Mechanic arts

“ Mechanical engineering, as we understand it, could only fairly start in its wonderful progress after the mechanic had found ways of utilizing natural forces and energies, and of making the tools with which to produce these prime motors, through the operation of which all the arts could be given application in the production of wealth, multiplying the power of the unaided hand by making it in the performance of work the guide of greater powers, rather than the tool itself. ”

“ The navigator, the engineer, the chemist, are alike indebted to him; while on the other hand, the useful arts would stand still, the mechanic be no more than the primitive artificer were it not for the successive substitutions or additions of forces, economical or supplementary, to construct which genius informs him; and his hand would be confined to the repetition of that labour which has no excitement of novelty and is unrelieved by the prospect of improvement.
Thus Science claims Art as its handmaiden; Art reverences Science as her preceptor ”

“ MECHANICAL TRIUMPHS. The direct and almost instant benefits of Mechanical Inventions to their originators have been thus eloquently illustrated in the Edinburgh Review:—"Contributing, as they do, to our most immediate and pressing wants—appealing to the eye by their magnitude, and often by their grandeur, and associated, in many cases, with the warmer impulses of humanity and personal safety—the labours of the mechanist and engineer acquire a contemporary celebrity, which is not vouchsafed to the results of scientific research, or to the productions of literature and the fine arts. ”

“ Mechanics, not illustrated by machinery, is a dry study, but by its use a great interest is created in the subject, and some slumbering genius may be [488] awakened in a common school, that may originate discoveries in the arts, which will tell on the destinies of men, like the cotton-gin of Whitney, the cotton-spinning machines of Arkwright, or the steam-boat of Fulton. ”

“ Carpentry is distinguished for its corners and angles, turnery for its spherical, cylindrical, and eccentric forms. In these forms Nature abounds and delights, and it is in these forms that the rhythm of mechanics exists. It is by the Turners that the arts are supplied with a thousand and one things of use and beauty. The machines, great and small, from the locomotive to the stocking-knitter—without which the work of the modern world could not be done—these wonderful contrivances, seemingly more cunning than the hand of man, owe their very existence to the turning-lathe. ”

“ In following the course of invention and rediscovery during the middle ages, and in subsequent times, we see two main causes of the superiority of our own useful arts to those of the ancients—the extended application of mechanical and chemical science. The discovery of the various problems in mechanics, which paved the way for the multiplication of human force, and the introduction of new motor powers, occupied chiefly the latter half of the sixteenth and the seventeenth century. ”

“ Mechanical laws and mechanical powers have a wide range of influence in the arts of design; for how shall a man embellish his work appropriately who knows not the former, or how economize in the use and application of machinery, without being conversant with the latter? ”

“ In this connexion the question naturally arises, In what way do the progress and expansion of mechanical art affect the power and province of fine art? The great practical movement of the world in our age is a movement for the development of mechanical inventions and multiplication of mechanical products. Fine arts and machinery: “art manufactures.” So far as these inventions are applied to purposes purely useful, and so far as their products to not profess to offer anything delightful to contemplation, this movement in no way concerns our argument. ”

“ The study of motors and motive power is one which calls for the highest engineering qualities. In this, as in every other of the mechanical arts, theory, while it has an important function, occupies second place. ”

“ In deciding upon the construction of models and the development of an idea, the proper mechanical movements should always be very carefully taken into consideration. In other words, movements which simplify the invention, minimize friction, and add power, are always to be preferred to clumsy and inefficient means or methods. Every inventor, and all students of the mechanical arts and sciences, should arrange any mechanism which they may desire to produce with the least number of parts possible, and embracing the greatest amount of simplicity of action. ”

“ It was a delicate enough operation in all conscience, for there is no machinery more difficult to guide than an artist’s mind, and none that demands overhaul more constantly. Hers was the task of tightening the bolts of a moving vehicle—one attended with grave risks to the mechanic. She took her satisfaction after the manner of a mechanic, by noting the smoother running and more even purr of the machine. ”

“ Hence we see so many heads applied to what requires thinking, which might have been applied to their country's good in the manner of the ancient use of battering rams, and have been run against stone walls without the least danger of being hurt.—If the mechanic should invert all the principles which compose the knowledge of that science; if he should assign the wheels to be the principle of motion, the spring to run round and be moved, the weight to vibrate and regulate, and the pendulum to urge; would not all mankind deride such a machine, because it could not perform its office? ”

“ In the production of beautiful specimens of mechanical art, much more depends upon the natural taste and ingenuity of the workman than upon the completeness and perfection of his tools. To those who are not much acquainted with the mechanical arts, this may sound somewhat like a self-evident proposition; yet it is far, very far indeed, from being considered such by European mechanics in general, and by our own in particular. ”

“ The improvement so much to be desired, will speedily follow upon the discontinuance of grinding. Recourse must then be had to the natural process. The surface plate and the scraping instrument will come into constant use, affording the certain and speedy means of attaining any degree of truth which may be required. A higher standard of excellence will be gradually established, the influence of which will be felt throughout all mechanical operations, while, to the mechanic himself, a new field will be open, in which he will find ample scope for the exercise of skill, both manual and mental. ”

“ Their nature almost prohibits the application of mechanical power to advantage in the conveyance of goods and passengers upon them; and they have not, therefore, partaken of the benefits which other arts have derived from mechanical science. ”

“ The slightest glance, however, must convince us that mechanical power and mechanical skill, as they are now exhibited in Europe and America, mark an epoch in human history worthy of all admiration. Machinery is made to perform what has formerly been the toil of human hands, to an extent that astonishes the most sanguine, with a degree of power to which no number of human arms is equal, and with such precision and exactness as almost to suggest the notion of reason and intelligence in the machines themselves. ”

“ 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. ”

“ "The successful construction of all machinery depends on the perfection of the tools employed; and whoever is a master in the arts of tool-making possesses the key to the construction of all machines..... The contrivance and construction of tools must therefore ever stand at the head of the industrial arts."—C. BABBAGE, Exposition of 1851. ”

“ The Mechanician: A Treatise on the Construction and Manipulation of Tools, for the use and instruction of Young Engineers and Scientific Amateurs, comprising the Arts of Blacksmithing and Forging; the Construction and Manufacture of Hand Tools, and the various Methods of Using and Grinding them; description of Hand and Machine Processes; Turning and Screw Cutting. By Cameron Knight, Engineer. Containing 1147 illustrations, and 397 pages of letter-press. Fourth edition, 4to, cloth, 18s. ”

“ It is constantly growing in prominence, and calls for the exercise of the skill of the engineer and the ingenuity of the mechanic. Efficiency and economy are the two great watchwords, and this is what the world is striving for. Success will come to him who can contribute to it in the smallest degree. ”

“ The knowledge so required as a general and commonplace equipment requisite for the pursuit of these modern skilled occupations is of the general nature of applied mechanics, in which the essence of the undertaking is a ready apprehension of opaque facts, in passably exact quantitative terms. ”

“ Looking at the matter in this way, in proportion to the number employed there are more gentlemen running locomotives to-day than there are teaching in colleges. In proportion as we are more creative in creating machines at present than we are in creating anything else there are more poets in the mechanical arts than there are in the fine arts ”

“ It must be admitted, too, that the sense of the reality of this separation has been felt not only by Engineers or others actually engaged in machine design, but also by those theoretical writers who have had any practical knowledge of machinery, in spite of the increasing tendency in the treatment of mechanical science to thin away machine-problems into those of pure mechanics. ”

“ The ancients considered Mechanics in a twofold respect; as rational, which proceeds accurately by demonstration, and practical. To practical Mechanics all the manual arts belong, from which Mechanics took its name. But as artificers do not work with perfect accuracy, it comes to pass that Mechanics is so distinguished from Geometry, that what is perfectly accurate is called Geometrical, what is less so is called Mechanical. But the errors are not in the art, but in the artificers. ”

“ Even the most casual review of the technological situation in Europe, say in the seventeenth century, will bring out characteristic features that cannot be denied honourable mention as applications of mechanical science, although the reserve caution is immediately to be entered that these early mechanical expedients and their employment stand out as sporadic facts of mechanical contrivance in an age of manual work, rather than as characteristic traits of the industrial system in which they are found. ”

“ The man who aspires to construct any great mechanical engineering work, like the Brooklyn Bridge, for example, must know the exact mechanical power of every piece of machinery he employs, as also the exact mechanical value of every piece of iron that enters into the structure; and these things he cannot know unless he is familiar with the entire series of iron manipulations, from those of the foundery to those of the machine-tool shop. ”

“ The machine tools did all the working (for the thinking had been embodied in them beforehand) , and they turned out all manner of geometrical forms with the utmost correctness. This sort of training educated the faculties of the lads, and trained their ideas to the perception of exactness of form, at the same time that it gave them an intimate acquaintance with the nature of the materials employed in mechanical structures. The rapidity with which they thus acquired the efficiency of thoroughly practical mechanics was surprising. ”

“ Mechanics are still living who firmly believe in the possibility of realizing a mechanical perpetual motion,—to spin, pump, or drive carriages or machinery, by means of a constantly descending weight. ”

“ The perfection of modern machine-tools is such that the utmost possible precision is secured, and the mechanical engineer can calculate on a degree of exactitude that does not admit of a deviation beyond the thousandth part of an inch. ”

“ Few mechanics have any distinct knowledge of the method to be pursued for obtaining it, nor do practical men sufficiently advert, either to the immense importance, or to the comparative facility of the acquisition. ”

“ Many of our illustrations will be designedly drawn from very commonplace sources: by this means I would try to impress upon you that mechanics is not a science that exists in books merely, but that it is a study of those principles which are constantly in action about us. Our own bodies, our houses, our vehicles, all the implements and tools which are in daily use—in fact all objects, natural and artificial, contain illustrations of mechanical principles. ”

“ Until a history of the schemes invented by numerous ingenious mechanics was published in 1861, inventors of this class were continually though unconsciously reproducing obsolete contrivances, from taking up the ordinary idea that a wheel may be kept constantly over-weighted on one side, so as to raise the next weight which is to perform the same miracle of art. ”

“ To take our illustration again from mechanics, we may say that if a man is inventing a particular machine,—a sewing machine, a reaper,—nothing is more important than that he should have a precise idea of the operation which his machine is to perform, yet when he is treating the general principles of mechanics he may discuss the lever, or the form of the teeth of wheels which will transmit uniform motion, without inquiring the purpose to which the apparatus is to be applied ”