ISO POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



will steadily improve governmental, industrial and educational meth- 

 ods and raise the nation to higher than Platonian levels. 



Thus, the Progress and Tendency of Mechanical Engineering have 

 been like that of human life, in many ways. As the outcome of an evo- 

 lution extending back into an infinite, or at least indefinite, past, its 

 birth, the first sensible evidence of existence, occurred a century ago. 

 ]ts growth involved the development of many and different phenomena, 

 tlie perfection of all, in the adult, depending ultimately upon the per- 

 fection of each in the process of development. This mighty giant of 

 modern civilization was conceived in liberty, nourished by law. Inven- 

 tion and protecting legislation, assuring to every man the fruit of his 

 brain as of his hand, gave the child health and early and sturdy devel- 

 opment. The introduction of new and great inventions in the early 

 part of the century; the formulation in legal terms of our Constitution, 

 of the patent-law and of a system of universal common-school educa- 

 tion; the systematization of manufactures, and their care and support, 

 until the advantages of foreign competitors were neutralized; the sub- 

 stitution in all departments of production of automatic and of labor- 

 assisting machinery; the reduction of all productive vocations to scien- 

 tific departments of mechanical engineering; legal provision for the 

 cooperation of individuals, the invention of the corporation, the later 

 cooperation of corporations in reduction of non-productive labor and 

 the resultant decrease of costs and prices; the introduction of science 

 and of practically applied science into the curriculum of the schools 

 and colleges; the provision of technical and professional schools for the 

 constructive arts and professions; the gravitation of the management of 

 the productive, and of all industrial, operations into the hands of scien- 

 tifically and practically expert men, who supplement the learning of 

 schools by the perliaps higher learning of the arts and of the profes- 

 sions — all these have illustrated the progress and tendency of mechan- 

 ical engineering during the nineteenth century and the plainly dis- 

 tinguishable tendency of the time points the way in which the twentieth 

 century is to further illustrate this progress aod tendency, in even more 

 marked degree. 



In the future, as in the recent past, the progress of invention and 

 of the mechanic arts will undoubtedly be still onward and upward, with 

 a still accelerated motion; the discoveries of the century may be ex- 

 pected to be more important and more imposing than ever before; the 

 work of the world will be performed with a more complete system, and 

 industrial operations of every sort will be carried on on a still larger 

 scale. The now familiar motors, developing the energies of Nature and 

 supplying the ))owcr needed to do tlie work of the world, will be, un- 

 doubtedly, still further improved and developed, and it may be hoped, 

 if not fairly expected, that a new method of utilizing the latent powerB 



