RELATIONS OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERING 595 



The development of engineering, with the accompanying devel- 

 opment of the engineering schools, has been a very interesting pro- 

 cess. Out of the "chalk age" has come the orderly present prac- 

 tice. In the chalk age a man would go into his shop with an idea 

 in his head and a piece of chalk in his hand; he would clear off a 

 place on the work-bench and call up his best man. He would sketch 

 and explain and when asked about dimensions would take out his 

 two-foot rule and slide his thumb along it till he reached the right 

 place and chalk it down. Then the best man would look in the 

 scrap-heap for available parts; would interview the pattern-maker 

 and the blacksmith; and later there would be a machine. This 

 machine would be tested; parts that failed would be replaced by 

 stronger ones, motion ratios would be adjusted, and finally the 

 machine would perform its function, all honor to the fine men who 

 did this work. But this process of machine evolution was tedious 

 and expensive, and the chalk man often wished he could figure out 

 dimensions because he saw profit in getting things right the first 

 time. It was in response to many such wishes that the technical 

 schools appeared. But they did not spring full-armed into being. 

 Like other earthly things they have developed by orderly growth. 

 The law of survival of the fittest operated as in organic evolution; 

 unfit things have fallen away and have been replaced by fitter ones, 

 while much that was good has survived. From the first it was clear 

 that an engineer should understand the laws of inorganic nature 

 and the relations of numbers, and hence physics and chemistry 

 and mathematics were included in the early courses. But the use 

 of shops for the training of engineers does not seem to have been 

 grasped, for students in most cases were simply taught handicraft. 

 One exception was the shop in which Professor Sweet taught not 

 only skill with tools but also principles of construction, together 

 with the highest ideals in machine design. But Professor Sweet 

 is such a man as comes but once in a generation or two. 



Many of the technical courses were grafted on the existing col- 

 lege courses and an attempt was made to combine a liberal and a 

 technical training. It does not need to be stated that these schools 

 were inadequate even in the simpler state of engineering; and yet 

 out of these schools came many of the men who have helped 

 to bring engineering to its present advanced state. But that was 

 because they had power to bring what they had learned into action, 

 to supplement it by wisdom gained in practice; in other words, to 

 train their judgment till they became real engineers. 



In contrast to this is the present state of the technical schools. 

 Engineering has developed steadily and the schools have tried to 

 meet its demands; not with perfect success, but still successfully. 



One of the difficulties ahout technical schools is that the teacher 



