September 5, 1901J 



NA TURE 



463 



an interval between school and collei^e should be passed in an 

 engineering works was not generally accepted. In the opinion 

 of most speakers, it is better for a youth to go straight from 

 school to a technical college for three years, and to obtain work- 

 shop experience after the college training, than to enter works 

 at once. Dr. E. Hopkinson pointed out that for a boy to leave 

 school at about the age of sixteen, and to enter a workshop with 

 the idea of returning to school or college after an interval of two 

 or three years involves a break in the scholastic course, and in 

 habits of learning, which often has disastrous results. The best 

 men are usually those who have had a continuous school and 

 college career up to twenty-two or twenty-three years of age 



.Another plan proposed is a combination of the half factory 

 and half technical school, and this system is now under the con- 

 sideration of the Manchester .\ssociation of Engineers. Mr. 

 M. 1*. Higgins advocates the establishment ot schools of this 

 kind in an article in the .August number of Feildeiis Magazine. 

 Such a school should, he says, possess the following features : — 

 (i) a first-class commercially .successful and productive machine- 

 shop, which is a department coordinate in importance, influence 

 and educational value with the academic department ; (2) the 

 pupils to be given instruction and practice in this shop during 

 half the working hours in five days of each week, for a period ol 

 four years ; (3) instruction in the public schools to be given 

 during a portion of the other half of the time, equivalent to a 

 high-school course, restricted, abridged and improved to meet 

 the needs of these pupils ; (4) special care and method of selec- 

 tion of pupils who have finished the grammar-school course 

 and who have special aptitude for mechanical work ; (5) manage- 

 ment under a corporation whose trustees shall be practical 

 business men. 



If technical colleges were equipped with ordinary commercial 

 apparatus and machines and kept in complete touch with 

 engineering advances, much of the difficulty as to training would 

 be removed, for students at such colleges would be able to com- 

 bine the realities of the workshop with the theoretical instruc- 

 tion. But, as Dr. Nicolson pointed out in his paper, the data 

 available in an engineering school are seldom of the latest, 

 unless the teacher spends his summer in obtaining them. The 

 instructor in electrical engineering has the special difliculty of 

 the newness and constant development of his sul)ject to contend 

 with ; but if he follows the practice of every year visiting the 

 plants of the manufacturing companies and typical light and 

 power stations, information is obtained which cannot be found 

 in engineering literature and which has the highest value for 

 educational purposes. The cultivation of close relations between 

 the college and the practising profession should, indeed, be part 

 of the duty of instructors and ought to be eagerly reciprocated 

 by the working engineers as one of the surest ways of meeting 

 foreign competition. 



The closer sympathy between science and fndustry is, indeed, 

 probably the most important factor to be considered. Engineers 

 should see that technical colleges are brought into contact with 

 current work, and arrangements might be made whereby young 

 men from works could be sent from works to the laboratories of 

 scientific institutions to carry on researches for the benefit of the 

 firms employing them. This system is already partly in vogue 

 in Germany and America, and has produced very gratifjing 

 results. 



This summary of opinion may appropriately be concluded with 

 some extracts from an article on the engineer of the twentieth 

 century, by Prof. V. C. Alderson, Dean of the Armour Institute 

 of Technology, Chicago. 



"In the realm of mathematics the training of the engineer 

 will be most rigid and exact. He will cut loose from the ideal- 

 istic, academic mathematics, as the student of higher literature 

 will cut loose from mere grammars. liis mathematics must run 

 down through his fingers, as it were. Mere juggling with 

 symbols will be useless to him. He must regard his mathe- 

 matics as one of his tools, as a means to an end, or as a language 

 in which to express his thoughts. The future engineer may be 

 successful if his training has included a greater or less amount 

 of shop practice with perhaps indifferent laboratory instruction 

 and a meagre equipment, but no engineer can be broadly 

 successful and thoroughly competent without a deep and 

 exhaustive theoretical treatment of engineering subjects. This 

 does away with the common opinion that literature and books 

 are not essential to the engineer's success, for the next quarter 

 of a century will see the engineering profession rise to the 

 dignity of the older professions. 



" The conditions which will beset the engineer of the twen- 

 tieth century will be exacting beyond anything we now know. 

 The importance of a strong foundation in scientific principles 

 cannot be over-estimated, for scientific principles are only the 

 laws of nature. These principles cannot be learned readily 

 after a man has begun his life work. His whole energy will 

 then be devoted to applying these principles correctly, not in 

 acquiring them laboriously. It will be a prime necessity for 

 the technical college of the future to lay these foundations 

 broad and deep. It will be regarded as a weakness for a college 

 to teach its students only the knacks of the profession, only just 

 enough to be an ordinary draughtsman, a tolerable surveyor, or 

 first-class linesman. 



" The technical graduate of the twentieth century will be 

 marked by certain characteristics which are too rarely found in 

 men trained in the colleges of literature and arts. Among the.<;e 

 are directness of purpose, intellectual accuracy and clear think- 

 ing. The student of science and technology is trained in the 

 realm of realities, where to commit error, to act without purpose, 

 or to think vaguel)' are seen at once to be fruitful of harm. 

 Econoinic and industrial needs will bring education from the 

 cloistered lecture-room into the open air of the laboratory. 

 Technical education will have a practical, helpful bearing upon 

 the problems of life. No longer will the seclusion of the 

 scholar be a mark of honour. Education will be found at the 

 bench, by the forge, in the shop, the laboratory and the draft- 

 ing-room, as well as in the library. The lesson to be taught 

 will be how to apply scientific ideas to the solution of problems 

 actually arising in the struggle to bring the forces of nature 

 under the sway of man. 



" As technical education develops, questions of far-reaching 

 importance must be settled. Probably the most important will 

 be the decision as to what kind of man shall guide the technical 

 college. In law, medical and theological schools, the lawyer, 

 the doctor and the minister, respectively, hold first place and 

 have much to say both in the actual training and in the manage- 

 ment of the schools. Prominent members of the profession 

 direct the destinies ot the schools. To a much less extent do 

 practising engineers influence the technical schools. 



" The engineering college represents that form of scientific 

 education must suitable to the exacting demands of advancing 

 civilisation. The particular form of education which it gives 

 through shop and laboratory practice, through practical tests, 

 through acquaintance with the needs of industry, must not and 

 will not be retarded by the classic heirlooms of the literary 

 college. The engineering college must fill its own niche and 

 work out its own salvation. Technical education is an educa- 

 tional and not an engineering problem. 



" The technical college in which the future engineer is to be 

 trained has several important characteristics to maintain. First, 

 to educate scientifically and technically those who shall lead the 

 march of the coming civilisation in industrial lines ; second, to 

 educate the public to a true sense of the value of applying 

 scientific principles to industrial processes ; third, as the uni- 

 versity has for one of its functions the extension of human 

 knowledge in any and all lines, so the technical colleges will 

 recognise that the investigation of questions relating to applied 

 science is within its own sphere of usefulness. Probably no 

 investigation to-day would be more fruitful of good results to 

 the engineering profession and to the public at large than the 

 systematic study and thorough test of materials of construction. 

 Such an investigation done on a large scale, on specimens of 

 full building size, in a scientific manner, would save millions of 

 dollars and put the science of construction on a scientific and 

 economic basis. While the university asks no questions about 

 the usefulness of the information gathered within its walls, the 

 technical college must make its investigations in fields that are 

 distinctly useful." 



NO. 1662, VOL. 64] 



UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 

 IN TELLIGENCE. 

 Lord Avebury referred to the neglect of scientific educa- 

 tion in secondary schools, in an address dtlivered at Nottingham 

 on Tuesday, before the Association of Chambers of Commerce 

 of the United Kingdom. He pointed out that the public 

 schools are legally bound, by the regulaticms made by Lord 

 Salisbury's Royal Commission, to give in all examinations one- 

 eighth of the marks for mathematics, one-eighth for modern 

 languages, and one-eighth for science. How science fares may 



