4 BELL SYSTEM TECHNICAL JOURNAL 



or their application?" is no longer even discussible, as far as the 

 engineering school is concerned. Applications must indeed be learned 

 by the student, but this can best be done after graduation, with the 

 help of the industry employing him, and under the stimulus of the 

 necessity of learning his job and preparing himself for greater useful- 

 ness in the organization. The question before the colleges is not 

 "Shall we teach fundamentals?" but "What fundamentals shall we 

 teach, and how can these most effectively be presented? How much 

 of the fundamentals of our present far flung electrical science can we 

 convey to the students in a four year course?" 



The same question naturally presents itself in this discussion. The 

 communication field, from the nature of the problems which it presents, 

 has a great wealth of material relating to the principles of electric 

 circuits, both as regards the practical application of these principles 

 and research extending our fundamental knowledge of these principles. 

 What phases of this subject matter should be presented here? In 

 this Mr. Hammond's circular to the members of the summer school 

 staffs is a guide. He points out that among the various purposes of 

 the summer schools the principal aim is to produce tangible results for 

 improving methods of teaching. I do not understand that I am 

 expected, in talking with a group of educators, to discuss teaching 

 methods directly, and will not presume to do so. However, in response 

 to your invitation to discuss "The Principles of Electric Circuits 

 Applied to Communication" I shall refer to the use in the communica- 

 tion field of those principles within the scope of student work which 

 appear to have the broadest general application, including all fields of 

 electrical engineering. Also, it will no doubt be of interest for us to 

 give some consideration to the relative conditions, including similarities 

 and differences, of application of these principles to communication 

 problems and to other branches of the electrical industries. 



Limiting the discussion in this way necessarily results in leaving 

 untouched many phases of the application of electrical principles to 

 communication which are of great interest but of less application in 

 other fields, and so I have left out such important matters as, for 

 example, modulation and demodulation, the balancing of line imped- 

 ance characteristics by artificial lines, inductive effects between differ- 

 ent circuits, and the performance characteristics of various types of 

 apparatus. 



Also, of course, this will in no sense be a general discussion of the 

 work of the transmission engineers of the telephone companies. 

 While their work is based on the application of electrical principles, 

 and requires that they understand those principles, the theoretical 



