Mechanics' institute

“ The success which they have already met with demonstrates unmistakably how necessary and useful they are. They satisfy a want which years ago it was thought would have been supplied by the Mechanics’ Institute. They provide for the physical and intellectual requirements of the industrial classes, and, if properly conducted, extended, and developed, will contribute most materially to the moral and mental improvement of the toiling, moiling masses. ”

“ Although mechanics' institutes are old institutions, they have scarcely been supported by working men. The public-house is more attractive and more frequented. And yet mechanics' institutes—even though they are scarcely known south of Yorkshire and Lancashire—have been the means of doing a great deal of good. By placing sound mechanical knowledge within the reach of even the few persons who have been disposed to take advantage of them, they have elevated many persons into positions of great social influence. ”

“ So much of the course of Mechanics as now taught might be legitimately embraced in the Department of Natural Philosophy, and, constituting what might be called the Mechanics of Engineering, would be embraced in the new chair proposed to be arranged. ”

“ Much attention is given to electrical construction and to electricity in general. The day and evening classes are always full. Some of the master-mechanics' associations are cordial in their co-operation and examination of students through their committees. After leaving the Institute, work seems to be readily obtained at good wages. ”

“ In these later days when so many of our so-called Mechanics' Institutes are merely cheap reading-clubs for the middle classes, and the lectures are delivered for the most part merely for a pleasant evening' s amusement, it seems to me that we have greatly departed from the original design with which Mechanics' Institutions were founded. ”

“ It proves that the highest intellectual labour is perfectly compatible with daily toil. The decay of mechanics' institutes is usually quoted as a proof that the intellectual elevation of the labouring classes is hopeless. But it admits of doubt whether the result is not due more to an under than an over-estimate of the mechanic's capabilities. The mechanic who could relish fluxions, would not long find advantage in attending the showy and superficial lectures usually given at such institutions. A system better calculated to develop his capabilities would most probably meet with more success. ”

“ Hiram Sibley, of Rochester, has erected a building, equipped it with lecture-rooms, draughting-rooms, a workshop supplied with the best machinery, and has given an endowment to support a Professor of Mechanical Engineering and a superintendent of the machine-shop. Besides this, Mr. Cornell has erected a shop for woodworking, and has provided water-power for both establishments.
What is the system? Young men come wishing to make themselves first-class mechanical engineers or master-mechanics, or to perfect themselves in any branch of mechanical industry. ”

“ The mechanical and chymical arts, so long taught in several universities in Germany under the name of technology, are to have two Special Schools, placed in the cities most rich in industry and manufactures. These schools, generally wished for, are intended to contribute to the national prosperity by the new methods which they will make known, the new instruments and processes which they will bring into use, the good models of machines which they will introduce, in a word, by every means that mechanics and chymistry can furnish to the arts. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Even the youngest among the leading engineering societies, that is, the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, was organized in the early eighties, whereas the American Physical Society was organized nearly twenty years later, in 1899. ”

“ It became a tradition in Engineering that the only school worth anything was the school of practical experience. Even long after the sciences of Mechanics and Hydraulics had become well established courses at Universities, such studies were neglected by engineers whose hard practical training tended to give them little sympathy with the abstruse and often impractical and unreal problems commonly discussed by the mathematicians. ”

“ In actual experience on the machine, human failures, such as failure to state the problem exactly or failure to put it on the machine correctly, have given about as much trouble as mechanical failures. The machine operates without mechanical failure about 90 to 95 per cent of the time. The balance of the time the machine is idle while being serviced or repaired. The machine is serviced by mechanics trained and supervised at Harvard. ”

“ Always in scientific universities applied science is sure to encroach upon the domain of pure science, and no one knows that better than we do, for we have been bewailing the presence of machine shops and boiler factories on the university grounds. The old universities did not teach applied mechanics or engineering, but that does not mean that these subjects were not taught. ”

“ It is the province of the mechanical engineer to utilize certain forces of nature in the service of man, and it is only through the machine-tool shop that such utilization can be effected. It hence follows that a practical acquaintance with the manipulations of the machine-tool shop is an essential prerequisite to a successful career in the field of higher mechanics. ”

“ New questions now opened as to this ``Department of Mechanic Arts.'' It was clear to me, from what I had seen abroad, that not all the models I had sent from Europe would be sufficient to give the practical character which such a department needed; that its graduates must have a direct, practical acquaintance with the construction and use of machinery before they could become leaders in great mechanical enterprises; that they must be made, not only mathematicians and draftsmen, but skilled workmen, practically trained in the best methods and processes. ”

“ They are apt to think, for instance, that the problems connected with making the parts of an engine require the especial study, one may say almost the life study, of a set of engine-making mechanics, and that these problems are entirely different from those which would be met with in machining lathe or planer parts. In fact, however, a study of those elements which are peculiar either to engine parts or to lathe parts is trifling, compared with the great study of the art, or science, of cutting metals, upon a knowledge of which rests the ability to do really fast machine-work of all kinds. ”

“ A mechanical and engineering section is to be organized in the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, to be devoted to the consideration of subjects bearing upon the mechanic arts and the engineering problems connected therewith. ”

“ It is not easy to draw the line that separates the ordinary skill of a mechanic, versed in his art, from the exercise of patentable invention, and the difficulty is specially great in the mechanic arts, where the successive steps in improvements are numerous, and where the changes and modifications are introduced by practical mechanics. ”

“ I proposed, then, to found a school for mechanics in the house of the Royal Institution, in which they should be taught such principles of science as would be useful in their several occupations, which I considered would in a great degree promote the ‘application of science to the common purposes of life.’ In the house of the Institution itself the men would be under the eye of the higher classes, and anything wrong would easily be put a stop to. ”

“ In the more advanced institutions, algebra, surveying, mechanics, study of machines and chemistry may be added to the theoretical list given, while the practical studies are more intensive, and of a somewhat higher order. Special departments for engineering, (Tiefbauabteilungen) preparing men to occupy positions as superintendents, managers of public works, construction directors, etc., are sustained in some instances. ”

“ One feature of the Institution is the electrical engineering laboratory, provided by the directors of the London and North-Western Railway, who have further arranged for a number of apprentices to attend at the laboratory one afternoon every week to receive instruction, their wages being paid to them as though they were still on duty in the works. There is, also, a mechanics' shop, with lathes, drilling machines, etc., electrically driven. ”

“ The engineering laboratories are used by students of all the engineering departments, that is to say, by a large majority of the students in the school. The benefit derived by this actual contact with materials and with machines of commercial size, under proper instruction, is believed to be very great.
The department of mechanical engineering, one of the original departments, is now the largest in the school, having a force of instruction of five professors and twelve instructors and assistants. ”

“ And the same is the case in the more recent progress of that subject, in the hands of Gauss, Bessel, Hansen, and others.
But yet the science of Mechanics as applied to terrestrial machines—Industrial Mechanics, as it has been termed—has made some steps which it may be worth while to notice, even in a general history of science. ”

“ This shop has an enrollment of 125 boys, who are trained in a three-year course to become expert all-round mechanics.
In addition to this, two of our largest shops, of 250 men each, have during the past year and a half conducted special training courses for green men on the more elementary work of toolmaking. The purpose of these courses is to train men who have had no mechanical experience to the point where they can be used to free more expert men from all routine and simple work. These men are started on a lathe grinder or milling machine. ”

“ When the idea of the school was first brought up there was some feeling among the skilled mechanics that the men trained in the school would replace them to the detriment of the mechanic, but this idea has passed or is passing away very rapidly and we find a considerable interest shown by the mechanics in the things that we are teaching. ”

“ A mess for the men of this corps is conducted at the school of household science connected with the institute, and here details of men are trained for this work through a course in army cooking. The men from the electrical school are quartered at the navy yard, and spend five and one-half hours a day at the institute taking courses in machine-shop operation, steam-engine practice, elementary electricity, armature- and field-coil repair work on electrical machines, elementary chemistry, and batteries. ”

“ This is followed by the mathematics necessary for the solution of the problems in machine design which are presented later, and a practical introduction to theoretical mechanics and the strength of materials. The various elements entering into machine design, such as cams, gears, sprocket wheels, cone pulleys, bolts, screws, couplings, clutches, shafting and flywheels have been treated in such a way as to make possible the use of the work as a textbook for a continuous course of study. It is easily comprehended and assimilated even by students of limited previous training. ”

“ However desirable it might be to make provision for instruction in the principles of Engineering—especially in Mechanical Engineering, in view of its bearing upon one of the most important industries of the town and district—the Council, for various reasons, were unable to give immediate effect to this particular recommendation. The subject of Mechanical Engineering, to be properly taught, requires the provision of workshops, laboratories, and an installation of costly plant. ”

“ A large additional building for instruction in physics will be in readiness early next year. The laboratories in the engineering departments are provided with the latest and best appliances, including a hundred-ton Wicksteed and a seventy-five ton Emery machine for strength-testing, a one-ton Faïja spring-tester for cements, a high-speed steam-engine coupled direct to a dynamo for incandescent lighting, and two Thomson electric balances. ”

“ Thus, at the Institute of Technology, there are not only professors of civil engineering and of mechanical engineering, but professors of mechanism, steam engineering, railroad engineering, highway engineering, hydraulic engineering, topographical engineering, etc. Again, the chemical staff of twenty-four persons is distributed over general chemistry, analytical chemistry, organic chemistry, industrial chemistry and sanitary chemistry. ”

“ It is that the University School should itself be a centre of inspiration for the engineering profession; that it should be a place where original experimental work is always being carried on, where inventions are tried out, and where engineering firms may come for help in carrying out tests and experiments to advance technical knowledge, and particularly to assist in the solution of engineering problems of special importance to the State.
All the large modern engineering and manufacturing corporations have realized the value of scientific research. ”

“ Now there began to be some sympathy for their cause, and the Board of Representatives of the Industrial Association showed a willingness to follow the sub-committee elected, consisting of the two motionists and Lector, (later Professor) Wilkens of the Polytechnic Institute. ”