The Progress of the Century

by Unknown

Now there is in the profession a great army of young men, most of them graduates of technical schools, good mathematicians, and well versed in the art of experimenting. The experiments of undergraduates on cements, concrete, the flow of water, the impact of metals, and the steam-engine, have added much to the general stock of knowledge.

One of the present causes of progress is that all discoveries are published at once in technical journals and in the daily press. The publication of descriptive indexes of all scientific and engineering articles as fast as they appear is another modern contrivance.

Formerly scientific discoveries were concealed by cryptograms, printed in a dead language, and hidden in the archives of learned societies. Even so late as 1821 Oersted published his discovery of the uniformity of electricity and magnetism in Latin.

Engineering works could have been designed and useful inventions made, but they could not have been carried out without combination. Corporate organization collects the small savings of many into great sums through savings-banks, life insurance companies, etc., and uses this concentrated capital to construct the vast works of our days. This could not continue unless fair dividends were paid. Everything now has to be designed so as to pay. Time, labor, and material must be saved, and he ranks highest who can best do this. Invention has been encouraged by liberal patent laws, which secure to the inventor property in his ideas at a moderate cost.

Combination, organization, and scientific discovery, inventive ability, and engineering skill are now united.

It may be said that we have gathered together all the inventions of the nineteenth century and called them works of engineering. This is not so. Engineering covers much more than invention. It includes all works of sufficient size and intricacy to require men trained in the knowledge of the physical conditions which govern the mechanical application of the laws of nature. First comes scientific discovery, then invention, and lastly engineering. Faraday and Henry discovered the electrical laws which led to the invention of the dynamo, which was perfected by many minds. Engineering built such works as those at Niagara Falls to make it useful.

An ignorant man may invent a safety-pin, but he cannot build the Brooklyn Bridge.

The engineer-in-chief commands an army of experts, as without specialization little can be done. His is the comprehensive design, for which he alone is responsible.

Such is the evolution of engineering, which began as a craft and has ended as a profession.

In past times, civilization depended upon military engineering. Warriors at first used only the weapons of the hand. Then came military engineering, applied both to attack and defence, and culminating in the invention of gunpowder. The civilization of to-day depends greatly upon civil engineering, as we have tried to show. It has changed the face of the world and brought all men nearer together. It has improved the condition of man by sanitary appliances and lowering the cost of food. It has shown that through machinery the workman is better educated, and his wages are increased, while the profits of capital increase also. It has made representative government possible over vast areas of territory, and is democratizing the world.