineering communities continually strive, in a somewhat uncoordinated manner, to develop new comprehensive physical theories and then apply them to the creation of new material systems. ”

“ His natural mode of work was utterly to disregard precedent and to seek for fundamental solutions of his problems, having only in view the conditions to be fulfilled, the laws of mechanics, and the engineering materials of construction. This habit of independence and of seclusion within the narrow circle of his own work so grew upon him in later years that mechanical science made many advances of which he took little or no note, and of which he refused to avail himself, even though he might have done so greatly to his own advantage. ”