PROGRESS IN ENGINEERING 297 



made a little peninsula in the Adriatic the mistress of the 

 world, or how Roman law became the basis of the jurispru- 

 dence of Christendom, or how the fall of empires was fore- 

 shadowed in the republic of Plato, or how the growth of a 

 corrupt and pri\dleged ecclesiasticism brought about the 

 transformation of modern Europe, the time will never come, 

 I say, when the man who has learned these things, not a 

 parrot like learning, but in the length and breadth of their 

 vast and enduring significance, will not be, in every highest 

 sense, the master of him who has not." 



Literature, languages, philosophy, and mathematics do 

 not make the well rounded, cultured man any more than do 

 special technical courses. The field of information and 

 training is unlimited, and there is no one field or branch so 

 broad that great advantage cannot be gained by investiga- 

 tion in the others, and that man may count himself fortunate 

 whose early years are well directed and well employed in the 

 serious pursuance of study in the courses best fitted to develop 

 and mold the man, for that training is indisputably the most 

 noble and most desirable which has for its aim the develop- 

 ment of those facilities and powers which shall first make the 

 student a man, and secondly fit to undertake work in his 

 special lines. 



To what extent this idea has been carried out by the 

 engineering institutions of the United States can be sho^vn 

 only by a sketch of the growth of such institutions, and by 

 observing the demand for and the success of young men whose 

 lives have been molded in these engineering schools. The 

 healthy growth of the technical school is marked with keen 

 interest, and the following brief sketch of its development 

 during the past century shows at once the imperative need of 

 such institutions and the excellent quality of their work, 

 together with the fact that progress in engineering education 

 has kept pace with the development of the country. 



At the very beginning of the nineteenth century the need 

 of engineering education was felt, and the United States 

 Military academy at West Point, being the only institution 

 fitted to give such training, took the initiative, and in 1802 



