(iO STATE BOARD OF AGRK^ULTURE. 



engineer is materially different from that of an inventor. The ditfer- 

 enee is so great that it is rare to find that a great inventor has the 

 practical instincts or the ability to prodnce practical resnlts which 

 mnst be possessed by the great engineer. No college conrse could safely 

 nudertake to give inshMiction in Ihe "art of inventing" if any sncli 

 art can b<' said io <'xis(, bnl it shonld iiis(r\u-t in the underlying sciences 

 whose field of api)lication if extended into new domains miglit lead to 

 discoveries which we lerm invention. It is true, that many engineers 

 in carrying out engineering work have had occasion to take out patents 

 or to make what might be termed a minor invention; but this class of 

 invention is more in the nature of design, and while in many cases 

 it may have proved remunerative it pertains rather more 1o the field 

 of engineering than to the field of invention. 



While engineering does not necessarily includ<' inveiUion, it is in many 

 respects closely allied. An invention may be defined as a discovery 

 in the application of the forces of nature which I'esults in the produc- 

 tion of new machines or new processes. Engineering makes the dis- 

 coveries of the inventor of practical use by giving shape and propor- 

 tion to all the parts and reducing* the invention to a practical and 

 useful form. The engineer extends the field of practice by experiment; 

 and research rather titan by brilliant discovery. In his productions, 

 if he is not confined to the field of practice with its definite and well- 

 known boundaries, he extends the field of development cautiously and 

 slowly and only to such an extent as warranted by well-known theories 

 which are proved, checked and verified so far as may be by experi- 

 ments. This makes the development of the engineer's art a slow one 

 since it is rarely ever safe or prudent to base large expenditures of 

 money in great constructions or results of theoretical considerations 

 unproved by practical experience. 



Serious mistakes have resulted where engineers have not been con- 

 tent to follow the slow period of development through the natural pro- 

 cesses of design and practical trials, one striking recent exam})le of 

 which is the failure of the Quebec bridge, which failure never Avould 

 have occurred had the form of the bridge and the proportion of its 

 parts been the result of a slow development instead of the applica- 

 tion of a theory whose coefficients were developed only for lighter and 

 smaller structures. 



What an engineer does is largely the work of application of well- 

 known laws of nature along well developed lines to fields of industry 

 whose limits are well defined or at best are extended slowly. 



The above consideration of what an engineer is required io do also 

 gives somewhat of an idea of what an engineer mii.*<t knoic> in order to 

 produce satisfactory results with the leasit waste of energy and money. 



It is also evident that if an engineer is to succeed in his various 

 undertakings, he must be an educated man and must understand the 

 laws of nature and the method of application of these laws so far as 

 such information can be obtained from the schools and colleges. 



When the fact is considered that very few of -the engineering schools 

 have an age exceeding .50 years, it is clearly i»erceivcd that the early 

 engineers and many of those who have performed the most noted achieve- 

 ments, did not ])Ossess the special college training which is now be- 

 lieved essential for good engineering. The early engineer often arrived 



