612 ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING 



pure, or inapplicable, are now strained to their known limits for 

 giving practical service to engineers. Moreover, there are many 

 directions in which engineering would be applied, if mathematics 

 could only gain a reliable foothold on the outcrop. 



In any new application of science, first comes the fact discoverer, 

 then the mathematician, who quantitatively connects the newly 

 discovered phenomenon with the known environment. Next in 

 succession is the inventor, who grasps the utilitarian possibility of 

 the fact; then the engineer, who grasps the essential portions of 

 the already enunciated mathematical law, and relates the same 

 to commercial and constructional conditions. Finally, the capitalist 

 grasps from the engineer the commercial limitations of the reduced 

 law and estimates the commercial values of the utility, venturing 

 capital upon the new possibility on the risk of its desirability or 

 undesirability. In rare cases it is possible for any successive num- 

 ber, or all of these intellectual stages to be reached in one and the 

 same individual; but it seems to be a general sociological and in- 

 tellectual law that the capitalist will not risk the savings of past 

 labor on a new application of science until the engineer has intel- 

 lectually assimilated the problem from an arithmetical stand- 

 point, with due regard to physics and mechanics on the one hand 

 and to the cost of factory processes on the other. In his turn the 

 engineer is often unable to grasp the problem arithmetically until 

 the mathematician has intellectually apprehended and elucidated 

 the quantitative scientific relations of the problem to a reasonable 

 degree of completeness. 



Thus, for example, considering the modern dynamo, first came the 

 discovery of the phenomenon of electro-magnetic induction by 

 Faraday; then the work of mathematicians, like Ohm and Ampere, 

 to determine the quantitative relations of the phenomenon to the 

 known cosmos. Thus far the matter was pure science. Then came 

 inventors who conceived the idea of utilizing the new principle for the 

 industrial generation of electricity. Unless, however, the inventor 

 was himself an engineer or was assisted by an engineer, the idea 

 would have been practically unavailing, however important the idea 

 might be in directing attention to the possible use of the new phe- 

 nomenon. The work of the engineer was next necessary to design 

 the machine. This he could only do effectively according to his 

 apprehension of the mathematical, physical, and mechanical under- 

 lying laws already discovered, and the application of those laws in 

 such a manner as to fit factory methods of construction economically. 

 Then came the capitalist ready to venture the accumulated savings 

 of the community he represented, upon the project of building 

 dynamos for commercial purposes, as soon as he was satisfied as to 

 the commercial desirability and economy of the new process. 



