November 2, 1900.] 



SCIENCE. 



&m 



tached to the arbitrary measure of time 

 that we call a century. The main course 

 of history is not much affected by the ar- 

 bitrary transition from one century to an- 

 other. But custom has established the 

 turn of the century as an appropriate time 

 to record the past and forecast the future. 

 Since to this Society is entrusted more than 

 to any other agency the future of engineer- 

 ing education in this country, and since we 

 as a nation have risen out of the Monroe 

 doctrine and our isolation, and have taken 

 our first steps to become one of the number 

 of great powers that assume to direct the 

 course of civilization and decide the destiny 

 of the rest of the world, and since this 

 nation largely through the work of the en- 

 gineer is making rapid progress toward the 

 commercial conquest of the world — the 

 present seems an auspicious occasion on 

 which to study briefly the progress of en- 

 gineering education. 



The century just closing has witnessed a 

 marvelous development in all matters re- 

 lating to education. Probably the most re- 

 markable feature of the educational history 

 of the century is the extension of the op- 

 portunities of an education to the common 

 people as a right. To-day there is nothing 

 in this country so free as education, and 

 the United States is far in the lead of foreign 

 countries in school attendance, about one- 

 fourth of the school population of the world 

 being Americans. 



At the beginning of the century there 

 were thirty colleges in the United States 

 with about 3,000 students, while to-day 

 there are 472 collegiate institutions with 

 155,000 students. But the mere iucrease 

 in numbers is not the most significant fea- 

 ture. The colleges then were of a lower 

 grade than most academies to-day. This 

 is the explanation of the frequent mention 

 in the biographies of men of that time that 

 they graduated at the age of 15 or younger. 

 The remarkable improvements in the meth- 



ods of instruction have been both a cause 

 and an effect of the popularization of edu^ 

 cation. 



Another important element in the de- 

 velopment of education in America has 

 been the munificent contributions of indi*- 

 viduals and of governments to the ca,use of 

 education . The movement in this direction , 

 during the closing years of the century, has 

 been at a rapidly accelerated rate, and is 

 therefore an element of great promise for 

 the future. 



Technical education, the application of 

 the sciences to the needs of man, is a 

 growth entirely of this century. Appar- 

 ently the first technical school in the world 

 was the Ecole Polytechnique in France, es« 

 tablished in 1794 to train men for the artil- 

 lery and engineering corps of the army. 

 The U. S. Military Academy was founded 

 in 1802, and for more than thirty years 

 thereafter was the only organized agency 

 for engineering education in America. For 

 three-quarters of a century a surprising 

 proportion of the graduates of this insti- 

 tution practiced engineering in civil life, 

 not because the education there given was 

 what would now be called engineering in- 

 struction, but because it was the best prep- 

 aration for engineering practice that could 

 then be obtained. Apparently this fact has 

 been overlooked alike by friendly and un- 

 friendly critics of this noted institution. 

 In 1825 at Troy, N". Y., was organized the 

 first institution in the world for giving in* 

 struction in engineering not military. Ap- 

 parently at the time of the founding of this 

 institution the term civil engineering had 

 not been coined, the word engineering being 

 synonomous with military engineering. , 



For thirty years after the establishment 

 of the engineering school at Troy, i. e. , from 

 1825 to the close of the civil war, only four 

 engineering schools were founded, of which 

 only two were really entitled to the nanie 

 engineering. During this time the engi- 



