vi PREFACE. 



the power to proceed to problems requiring a continually increas- 

 ing initiative and originality. Although standardized tests afford 

 the quickest way for obtaining certain desired results and, in the 

 case of a student, for obtaining a knowledge of testing methods, 

 the ability to conduct such tests with full instructions given is 

 soon acquired. Beyond this point the exclusive use of standard- 

 ized tests should be avoided. Standards in electricity serve best 

 as new points of departure. The student who is to become more 

 than the " ordinary slide-rule engineer " or " mental mechanic " 

 will have sufficient intellectual curiosity to desire more than any 

 standardized tests can give him and should be encouraged in every 

 way to seek new results and to devise ways and means for obtain- 

 ing them with the facilities at hand. To attempt to formulate 

 such work would at once deprive it of its freshness. The student 

 may well be referred to the current technical press and to the 

 transactions of the engineering societies for suggestions as to 

 subject matter for further study and also as to methods to be 

 adopted. 



With reference to prepared blanks and forms, the writer be- 

 lieves that their use can be, and often is, carried too far, leading 

 perhaps to good technical but not to good pedagogical results. In 

 a certain sense the one who prepares the forms and lays out the 

 work is the one who really performs the experiment, the tabu- 

 lators of data being assistants who, for commercial work, require 

 only a common school education. 



Progress undoubtedly results from the development of indi- 

 vidualism and if room for such development is to be given in a 

 college course specifically in a college laboratory course the 

 more or less standardized instruction must needs be reduced so 

 as not to fill the entire available time. The natural tendency has 

 been quite the reverse. Two decades ago, the study of electrical 

 engineering meant, practically, the study of direct currents, there 

 being little else. Laboratory courses were developed in which the 

 whole available time was well filled with test after test upon 



