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It enables us to get all the knowledge, which men 

 took a thousand years to acquire by experience, in 

 the course of two or three years. The experience 

 of others in the same line of business at the present 

 time enables us to get the thought which thousands 

 nen are putting upon their work, instead of 

 being confined to the thinking we ourselves can do. 



nee. Whether we realize it or 



not, we are using the experience of the past. 



whole organization of industry is based upon 



past experience and the books which have been 



ren about that past experience. The student 

 who goes to a university to take an engineering 

 course does not learn how to be an engineer. He 

 learns what the engineers, who spent their lives 

 in engineering, have said about their discoveries; 

 so that when he is out of college he begins to get 

 his practical experience and applies his knowledge 



:ie engineering problems of the day. If he did 

 not know about the things which had already been 



ovcrcd, he would rediscover a great m 

 things and spend a lot of time and energy in work- 

 ing them out. Now they can be studied and ab- 

 sorbed by him in a very much smaller space of 

 tim n he becomes an engineer he is often 



he society of engineers, he reads the technical 

 papers and, through these means, he learns of the 

 things which other engineers arc discovering in 

 their practice. He discusses his problems 

 other engineers and in that way his mind is capable 

 of using a vast amount of material which he could 



accumulate in his own experience. 



