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ENGINEERING SCIENCE

AN INAUGURAL LECTURE

ON THE

TRAINING FOR THE ENGINEERING PROFESSION

DELIVERED BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY, OCT. 16, 1908

BY

CHARLES FREWEN JENKIN

PROFESSOR OF ENGINEERING

OXFORD

AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 1908

Price One Shilling net

ENGINEERING SCIENCE

AN INAUGURAL LECTURE

ON THE

TRAINING FOR THE ENGINEERING PROFESSION

DELIVERED BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY, OCT. 16, 1908

BY

CHARLES FREWEN JENKIN

PROFESSOR OF ENGINEERING

OXFORD

AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 1908

HENRY FROWDE, M.A.

PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

LONDON, EDINBURGH, NEW YORK

TORONTO AND MELBOURNE

ENGINEERING SCIENCE

IT is my high privilege and great happiness to be the first occupant of the new Chair which has been founded for the study and teaching of Engineering Science in this University.

The duties and responsibilities of the post are arduous, but I am encouraged by the bold faith that the work will be for the benefit of my profession, of the students, and of the University.

The success of the new school must depend greatly upon the interest and sympathy of the whole University ; I have therefore, though with the greatest diffidence, ventured to take this opportunity, the first possible, of explaining our aims and objects — what Engineering Science really is — and how it will be taught here.

As the teaching at the University forms a part only of the whole education of an engineer, and must be made to harmonize with what has gone before and what follows, I have taken as my subject to-day the whole of the training for the engineering profession, but I shall speak very briefly of the earlier and later portions.

The Royal Charter granted by George IV to the Insti- tution of Civil Engineers defines the profession of the Civil Engineer as the ' Art of directing the Great Sources of Power in Nature for the use and convenience of man ', and it then proceeds to enumerate a list of objects to which this art may be applied. These objects are very various, and it is worth while to consider some of them

A 2

4\ i ; : v, : ENGINEERING SCIENCE

so that we may realize clearly what a wide and interesting field is open to the engineer.

He has to make roads for foot, horse, and motor passengers, across our smiling England or through the jungles of the tropics ; railroads and bridges. He surveys the land and makes the maps.

He makes canals : for little Dutch market boats or for great ships across the desert, or over the tropical isthmus.

He has to build ships : the humble cargo tramp, and the great ocean liner, the battleship and the stern- wheeler for the Niger or the Yangtse. Docks and harbours for all these, and lighthouses to show

To each and all their equal lamp at peril of the sea.

He has to mine for gold and silver and precious stones, for coal and iron ore ; to smelt and refine and cast the metals for our use.

He has to harness Wind, Water, Steam, Gas, and Electricity to give power, light, and heat.

He has to build great reservoirs and aqueducts to hold store of water in long drought to feed both crops and men. It is difficult to imagine more useful works than the great irrigation systems of India and Egypt. The Baby- lonian, Egyptian, Chinese, and Roman engineers have, from the earliest times, devoted themselves to such work, and we can now hardly equal their great achievements. It is a thing we may be proud of that it is Englishmen who are following in the steps of the old Egyptian and Babylonian engineers, and are now carrying on their work on the Nile, the Euphrates, and Tigris.

As the engineer brings the water, so he must carry it away. He must drain both cities and marshes. It is to the engineer equally with the doctor that we owe our greatly reduced death-rate; it is the sanitary engineer

ENGINEERING SCIENCE 5

who fights the cholera side by side with the medical officer. The ventilation, heating, and lighting and draining of our houses is the engineer's work. And he still makes guns and explosives to destroy all his other handiwork. These examples are a few only, but they are sufficient to show to how many tasks the engineer is called.

And where his work lies, there must the engineer go. He may have an office in London, a workshop in Man- chester, or live under canvas in India. He may be surveying among the forests and mountains in Canada, or in the tropical jungles of Africa. He may be building a railway to Mecca, or laying a cable in the Pacific, or if his bent be for invention, he may spend his life in the laboratory, or perchance lose it flying in the air, or diving in a submarine.

Every day the field grows wider, and for the engineer there is no lack of romance or adventure. Here is what R. L. Stevenson says in his life of an engineer : —

* And there was another spring of delight, for he was now moving daily among those strange creations of man's brain, to some so abhorrent, to him of an interest so inexhaustible ; in which iron, water, and fire are made to serve as slaves, now with a tread more powerful than an elephant's, and now with a touch more precise and dainty than a pianist's. . . .

' The struggle of the engineer against brute forces and with inert allies was nobly poetic. Habit never dulled in him the sense of the greatness of the aims and obstacles of his profession. Habit only sharpened his inventor's gusto in contrivance, in triumphant artifice, in the Odyssean subtleties, by which wires are taught to speak, and iron hands to weave, and the slender ship to brave and to outstrip the tempest.

' To the ignorant the great results alone are admirable ; to the knowing rather the infinite device and sleight of mind that made them possible.'

Can any teaching fit a man for all these various duties ?

6 ENGINEERING SCIENCE

Is it possible by any college education to make a man an engineer ? No, it is not. All that can be given in college is the scientific training. Science can be taught, but before his training is complete the engineer must learn a host of facts which he can only learn by experi- ence. Experience cannot be taught.

Let us consider for a moment what has been done in the past. Not many years ago the only training available was the apprenticeship in a great mechanical workshop. The apprentice was not taught to observe or reason, he gained no grasp of mechanical principles. His stock of mathematics was scanty, and he never learnt how to apply them to material affairs. His knowledge of physics was nil. Nevertheless he learnt many invaluable lessons, lessons which he could have learnt nowhere else — but they were not the whole of engineering. It has long been recognized that the apprenticeship must be supple- mented by scientific training. The University training of engineers, the type of training which we shall give here, had its foundation laid when Rankine was appointed to the Professorship of Civil Engineering and Mechanics in the University of Glasgow. There is still no better basis for college teaching than his series of books on engineering theory. He has been followed by a number of distinguished teachers ; I will only mention my father, Fleeming Jenkin, the first professor of engineering in Edinburgh, Kennedy in London, and Ewing in Cam- bridge, The training given by these men has been theoretical; principles, not details of practice. Their teaching was intended to be followed by an apprentice- ship. On these sound lines our leading English schools are now working.

But there is another type of engineering teaching which has sprung up in recent years, that given at our technical

ENGINEERING SCIENCE 7

colleges. For the origin of this school, I believe we must look abroad. I quote a few sentences from the Report of the Royal Commission on Technical Education issued in 1884 :—

'The beginnings of the modern industrial system are

due in the main to Great Britain Thus when, less than

half a century ago, continental countries began to construct railways and to erect modern mills and mechanical work- shops, they found themselves face to face with a full- grown industrial organization in this country which was almost a sealed book to those who could not obtain access to our factories.

1 To meet this state of things foreign countries estab- lished technical schools like the Ecole Centrale of Paris and the Polytechnic Schools of Germany and Switzerland.

'The buildings are palatial, the laboratories and museums are costly and extensive, and the staff of pro- fessors is so numerous as to admit of the utmost sub- division of the subjects taught.'

To this class belong the Polytechnic Schools of Zurich, Munich, Vienna, Stuttgart, Dresden, Hanover, Berlin, and many others. There is much that is admirable in the foreign technical schools, but when we read the opinions of men who have had experience of the system we find evidence that the highly finished product of the foreign technical school lacks something that is often present in his English competitor. The Report quoted already contains emphatic testimony on this point. Even those witnesses who were most alive to the inadequacy of our English apprenticeship as the sole means of training engineers give no encouragement to the idea that we should copy the foreign polytechnic. As one of the witnesses stated, ' Those schools are apt to teach the student details which he mistakes afterwards for princi- ples. The teaching should deal very much with principles, and very little with details.'

8 ENGINEERING SCIENCE

The great extension of technical schools in England is, I believe, largely the result of copying the continental and American practice. The palatial buildings and costly equipment impress English visitors, and the public cry out for similar appliances here ; but I believe it is a retrograde step. These schools abroad were built because they lacked what we had. Are we to throw away our apprenticeship system and follow them in a vicious circle ? I speak of throwing away our apprenticeship system, because the modern technical colleges profess to turn out trained engineers. They believe that they can teach, in addition to the theory, the experience formerly gained in the apprenticeship. Can a doctor or surgeon practise on a lay figure and do without his hospital training ? Can a sailor learn seamanship in a college tank ? Or a barrister learn to plead in a model law court ? The doctor can be taught Physiology, Anatomy, and all the wide range of science he now needs ; the sailor can be taught Astronomy and Navigation ; the barrister can be taught Law ; but the rest they must learn during some form of apprenticeship, whether it be called 4 walking the hospitals 5, ' serving his time ', or ' devilling for a lawyer '.

This principle is of wide-reaching importance, and is too little recognized. The great painters served their time in their masters' studios ; Leonardo was apprenticed to Verrocchio, Raphael to Perugino, Michael Angelo to the Ghirlandaii. The Greek sculptors were similarly trained. The ability and skill of our naval officers is our pride; they all serve their time as midshipmen. The lack of real warfare in which to apprentice our officers is the great difficulty in military training. But now is not the time to discuss these subjects ; I use

ENGINEERING SCIENCE 9

them only as illustrations of the value of a real apprenticeship, and to show how impossible it must always be to substitute college teaching for the teaching of experience.

What we purpose to teach, then, in Oxford is the Science or Theory of Engineering, and to leave the experience, or rather the beginning of experience, to be learnt during a subsequent apprenticeship. [There is often objection made to the teaching of theory only. It is said, ' We want practical men, not theoretical men.' Concerning this imaginary conflict between theory and practice, I will quote a short extract from a most admirable dissertation by Rankine : —

'The words theory and practice are of Greek origin : they carry our thoughts back to the time of those ancient philosophers by whom they were contrived ; and by whom also they were contrasted and placed in opposition, as denoting two conflicting and mutually inconsistent ideas.

' In geometry, in philosophy, in poetry, in rhetoric, and in the fine arts, the Greeks are our masters ; and great are our obligations to the ideas and the models which they have transmitted to our times. But in physics and in mechanics their notions were very generally pervaded by a great fallacy, which attained its complete and most mischievous development amongst the mediaeval schoolmen, and the remains of whose influence can be traced even at the present day — the fallacy of a double system of natural laws ; one theoretical, geometrical, rational, discoverable by contemplation, applicable to celestial, aethereal, indestructible bodies, and being an object of the noble and liberal arts ; the other practical, mechanical, empirical, discoverable by experience, ap- plicable to terrestrial, gross, destructible bodies, and being an object of what were once called the vulgar and sordid arts.

' The so-called physical theories of most of those whose understandings were under the influence of that fallacy, being empty dreams, with but a trace of truth here and

io ENGINEERING SCIENCE

there, and at variance with the results of everyday observation on the surface of the planet we inhabit, were calculated to perpetuate the fallacy. The stars were celestial, incorruptible bodies ; their orbits were circular and their motions perpetual ; such orbits and motions being characteristic of perfection. Objects on the earth's surface were terrestrial and corruptible ; their motions being characteristic of imperfection were in mixed straight and curved lines, and of limited duration. Rational and practical mechanics (as Newton observes in his preface to the Principia) were considered as in a measure opposed to each other, the latter being an inferior branch of study, to be cultivated only for the sake of gain or some other material advantage. Archytas of Tarentum might illus- trate the truths of geometry by mechanical contrivances ; his methods were regarded by his pupil Plato as a lowering of the dignity of science. Archimedes, to the character of the first geometer and arithmetician of his day, might add that of the first mechanician and physicist, — he might, by his unaided strength acting through suitable machinery, move a loaded ship on dry land, — he might contrive and execute deadly engines of war, of which even the Roman soldiers stood in dread, — he might, with an art afterwards regarded as fabulous till it was revived by Buffon, burn fleets with the concentrated sunbeams ; but that mechanical knowledge, and that practical skill, which, in our eyes, render that great man so illustrious, were, by men of learning, his contemporaries and successors, regarded as accomplishments of an inferior order, to which the philosopher, from the height of geometrical abstraction, condescended, with a view to the service of the state. In those days the notion arose that scientific men were unfit for the business of life, and various facetious anecdotes were contrived illustrative of this notion, which have been handed down from age to age, and in each age applied, with little variation, to the eminent philosophers of the time.

' That the Romans were eminently skilful in many de- partments of practical mechanics, especially in masonry, road-making, and hydraulics, is clearly established by the existing remains of their magnificent works of en- gineering and architecture, from many of which we should do well to take a lesson. But the fallacy of a sup-

ENGINEERING SCIENCE n

posed discordance between rational and practical, celestial and terrestrial mechanics, still continued in force, and seems to have gathered strength, and to have attained its full vigour during the middle ages. In those ages, indeed, were erected those incomparable ecclesiastical buildings, whose beauty, depending as it does mainly on the nice adjustment of the form, strength, and position of each part, to the forces which it has to sustain, evinces a profound study of the principles of equilibrium on the part of the architects. But the very names of those architects, with few and doubtful exceptions, were suf- fered to be forgotten ; and the principles which guided their work remain unrecorded, and were left to be re- discovered in our own day ; for the scholars of those times, despising practice and observation, were occupied in developing and magnifying the numerous errors, and in perverting and obscuring the much more numerous truths, which are to be found in the writings of Aristotle ; and those few men who, like Roger Bacon, combined scientific with practical knowledge, were objects of fear and persecution as supposed allies of the powers of darkness.

'At length, during the great revival of learning and reformation of science in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, the system falsely styled Aristo- telian was overthrown : so also was the fallacy of a double system of natural laws ; and the truth began to be duly appreciated, that sound theory in physical science consists simply of facts, and the deductions of common sense from them, reduced to a systematic form. The science of motion was founded by Galileo, and perfected by Newton. Then it was established that celestial and terrestrial mechanics are branches of one science ; that they depend on one and the same system of clear and simple first principles ; that those very laws which regulate the motion and stability of bodies on earth, govern also the revolutions of the stars, and extend their dominion throughout the immensity of space. Then it came to be acknowledged that no material object, how- ever small — no force, however feeble, — no phenomenon, however familiar, is insignificant, or beneath the attention of the philosopher ; that the processes of the workshop, the labours of the artisan, are full of instruction to the

A3

12 ENGINEERING SCIENCE ,

man of science ; that the scientific study of practical mechanics is well worthy of the attention of the most accomplished mathematician.'

Thus this contrast between theory and practice is, in part at least, a survival from a time when there was a real division between the two. But 4 practice ' is now used rather to mean ' the habit of doing ', and when the theoretical and practical man are contrasted, it is really the man who has learnt from books, and the man who has learnt from doing, that are compared. An engineer should not be either of these alone, he should be both — a learned and experienced man ; but it is only the learning which can be acquired at college.

In what, then, does the Theory or Science of Engineering consist ? It is based mainly on Mathematics and Physics, and to a less extent on Chemistry, Geology, and Metal- lurgy. Engineering has been called ' Applied Physics ' ; in the same way Medicine might be called ' Applied Physiology '.

It is not necessary to describe the teaching of Mathe- matics, Physics, or Chemistry, but it will be well to consider how Engineering proper should be taught. The teaching should be partly bookwork, taught in lectures, and partly experimental measurement taught in the laboratory. The names of many of the subjects are already familiar in Oxford — Statics, Hydrostatics, Dyna- mics, Electricity, Magnetism, Thermodynamics, and so on, but the engineering treatment of these subjects differs considerably from the traditional treatment. Statics, for instance, is used by mathematicians as a peg on which to hang ingeniously contrived problems involving for their solution elegant mathematics, and the solution required is a general one. To the engineer the first part of a statical problem is ascertaining what the forces are

ENGINEERING SCIENCE 13

which he has to deal with, and the next is to find the simplest solution of the particular case before him. For example, he may require to find the stresses in a structure when a gale of wind is blowing. He has first to study all the available experimental data on the forces pro- duced by wind — a most difficult subject — and from these, by the exercise of judgement, to form an estimate of the forces in his particular case, and then calculate the stresses in the different members of the structure. For this pur- pose he will probably use graphic methods as being the quickest, when a general solution is not required. With statics should be taught the theory of the Elas- ticity and Strength of Materials. This may be illustrated in the laboratory by means of accurate testing plant designed to measure the strength and indicate the beha- viour of all sorts of materials under all sorts of stresses.

Similarly the engineering treatment of Dynamics differs considerably from the traditional one, but more mathematics is required for this subject. The aim of the teaching should be to make the student realize fully the motions and forces which he is discussing ; for this end examples drawn from moving apparatus, which he can handle, are preferable to the classical examples of imaginary astronomical bodies. The subject may be fully illustrated in the laboratory by teaching the student to make accurate measurements of forces, velocities, and accelerations, using moving carriages and revolving wheels rather than pendulums. The experiments should be on a sufficient scale to make the student realize that he is dealing with ' real ' forces and weights, not chemists' balance weights, which are apt to blow away if he sneeze. Models may also be made to illustrate the theories being taught.

These methods serve two purposes — they give to most

14 ENGINEERING SCIENCE

men realler, more concrete conceptions, and a solider grasp of the subject than purely mathematical methods, and they teach at the same time how the theory may be applied to engineering problems.

The use of models should not be thought one whit less scientific than pure mathematics ; but by a model I do not mean a toy railway train ; I mean a concrete repre- sentation of some idea which in the model is shown forth by means of some convention. Here, for instance, is a model of the simplest conceivable condition of static equilibrium ; in it the sticks represent force links in com- pression, and the elastics force links in tension ; the two models represent the only two possible arrangements.

Here is what Lord Kelvin said of models : —

'It seems to me that the test of "Do we or do we not understand a particular subject in physics ? " is "Can we make a mechanical model of it ? " As long as I cannot make a mechanical model, all the way through, I cannot understand it.'

As Silvanus Thompson says : —

'The use of models has become characteristic of the tone and temper of British physicists. Where Poisson or Laplace saw a mathematical formula, Kelvin discovered a reality which could be roughly simulated in the concrete.'

Thus we see that in each subject there is a difference between the engineering and the scholastic point of view. This corresponds to the difference drawn by Rankine between what he calls Theoretical Science and Practical Science. The object of Theoretical Science is to answer the question, ' What are we to think ? ' But in Practical Science the question is ' What are we to do ?' a question which involves the immediate adoption of some rule of working.

I have already referred more than once to the labora-

ENGINEERING SCIENCE 15

tory. A good engineering laboratory is now essential for the complete teaching of engineering science. The real object and proper use of the engineering laboratory were first understood and explained by Sir Alexander Kennedy, then a Professor at University College, London. He found the laboratory no more than a means of private research, and he turned it into a splendid instru- ment of education. Concerning its great value I need do no more than quote Prof. E wing's vigorous state- ment : —

' It stimulates interest, fosters exactness, creates habits of observation and of independent thought, it makes the dry bones of science start into life. Facts and principles learnt from the text-book or the lecture-table are colour- less and dull ; in the laboratory they become vivid and memorable. "We study nature in books," says a great teacher, " and when we meet her face to face she passes unrecognised." Study in books we must, but if our knowledge is to be real it must be of the kind that a face- to-face acquaintance brings. Put a good student into a laboratory and you inspire him with the enthusiasm of an investigator ; put a good teacher into a laboratory and you ensure that he will never cease to be a student. The laboratory teaches something that is learnt neither in the workshop nor in the lecture-room — something that connects the knowledge gained in both.'

A laboratory should not be a model workshop ; it should not aim at teaching manual arts, its object should be to teach the Art of Measurement, and in addition — to a few students — the methods of research.

On the value of research it is hardly necessary to speak nowadays, but I should like to remind you of Bacon's wise and charming statement which forecasts most closely the opinions we now hold, and sometimes think quite modern : —

' Therefore, no doubt, the sovereignty of man lieth hid in knowledge ; wherein many things are reserved, which

16 ENGINEERING SCIENCE

kings with their treasure cannot buy, nor with their force command ; their spials and intelligencers can give no news of them, their seamen and discoverers cannot sail where they grow. Now we govern nature in opinions, but we are thrall unto her in necessity ; but, if we would be led by her in invention, we should command her in action.'

The teacher is himself engaged in the research of some scientific truth, and he finds in the best of his students a willing band of workers ; the young men are inspired by the teacher with his own ardour ; they imitate his methods, sympathize with his aims, and emulate his success. In a few years these generous and unknown assistants will themselves be leaders. The process is natural, healthy, and successful, but it is incomplete. It reaches only those who are born with a great natural aptitude for scientific inquiry. The rank and file of the students cannot be employed in this manner by the teacher ; they would waste their time, spoil an indefinite amount of apparatus, hinder the advanced student, occupy the attention of the teacher unworthily, and per- haps try his temper ; and yet the rank and file — the ordinary well-meaning student who will never 'become a leading light in science — is worthy of our attention. We can teach him systematically the art of measurement. We cannot give him the hunger for knowledge, the acute logical discrimination, nor the imaginative faculty required for research ; but we can teach him how to ascertain and record facts accurately ; we can bring home to him the truth that no scientific knowledge is definite except that based on the numerical comparison which we call measure- ment. The distinct recognition of measurement as a thing to be taught should serve as a guide in the purchase of apparatus — it will serve to distinguish the toy from the scientific instrument.

ENGINEERING SCIENCE 17

Here is what Lord Kelvin said about measure- ment : —

' When you can measure what you are speaking about and express it in numbers, you know something about it ; when you cannot express it in numbers your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind ; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely in your thought advanced to the stage of science, whatever the matter may be.'

Drawing should also be taught, and a workshop in connexion with the measuring class is a legitimate and almost necessary complement. The work done in this workshop is not the same as that of any trading concern, although it bears some similarity to that of the practical optician. In such a workshop, the student may be usefully occupied in adjusting, repairing, and modifying the apparatus he requires.

Scientific research for the most advanced and best endowed students ; measurement classes open to all in all branches of exact science, and a common workshop, where apparatus of all kinds can be repaired, adjusted, modified, with the help of highly skilled workmen. This is the general picture of a laboratory fully equipped for practical scientific teaching.

One other subject remains to be mentioned, Survey- ing. It would be hard to find a subject better adapted for teaching. The field work consists in making methodical measurements of many different kinds, and the plotting of the results, when the map is drawn, forms a perfect check on their accuracy. The work is novel and interesting, particularly the astronomical part ; it must be carried out by parties in the open country and is more like a walking tour than a grind at work.

This completes the scheme of the college work : —

Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, the Application of

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these to engineering problems, Laboratory practice in accurate measurement, Surveying in the open country. It is difficult to imagine a more interesting, a broader or more thorough scientific training. There is no technical teaching, but it is in the highest degree practical, for what the student learns will be of the utmost service to him all his life.

I will now say a few words about the training of the engineer before he comes up to the University and after he has taken his degree.

It would be an immense advantage if all the men going in for engineering had learnt the elementary parts of physics, statics, and dynamics before coming up. These subjects are being taught in some of the public schools, and well taught, but usually only to boys who specialize. As science gains her proper place in educa- tion I believe that these subjects will be taught to all boys — in the meantime those who think of becoming engineers should specialize in science at school.

After leaving the University, the graduate must begin his apprenticeship or pupilage. The object of an en- gineering apprenticeship is not to teach how to chip and file • and turn in a lathe ; the engineer will probably never need to use these arts. What the apprentice really learns, while he works at his bench, is how work is organized, the system of storage, in what forms materials can be bought in the market, the difference between good and bad workmanship, what accuracy can be attained in manufacture, how men are handled, what a foreman's duties are, and what the workmen's views are on all sorts of subjects. These and a hundred other things he learns, which can only be learnt in real work. The strict discipline in the workshop, the friendship with a class of men leading very different lives from his own, having

ENGINEERING SCIENCE 19

to acknowledge them as his betters at all the work he is engaged on — these things make the apprenticeship a most valuable training apart from the merely pro- fessional point of view. At the end of his apprenticeship our young man is fully equipped to enter the world, and if he has won his employer's attention by keenness and hard work during his apprenticeship, he will in all probability obtain an offer of a post at once. So his training is completed, and he enters on his life work with

A mind through all her powers irradiate.

I now have to explain how the teaching which I have described will be carried out in Oxford. There is already first-rate teaching in mathematics, physics, chemistry, geology, and metallurgy ; the pure engineering teaching will be my special duty. A scheme for co-ordinating all the subjects into a well-balanced and coherent course of study has already been drawn up by a committee of the Board of the Faculty of Natural Science. For carrying it out I must rely on co-operation and help from the whole University. I have already received so much willing assistance and cordial co-operation, that I feel no doubt that any call made on the departments of Natural Science and Mathematics will be willingly responded to, but I wish to make a wider appeal to-day, and to ask for a sympathetic welcome for my subject from all, and help more particularly from the college tutors. It is impos- sible to expect engineering teaching from the tutors at first, but I hope that before long there will be lecturers taking subjects directly connected with the engineering course ; for example, it would not be difficult to arrange at once for the necessary mathematics. It is specially desirable to make full use of the existing organization for teaching, but at first the engineering students will have

20 ENGINEERING SCIENCE

to rely largely on the advice and assistance which will be given in the laboratory. The personal help and individual advice of tutors is of great value to the student, and I need only say that I shall do everything in my power to act as engineering tutor as long as the need may last.

It is proposed that the undergraduate should take the new Science Preliminary Examination at the end of his first or third term, and then take some more mathematics, physics, and chemistry, but devote most of his time to engineering proper. During the first Long Vacation, a Survey Class will be organized to do surveying for about a month on the Welsh, Northumberland, or Scotch hills. Instruction will be given by the Oxford Instructor in Surveying. We shall live either in little country inns or under canvas. During the undergraduates' second Long Vacation I hope to arrange a class of engine and boiler testing at the lavishly equipped mechanical laboratory of the Birmingham University ; testing of this nature forms a valuable adjunct to the ordinary laboratory work.

The only building provided for the Engineering Depart- ment is the Millard Laboratory. It is small and some- what shabby. Of equipment there is almost none, but a sum of about £1,100 has been subscribed for initial expenses, and with this I shall be able to get sufficient apparatus to start with, while our numbers are small. Large and elaborate apparatus is unnecessary for an engineering laboratory, and is apt to become a snare for both teacher and student. Some accurate measuring instruments are costly, such as the surveying instruments, and we cannot do without them ; but I hope that I shall not have to ask for much more money till our numbers

ENGINEERING SCIENCE 21

grow and we require larger quarters. Much of the best work in the past has been done with the simplest means. Here is what Helmholtz wrote of his first visit to Faraday : —

'I succeeded in finding the first physicist in England and in Europe — Faraday. Those were splendid moments. He is as simple, charming, and unaffected as a child. I have never seen a man with such winning ways. He was, moreover, extremely kind, and showed me all there was to see. That, indeed, was little enough, for a few wires and some old bits of wood and iron seem to serve him for the greatest discoveries.'

And here is Clerk Maxwell's description of his work- room in 1848 : —

' I have regularly set up shop now above the wash- house at the gate, in a garret. I have an old door set on two barrels, and two chairs, of which one is safe, and a skylight above, which will slide up and down.'

When I remember the dingy little classroom in Edin- burgh in which my father taught, and all the engineers who were trained in it — there was no laboratory, no apparatus — I feel sure that Oxford students need not suffer from the roughness of our accommodation or the sim- plicity of the apparatus, and I am confident that in the future — the near future — as our numbers and needs in- crease, those generous benefactors who have enabled the Chair to be founded will see that we have a home worthy of the University.

Thus through the preliminary examination, summer courses, and engineering lectures and laboratory, the student will prepare for the final honour school in engineering. The final examination includes mathema- tics, physics, chemistry, various branches of engineering, and surveying.

I need hardly point out to you how essential a final

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school in engineering is as a goal for the student to work for. I hope I have shown that the scheme includes an educational course of the highest value and worthy of recognition by the University. Without this recogni- tion the whole must fall to the ground. The other English Universities have long ago made engineering an avenue to their degrees. It may be wise for Oxford to move slowly and consider its steps well, but I believe that the time has now come — I take it that the founda- tion of this new Chair proves that in your opinion also the time has come — for Oxford to advance. As the Vice-Chancellor has said ' lam movendus est orbis aca- demicus.'

A^scheme, prepared by the Board of the Faculty of Natural Science, will, I believe, shortly be laid before you by the Council. I appeal to you, therefore, with con- fidence to receive this scheme favourably, by which the path to Academic honours will be opened to engineers.

By this path, if it is your pleasure, shall go forth men to all the ends of the earth who will gain new honours for Oxford and blessings from fellahin for water in a thirsty land ; from ryots for famine warded off ; from crowded cities for health and comfort ; from solitary dwellers in forest and mountain and veld for roads and bridges.

It is for you to open the Gate.

OXFORD

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BY HORACE HART, M.A. PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY BERKELEY

Return to desk from which borrowed. This book is DUE on the last date stamped below.

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MAR 8

NOV131953U)

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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY