34 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



PROGEESS AND TENDENCY OF MECHANICAL ENGINEER- 

 ING IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.* 



By ROBERT H. THURSTON, LL. D., Dr. Eng'g, 



DIRKCTOK OF SIBLEY COLLEGE, CORNELL UNIVERSITY. 



THE progress and tendency of mechanical engineering in the nine- 

 teenth century comprehends the progress and the tendency of 

 almost all that has distinguished the nineteenth century from all the 

 centuries of time, historic and prehistoric, that have preceded. 



The progress of the human race includes advancement in all the 

 languages, all the literatures, all the arts and all the sciences of all 

 times. But the progress of past time in language is the evolution of the 

 employment of the tongue in the conveyance of ideas, and it is the idea 

 that is important, rather than the language. Progress in literature is 

 the perfection of our methods of permanent preservation of ideas, and, 

 again, it is the ideas, not the systems of preservation, that count. 

 Progress in the sciences, in a proper acceptation of the term, is the 

 progress of the race in knowledge of the laws of nature and the phe- 

 nomena of nature, the progress of reduction of such exact knowledge 

 to system, the construction of a code of natural law in all departments 

 of science. Progress in the arts is advancement in the utilization of 

 Nature's laws in the construction of a system of application of the 

 materials and forces of nature to the enrichment and elevation of human 

 life from its crudest and simplest forms to the highest and noblest 

 phases of civilization. Progress in mechanical engineering is the evolu- 

 tion of the methods and machinery of production, transportation and 

 utilization of the material forms of wealth. In all other directions, the 

 progress of the world has been more or less steady, continuous and evo- 

 lutionary from the beginning of the life of the race; in the sciences and 

 the arts, it has been an evolution mainly of the later times, though hav- 

 ing an origin prehistoric. 



Progress in mechanical engineering, the production of permanent 

 wealth in most part, could only come after language should have sup- 

 plied a satisfactory vehicle for ideas; it could only begin after literature 

 should be competent to furnish a means of storage of ideas and of 

 knowledge in safe and accessible treasuries; it could only progress 

 rapidly after science had accumulated sufficient store of knowledge of 

 facts, of phenomena and of natural law to permit complete reliance upon 



• An address delivered before the Washin^on Academy of Sciences, Columbian 

 University, February 19, 1901. 



