XXVIII.

AN ENGINEERING EDUCATION.

"WHAT LINES SHOULD BE LAID DOWN AS A GUIDE FOR TRAINING AN ENGINEER?"

A Discussion, November 3, 1897.

Mr. J. C. Bley: Mr. Chairman, on the spur of the moment, I suggest as a topic for discussion the consideration of an engineering education, what lines should be laid down as a guide for training an engineer? Suppose, for example, one of you desired to train a boy in civil engineerning, what lines of work would you want him to pursue, how much pure mathematics, how much physics, and how much actual construction work, as far as that work is possible in college, and so on in other lines? I believe that we ought to do in education as we are doing in other work, we ought to go to the workman and ascertain what things he has found useful and the things that he has found of little use; the things that are useful as training, the things that are useful as tools, and various matters of that kind; and the practicing engineer is the workman to whom we would have to appeal in that

case.

Mr. O. Chanute: Mr. Chairman, I believe this is the subject that led to the formation of the Society consisting of a number of teachers and professors in civil engineering schools of the country. This association was called in 1893, and was one of the divisions into which the engineering Congress which was held in this city was divided. I met one of the professors who was in that society last summer, and he told me that they had been debating over that question ever since, and that they had not made much progress; they have held one or two annual sessions, they have published several volumes of transactions, and they are no nearer to an agreement upon what is the best possible course of training for an engineer than they were at the beginning. It is possible that some engineers might throw some additional light on the subject through their own practical work, but so far as I am aware, the question is yet an open one.

Mr. G. A. M. Liljencrantz: Concerning this question, there is one thing that I consider of great value, and that is: When a young man starts in to study a certain branch, whether it be civil or mechanical engineering, it will be to his advantage to spend his vacations somewhere in actual work; for instance, for a mechanical engineer, if he can get a position in a workshop then study afterwards, the theoretical part will be much easier acquired, and the same with any other branch. Take, for example, the branch of surveying. If the student has been out in the field,

as rod-man or running the level, he will find it much easier afterwards to understand and re.nember what he studies in that line. If a certain line has been decided upon more time and more study should be devoted to that particular line, but in most colleges, I presume, each student must go through a fixed course in each branch, as was the case where I studied, though that is thirty-one years ago, and methods may be different now. We had to study all the different branches according to the established curriculum, and therefore could not study more thoroughly any particular one, as should be done if a person is going to devote himself more exclusively to a particular branch.

Mr. Isham Randolph: I remember last winter we had a meeting at the Technical Club of the faculty and alumni of the Troy School, and several of the faculty of the Chicago University, of the Northwestern University and several of the schools in and near Chicago, and this same subject was up for discussion then. At that meeting I repeated a conversation which I had had with Professor Fuertes, of Cornell University. When there, three years ago, in conversing with him, I said that if I trained up. either of my boys to follow my profession, I wanted to give him a good, common-school education, ground him as well as I could in mathematics, then put him in the field and on construction for about two years before sending him to college, that I thought then he would know the value of the things he was going to study and would be able to apply himself to it. Professor Fuertes said, "You would be making one of the greatest mistakes. of your life, if that is the way you are going to treat your boy. You ought to give him his scientific education first, and then let him work all he wants to after that."

I repeated this conversation at this meeting, and it was discussed quite fully there. Professor Palmer C. Ricketts, Director of the Renssalaer Polytechnic, sided with me in that discussion, others took the ground of Professor Fuertes. It was discussed at considerable length and left right there.

Mr. F. G. Gasche: Mr. Chairman, if suggestions concerning the proper training of a youth to become an engineer are in order, it is well to prepare the way for such discussion as may follow by a certain observation, viz.: The problem will be indeterminate so long as the education of a young man continues to involve so many intricacies.

One of the requirements, I think, previous to the analysis of the controlling factors of the case, would be the definition of the qualifications of an engineer; what kind of an individual you would propose to make of the candidate for instruction. Other complications would arise in the difference of physical constitution and temperament of the students. All these things will determine the receptive capacity of the embryo engineer such that the proper educational training of the youth will begin and end. as a special problem for the individual.

J. W. Beardsley: Mr. Chairman, the old darkey evidently re

ferred to one of the essentials of the engineer when he analyzed senses. He said that everybody had five senses, but that there were seven senses in all. A good many men had common sense, but only the very best people had good "hoss" sense, which was the seventh and most rare of all the senses. Engineering has been defined as scientific guess-work combined with good com

mon sense.

It seems to me that this Society is discussing this question from two standpoints-as a trade and as a profession. Past conditions. have existed in the country which have made engineering a trade, but present conditions are radically tending towards making it a profession. I would prefer to consider the question from the latter standpoint.

It is a law of psychology that the power of the average youth to acquire facts and store them up for future use is greater than that of the average adult. Memory is the more readily impressed and the more retentive. The demand of engineering questions upon science, mathematics and natural laws is almost limitless. Specialization should rest upon the strongest foundation attainable, and the young engineer should not be deprived of the peculiar value of certain years in acquiring such foundations. Nearly all of our technical schools require sufficient laboratory and field practice to meet the demands of the practical man. They are increasing both the number and range of theoretical subjects, and they are discriminating more closely in granting a degree.

I believe that the scientifically trained man will receive far more actual experience from the same work and in the same time than the practical man, and that in the end the quantity and quality of his work will be far superior. However, no school can complete the studies required in actual work. No technical training can offset lack of ability to work, and the graduate who fails to continue his studies must fall far behind the practical man who possesses the power and determination to solve each problem encountered.

Mr. Bley: Mr. Chairman, the question as I have looked at it, has called out several other questions; for instance, I had an engineer tell me one time, that he regarded the time he spent on calculus as entirely wasted. I had another engineer, a member of this Society, whom I understood to be a very thorough mathematician when at school, say that he wished he had enough calculus so that he could use it, it was of no practical use to him in the limited understanding he now has of calculus. Now then, if that is the case, the question comes up, how much shall we study calculus? Should we study allied subjects as quaternions, and space, analysis and things of that sort? They used to consider that one of the foundation stones of engineering was mathematics, but in the last two or three years, in current periodicals, there have been expressions given to the idea that you could have good, constructive engineers who were poor mathematicians, and I con

fess that in my observation I have found one or two men who answer that statement, men who are not good mathematicians but are good constructive engineers. They will get out a machine on time, their work will be neatly done, and the machine will fulfill the office for which it was designed.

Then another question comes up; shall we make a physicist of the man, an experimentalist, or shall we make him like people who have no theoretical knowledge, but from natural insight and from time devoted to a branch of work becomes proficient in it. That adds a little to the complication of the subject. For example, shall we train a man who can go through a series of extensive experiments and work out the result, or shall we train men rather to be able to use material that has been accumulated by others and is accepted by everyone as fairly reliable? I understand we train an engineer for active work. Now which will equip him the best for that work? Those are some of the ideas I had in raising the question.

Mr. Victor Windett: Mr. Chairman, an engineer ought to be thoroughly grounded in mathematics, and by all means give him enough calculus to be able to apply it when necessary, and there are times when it is necessary. That is, there are times when the use of calculus will save much crude approximation or labor in reaching desired results. The college student does not graduate with a storehouse of knowledge, either of facts or theory. He has learned to think and how to use the knowledge of which he has learned the location.

A few months ago there appeared in the "Engineering News" a letter written by the chief engineer of one of the western roads to the father of a young graduate. The point was that this country had now reached a point where railroad expansion will be in comparatively small steps. Consequently the number of civil engineers required for railroad building is small. He mentioned. the lack of engineering trained men in the operative department and recommended a graduate of college taking a position as section hand for some months, nearly a year, then if he showed ability he might be made a section foreman, and after several years he might reach the position of a division superintendent. This is a rigorous training. If a man has the physique needed he can stand this. I know a young man who tried this. He entered a section gang. The first day he unloaded rails from flat cars, and went home fatigued, the next day he continued on this work, the third day unloaded and spaced ties. The following morning he did not appear at work. His mates went to his lodgings and found him exhausted. On being brought to Chicago he was found to have sustained a lesion of a valve of the heart and now is forbidden work for a year. The fellow had grit and worked beyond his powers, being not very strong at the best.

Another college graduate, of a robust constitution, went into the shops, starting in the casting yard, then working at the bench and machine work. Now he is a prosperous master mechanic in a

large plant. Thus it seems that this question of education, when carried beyond the teaching how to think and work, is a problem for the individual and not for generalization.

Mr. Randolph: One of my good friends in this city is a gentleman, a Scotchman by birth, who gave me this page from his life's history. He said that he landed in New York-it must have been, I should say, about thirty-five years ago—after having been shipwrecked. He said he had the clothes on his back, and a plug hat, and a dollar or two in his pocket. He had been well educated in Scotland, and had served his apprenticeship in a surveyor's office. He struck over into New Jersey, looking for work, and found a railroad in process of construction. He asked for work and was given a wheelbarrow. He said that he started in at noon; by night he wondered whether he did have manhood enough to tackle that wheelbarrow the next day. He went to bed feeling as if he never would be able to do anything again. But with the night's rest his courage rallied, and he went back to that wheelbarrow and wheeled it all the next day. By this time the foreman had begun to take some little interest in him and told him he would give him something easier the next day. The next day he gave him a shovel to load the wheelbarrow with, and his back ached as badly that night as it did the night before from the wheelbarrow. But the foreman was in some trouble with his timebook. My friend saw this, and he told him that he knew something about accounts, and helped him out, fixing up his time-book for him. That led in a day or two to his being given a gang of three or four men to do some digging, digging out the foundation of a culvert, I think, and from that he was made foreman of a small gang on that work. When he finished that he drifted out West and got a position as section hand on the Rock Island road. He worked at that for a short time and was finally made foreman of the gang. His time-books and accounts were so nicely kept that he was sent for to come into the Chicago office as clerk, but he said he had no idea of doing that. He did not propose to stick at a clerkship. He stuck to his foremanship and studied law at night, and finally he got a clerkship in a store, and his friends found out that he knew something about law and they used to sponge law off of him until he got tired of that. Finally he got a clerkship in a bank. You will think it hard to go through such vicissitudes as his were, but at the present time he is one of the wealthy men of Chicago, and he has made that wealth by hard work and good, sound Scotch judgment. But if he had not had the grit he showed in the beginning, I doubt whether he would have landed where he is now.

Mr. J. B. Rohrer: A suggestion was made by one of the speakers that it was better for the student to attend college when he was young than when he had attained more mature years, because the youth would more readily imbibe the proper data and information and would place it in his storehouse to be be used in future operations. I think that suggestion is one that ought to