84 



NATURE 



[September 19, 1912 



disposal to make some observations upon a larger and 

 more general theme. The thesis which 1 propose to 

 uphold mav not fall very obviously within the scope 

 of the original aims of the British Association, but it 

 has, at least, an intimate bearing on the work of those 

 who are concerned with the applications of mechanical 

 science. 



Tredgold's oft-quoted definition of engineering as 

 "the art of directing the great sources of power in 

 nature for the use and convenience of man " may well 

 be taken, and often has been taken, as a text upon 

 which to hang a discourse on the importance of the 

 profession to which many of us belong, the leading 

 part it has played in the process of civilisation, and 

 the dependence of the world to-day on its activities. 

 But the words suggest failures as well as achieve- 

 ments, and responsibilities no less than privileges. 

 The definition suggests that the engineer not only 

 fails in his vocation if he does not accomplish some- 

 thing for the use and convenience of man, but further, 

 that he acts contrary to the spirit of his profession 

 if he directs the sources of power in nature to the 

 unuse' or inconvenience of inan ; and surely we must 

 understand by "man" not the engineer's immediate 

 client but mankind in general. The works of the 

 engineer are to be used by some people ; they have to 

 be endured bv all. 



Taking the' highest view of our calling — and surely 

 we do not hold that ours is in any sense a sordid 

 or selfish vocation — the engineer fails in the fulfilment 

 of his duty in so far as his works are detrimental to 

 the health or destructive to the property of the com- 

 munitv, or in so far as they are unnecessarily offen- 

 sive to any of the senses of those who are compelled 

 to live with them. There has been too great a neglect 

 of such considerations. The medical practitioner is 

 held to be negligent of his duty if he acts solely in 

 the immediate interests of his patient, and does not 

 take due precaution to guard against the spread of 

 disease or the offence of the community by the exhibi- 

 tion of unsightly forms. We should take as high a 

 view of our responsibilities. 



In his presidential address to the Association last 

 vear. Sir Wm. Ramsay said that the question for the 

 engineer has come to be not "can it be done?" but 

 "will it pay to do it? " The answer to this question, 

 in respect to anv particular proposal, depends on the 

 width of view vve take in answering two preliminary 

 questions: whose interests are we to consider? and, 

 what do we mean by paying? Of course, there are 

 limits that must be set in answering each of these ; 

 mv present contention is that these limits are usually 

 much too narrowly drawn. A road surveyor may save 

 a few pence or shillings to his county council by 

 leaving a piece of newly metalled road unrolled — 

 because the clock strikes the hour for retiring — and 

 mav therebv cause expense, amounting to pounds, it 

 may be to hundreds of pounds, through damage to 

 motor-cars or the laming of horses (not to speak of 

 loss of life or limb), to the users of the road, who 

 are, after all, the clientele he is there to serve. Does 

 it pav? The authorities of a city will spend large 

 sums on the adornment of the streets with stately and 

 ornate buildings, and on the purchase of works of art 



and rip-htiv so, though comparativelv few of the 



citizens can apnreciate or even give themselves the 

 chance of apnreciatlng them — while they will tolerate 

 or even be directlv responsible for the running on 

 these same streets of quite unnecessarilv ugly and 

 noisv tramcars, and congratulate themselves on the 

 drawing of a paltry income from the display of hideous 

 advertisements that are constantly before the eyes of 



1 We have no word to denote very clearly the negative of use, as the term 



here applied : unitse may serve for the present. 



NO. 2238. VOL. go] 



the whole community. Does it pay thus to separate 

 a2sthetic from utilitarian demands and interests? 



It is too much to assume that engineers could meet 

 all the reasonable demands of their immediate clients 

 without producing, at least temporarily, secondary 

 effects that may be of inconvenience to some members 

 of the community. Bacon, indeed, said that " The 

 introduction of new Inventions seemeth to be the very 

 chief of all human actions. Inventions make all men 

 happy without either Injury or Damage to any one 

 single Person." But Bacon was a philosopher, and 

 dealt with ideals rather than with hard facts, and in his 

 times inventors had not yet begun to dominate all the 

 elements of our physical environment. Had he lived 

 to-day beside one of our country roads he might have 

 had something to say, in another key, regarding 

 motor-cars and dust ; or had his lot been cast in the 

 proximitv of a great centre of industry he might have 

 modified his conviction of the universality of the 

 benefits conferred by the inventor. He might even 

 have been disposed to agree with a literary man of 

 to-dav who is reported as asserting that "The uni- 

 versal and blatant intrusion of Science into our lives 

 has resulted in a total disappearance of repose." 

 Isolated and unqualified statements such as those I 

 have quoted are like proverbs — you can always find 

 two that are directly opposed. The truth lies about 

 midway between these extremes, or rather there are 

 aspects of the facts in regard to which one is an 

 approach to the truth, and aspects in which the other 

 has some justification. Our aim should be to make 

 Bacon's dictum have more of truth and Mr. Stephen 

 Coleridge's assertion have less foundation in fact. 

 And the outlook seems to me to be a very hopeful 

 one, though to be able to take an altogether favour- 

 able view of the tendencies of the present time, one 

 must be an optimist of the true order — " One who can 

 scent the harvest while the snow is on the ground." 



When we examine into the immediate causes of the 

 injuries and inconveniences that result from our 

 activities we find that they are due in all, or almost 

 all, cases to failures rather than to successes. The 

 more completely the engineer achieves the primary 

 end of his work the less is the damage or injury that 

 can be laid to his charge. If it can be shown that 

 this is a very general law, as I think it can be, we 

 may look forward to the elimination, as a direct result 

 of progress in the mechanical arts, of the nuisances 

 and inconveniences for which, in some measure at 

 least, we must accept responsibility. And not only 

 so, but the converse will be equally true — the more we 

 keep in view the removal or avoidance of anything 

 that can cause offence, the more rapidly we shall 

 advance in the attainment of the primary ends at 

 which we aim. Consider, by way of example, the 

 nuisance to which I have referred, and of which we 

 hear so much — the raising of dust by motor-cars. I 

 shall not discuss the debated question as to how far 

 the motor-car produces dust^ or only distributes It, nor 

 shall I deal in detail with the possible remedies. We 

 hope to have a paper on the subject at this meeting 

 from one of our leading authorities. For my present 

 purpose it suffices to point out that it is no part of 

 the function of a road surface to fritter itself down 

 into dust under traffic of any kind. The ideal road 

 would be one that would not wear at all, and the 

 nearer we approach this ideal of a permanent road 

 surface, the less will be the inconvenience caused, not 

 only to those responsible for the upkeep of the road, 

 but to the eeneral public, .^nd conversely, the more 

 attention we give to the devising of a dustless road 

 the more rapid will be our advance towards the pro- 

 vision of one best suited for all the purposes which 

 a road is intended to serve. We had dusty roads 



