i88 SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL EDUCATION 



girls may pleasantly and usefully dress their dolls, but no woman 

 could in two or even three college terms learn to be a successful 

 milliner by cutting out dolls' clothes for an hour three times a 

 week ; and yet I sometimes hear what is no better than this 

 advocated as a necessary adjunct to engineering teaching at a 

 university. The young professional engineer does not simply 

 learn in the works how to file and chip. He learns the time 

 required for all manner of jobs, the finish required in each class 

 of work, the way the various parts are handled, the forms which 

 are convenient, the routine of the shop, the character of the men 

 the system of storage, the materials and sizes to be bought in 

 the market, and hundreds of other facts, which can only be made 

 his own after contact with manufacture on a full scale. We 

 cannot imitate this in college. 



But the workshop, in connection with the measuring class, 

 is a legitimate and almost necessary complement. The work 

 done in this workshop is not the same as that of any trading 

 concern, although it bears some similarity to that of the prac- 

 tical optician. In such a workshop, the student may be usefully 

 occupied in adjusting, repairing, and modifying the apparatus 

 he requires ; he may thus learn to use both hand and eye, and 

 he may gain some practical knowledge of materials ; he can, in 

 fact, acquire such skill in a number of the minor arts as will be 

 of much use to him in experimental work ; used in this way, the 

 laboratory workshop may teach him much which he cannot 

 easily learn in large engineering or manufacturing works. 



Scientific research for the most advanced and best endowed 

 students ; measurement classes open to all in all branches of 

 exact science, and a common laboratory where apparatus of all 

 kinds can be repaired, adjusted, modified, with the help of highly 

 skilled workmen. This is the general picture which I have 

 endeavoured to draw of a college fully equipped for practical 

 scientific teaching. I have not touched on the study of theory, 

 which must precede or accompany the practical training. This 

 lies outside my subject. I have laid most stress on measure- 

 ment classes, because it has seemed to me that while the import- 

 ance of this teaching is patent both to men of science and men 

 of practice, the organisation of these classes admits of consider- 

 able improvement and great extension. 



