554 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



provided greatly improved facilities for research; but perhaps one of 

 the most important results to engineers has been the direct and indirect 

 influence of the more general application of scientific methods to 

 engineering. 



Sir Frederick Bramwell, in his presidential address to this asso- 

 ciation in 1888, emphasized the interdependence of the scientist and 

 the civil engineer, and described how the work of the latter has been 

 largely based on the discoveries of the former; while the work of the 

 engineer often provides data and adds a stimulus to the researches of 

 the scientist. And I think his remarks might be further appropriately 

 extended by adding that since the scientist, the engineer, the chemist, 

 the metallurgist, the geologist, all seek to unravel and to compass the 

 secrets of nature, they are all to a great extent interdependent on each 

 other. 



But though research laboratories are the chief centers of scientific 

 invention, and colleges, institutions and schools train the mind to sci- 

 entific methods of attack, yet in mechanical, civil and electrical engi- 

 neering the chief work of practical investigation has been carried on by 

 individual engineers, or by firms, syndicates and companies. These 

 not only have adapted discoveries made by scientists to commercial uses, 

 but also in many instances have themselves made such discoveries or 

 inventions. 



To return to the subject, let us for a moment consider in what 

 invention really consists, and let us dismiss from our minds the very 

 common conception which is given in dictionaries and encyclopedias 

 that invention is a happy thought occurring to an inventive mind. 

 Such a conception would give us an entirely erroneous idea of the for- 

 mation of the great steps in advance in science and engineering that 

 have been made during the last century; and, further, it would lead us 

 to forget the fact that almost all important inventions have been the 

 result of long training and laborious research and long-continued labor. 

 Generally, what is usually called an invention is the work of many indi- 

 viduals, each one adding something to the work of his predecessors, 

 each one suggesting something to overcome some difficulty, trying many 

 things, testing them when possible, rejecting the failures, retaining the 

 best, and by a process of gradual selection arriving at the most perfect 

 method of accomplishing the end in view. 



This is the usual process by which inventions are made. 



Then after the invention, which we will suppose is the successful 

 attempt to unravel some secret of nature, or some mechanical or otber 

 problem, there follows in many cases the perfecting of tbe invention 

 for general use, the realization of the advance or its introduction com- 

 mercially; this after-work often involves as great difficulties and re- 

 quires for its accomplishment as great a measure of skill as the inven- 



