5. Electrical engineering: general electrical engineering; telephone engineering; electrical design; power-plant design; electrical railway engineering.
6. Marine engineering: general marine engineering; naval architecture; marine engineering.
7. Mechanical engineering: general mechanical engineering; steam engineering; railway mechanical engineering; hydro-mechanical engineering; machine design and construction; heating, ventilating, and refrigerating; industrial engineering; automobile engineering; aëronautical engineering.
8. Mining engineering: general mining engineering; metallurgical engineering; coal mining; ore mining.
The first engineering curriculum established was civil engineering, which was so called to distinguish it from military engineering. At first the course contained only a little technical work, but in course of time specialized work was increased; and later courses were established in mining and mechanical engineering, and more recently followed specialized courses in architecture, electrical engineering, marine engineering, chemical engineering, and ceramic engineering—about in the order named. The order of the various special courses in the several groups above is roughly that of their establishment.
Number of engineering subjects
In the preceding list are eight groups of curricula, each of which contains about 60 semester-hours peculiar to itself; and, considering only a single curriculum in each of the eight groups, there are 480 semester-hours of specialized work. In addition there are in the list thirty-two subdivisions, each of which differs from the parent by at least 10 semester-hours. Hence the total number of engineering subjects offered is at least 800 semester-hours. It is safe to assume that for administrative reasons, each 3 semester-hours on the average represents a distinct title or topic, and that therefore the engineering colleges of the country offer instruction in 267 different engineering subjects.
However, the diversity is not so great as the preceding statement seems to imply, since for convenience in program making and in bookkeeping many subjects are listed under two or more heads. For example, a subject which runs through two semesters will for administrative reasons appear under two different heads in the above computations. Again, the lecture or textbook work in a subject will usually appear under one head and the laboratory work under a separate title. Finally, some subjects which differ but little in character may for convenience be listed under two different titles. If the subjects that are subdivided for the above reasons were listed under a single head, the number of topics would be reduced something like 20 to 25 per cent.
Therefore, the topics of engineering instruction which differ materially in character number about 200. This, then, is the field assigned to this chapter. Obviously it is impossible to consider the several subjects separately.