.S7/0 WILLIAM SIEMENS^ F.R.S. 275 



meat being similarly situated had to resort to similar means, and 

 to establish Cooper's Hill Engineering College. 



la this country, where happily the great commercial interests, 

 with one exception, are still in private hands, educational estab- 

 lishments on the Continental model would be, I consider, inap- 

 propriate. The object a young man has in view is not the 

 attainment of a snug position in a Government establishment, 

 but to be fitted by his education for the great battle of life, in 

 which he will T>e judged, not by the answers he can give to 

 certain set questions in his competitive examination, but rather 

 by the faculty he may have acquired of realising useful results 

 under even'adverse circumstances and conditions. 



The time was, not long ago, when the opinion prevailed in this 

 country that useful knowledge could only be attained in the work- 

 shop ; that a lad, after having mastered the three R's at a primary 

 school, had to be bound to a manufacturer or craftsman for a 

 period of seven years, where his time was occupied in routine work 

 or in mechanical repetitions of one and the same operation, causing 

 him to give up thinking altogether, and to become what was digni- 

 fied by the appellation of " practical man " a man of notions, 

 with a supreme contempt of theory or science. The reign of this 

 practical man par excellence is happily drawing to a close ; for 

 those who wish to treasure up his memory, I would recommend a 

 lucid description of him by my friend Sir Frederick Bramwell in 

 his presidential address to the Mechanical Section of the British 

 Association in 1872 (which may be found in the Transactions of 

 that year). Since then Sir Frederick Bramwell has done much to 

 hasten the burial of the character he describes, in making himself 

 the principal promoter, of that splendid endowment, the City and 

 Guilds of London Institute, which, under wise direction, cannot 

 fail to exercise a very important influence on the educational 

 development of the country. 



Having now spoken, somewhat disparagingly, I fear, of both 

 the old English system and of the more recent Continental system 

 of technical education, I shall be asked, no doubt, what in my 

 opinion should be the plan adopted in preparing the mechanical 

 engineer, the manufacturer, and the artisan of the future, for their 

 respective careers. The answer to such a question is one involved 

 in much difficulty, scarcely admitting of universal solution. There 



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