594 MECHANICAL ENGINEERING 



certain divisions of engineering work. Then factors of safety are 

 reduced, standards are designed, and the work may be done by 

 any one who can learn a routine and can follow it repeatedly with 

 accuracy. But the real engineer has nothing further to do with it, 

 unless new applications are demanded. 



But most engineering work reaches into unexplored or partially 

 explored fields, and in such cases the last appeal is to the judgment 

 of some man. In other words the real engineer is a man of trained 

 judgment. It is impossible to teach any general method for the 

 solution of engineering problems. No two are alike; the modifying 

 factors are so many that the possible number of combinations is 

 indefinitely great and the same combination seldoms recurs. A 

 man's judgment must be trained so that he can take any combin- 

 ation and reach a good solution; not necessarily the best solu- 

 tion, for there may be many good solutions differing only slightly 

 in results. 



Judgment for its training must draw from many sources. There 

 must be the understanding of the mathematical basis of all en- 

 gineering; a knowledge of inorganic nature's laws and of the qual- 

 ities of engineering materials and of constructive principles; and 

 all this the schools ought to supply. But there must also be the 

 experience which comes from being "up against the real thing" 

 with no authority at hand to appeal to - - when there is just the 

 man and the problem and the necessity for a result. This is the 

 kind of experience which tries men's souls and makes engineers 

 or failures. It cannot be supplied by the schools. 



There has always been a gap between the technical schools and 

 the practice of engineering. Thirty years ago when practice was 

 simpler and the schools cruder, this gap was wide. In those days 

 engineering firms and manufacturers did not seek to employ tech- 

 nical graduates; they said: "We have tried them and they always 

 try to shift a belt on the wrong side of a pulley; we prefer to train 

 up our own men." That this gap has narrowed somewhat is shown 

 by the fact that men in authority in three prominent engineering 

 and manufacturing firms came to Cornell last June to meet mem- 

 bers of the graduating class with a view to engaging young men 

 for their work, and this same thing happens at other schools. But 

 still there is the gap; the graduate must still unlearn some things 

 that have been improperly taught, and must learn other things 

 that have not been taught at all. There must of course always be 

 a period of readjustment because the conditions in practice and 

 in the schools can never --from the nature of the case --be the 

 same. 



To meet the demand therefore the schools must cease to teach 

 wrong things, and must teach right things. 



