174 Transactions of the American Institute. 



works ; bridges over rivers, hcarbors and docks, and tlie reclamation 

 of lands under water. The great canals of France, Holland, and 

 Great Britain, and the improvement of rivers ; the thousands of acres 

 of wet docks in England and France to overcome the inconvenience 

 of the tidal wave, harbors and light-houses, show the progress of the 

 profession for the next two centuries. The last century has been 

 characterized by the application of steam to water and land transport, 

 and to every variety of mechanical operations, to the product and 

 manipulation of metals, to telegraph, and to printing in its various 

 improved forms. Some of the most distinguished of the earlier of the 

 modern engineers were recruited from other trades and professions, 

 and were drawn into it from circumstances, or a natural inclination 

 toward the study of the phj^sical sciences. With the continued 

 advance of refined civilization, the demand for this service called for 

 a higher degree of elementary education, until it has required from 

 the modern engineer not onlv the highest degree of knowledge in the 

 physical sciences, but also long practical experience and sound judg- 

 ment in the application of such knowledge. During this period the 

 profession, as in all others, has suffered somewhat in the public 

 estimation by pretenders, quacks, and charlatans. The wide dissemi- 

 nation of knowledge among our American people has now reached a 

 point which enables the claims and merits of an engineer to be fairly 

 judged, and henceforth such pretenders will be employed only in 

 schemes of doubtful expediency, or by those who are themselves but 

 little acquainted with the ordinary principles of science. The ordeal 

 of criticism by our daily and other periodical journals serves not only 

 to expose such pretentious claims, but also to I'estrain the eccentricities 

 of genius, and now compels the engineer to the enunciation of pm*ely 

 practical plans. 



The Locomotive. 

 I have referred to the effect of the great discoveries and appliances 

 of engineering upon modern progress. The first of these of which I 

 shall speak is the locomotive, a machine of purely modern invention. 

 When I first entered the profession, but little more than forty yearg 

 ago, it had not been successfully used anywhere, and was almost 

 wholly unknown in this country. At the beginning of this century, 

 a rude machine of this kind was invented by oar countryman, Oliver 

 Evans, and, a few years later, was reinvented in England ; and after 

 the trial of many modifications and expedients, during the succeeding 



