The successful engineer, while possessed of certain spiritual characteristics, must also—if I may be so bold as to say so—be possessed of certain physical characteristics. One of these is large, and what is known as capable, hands. Short, spatulate fingers, with a broad palm, appear to be a feature of the successful engineer. Of course, there are exceptions, as there are exceptions to every rule, but in the majority of cases which have come under the writer's observation the successful engineer has had hands of this shaping. He likewise has had wrists and arms to match with such hands, and—in the practical engineer—that is, the engineer whose particular gift is coping with ordinary problems of construction, as against the genius who blazes new trails, like Watt and Westinghouse and Edison and Marconi and the Wright brothers—a head whose contour was along the "well-shaped" lines. The so-called genius usually has an odd-shaped head, I've noticed, but for purposes of this book we shall confine ourselves to the average successful man in engineering.
Thus you have, roughly, the engineering type. I have sketched only the major characteristics. The minor characteristics embrace many features. There is patience, for one—patience to labor long with difficulties; concentration, for another; application, for a third; certain student qualities, for yet a fourth. Many graduate engineers have gone off into other work immediately after leaving college because of a clearly defined dislike for detail in construction. The average successful engineer will be a man interested in the shaping of the details of his machine or bridge or plant. To many, details are irksome. If the young man who is reading this book knows that he dislikes a detail of any character whatsoever, unless he be possessed of the creative genius of a Westinghouse or an Edison, he would better take up with some other profession. For engineering, in the last analysis, is the manipulating of detailed parts into a perfect whole—whether it be a bridge or a machine or a plant.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The boy's father always wanted to be a carpenter.
IV
THE FOUR MAJOR BRANCHES
The four major branches of engineering are civil, mechanical, electrical, and mining. I give them in the order of their acceptance among engineers. Each is separate from each of the others, and each is a profession in itself, and as distinctive from each of the others as is the allopathic from the homeopathic among men of medicine, though not with quite the same distinction. Whereas the several groups of physicians seek to relieve pain and correct disorder by way of diversified channels, the several groups of engineers each work in a field of endeavor actively apart from each of the other groups. Sometimes one group will lap over upon another group, in certain kinds of construction work, but even then the branches will hold sharply each to its own.
Civil engineering embraces, roughly, all work in the soil. The surveyor is a civil engineer. He constructs dams, builds viaducts, lays out railroads, and in the war, where he was known as a pioneer, he was responsible for all tunneling and trench projects, besides keeping the highways clear and the wire entanglements intact. Civil engineering is a profession which keeps its followers pretty well out in the open. A civil engineer will go long distances, and frequently must, in order to get to his work, and, having reached the scene of his labors, enters upon a rugged outdoor life in camp where he remains until the job is completed. The Panama Canal was a civil-engineering job—probably the largest of its kind ever undertaken—and its success, after failure on the part of another government, is a high tribute to the genius of our own civil engineers.