November 14, 1903.] 



SCIENCE. 



in 



was an elaborate system of tutorial classes, 

 where numerical and squared paper exer- 

 cise work was done; there were classes in 

 experimental plane and solid geometry, 

 including much graphical calculation ; boys 

 were taught to make drawing-office draw- 

 ings in pencil only, and ti'acings and blue 

 prints, such as would be respected in the 

 workshop, and not the ordinary drawing- 

 class drawings, which cannot be respected 

 an_yAvhere; but the most important part of 

 the training was in the laboratory, in which 

 every student worked, making quantitative 

 experiments. An offer of a 100-ton test- 

 ing machine for that laboratory was made 

 but refused ; the advanced students usually 

 had one opportunity given them of testing 

 with a large machine, but not in their own 

 laboratory. I consider that there is very 

 little educational value in such a machine ; 

 the student thinks of the great machine,* 

 * These great testing-machines, so common in 

 the larger colleges, seem to have destroyed all 

 Idea of scientific experiment. There is so much 

 that the engineer wants to know, and yet labora- 

 tory people are persistently and lazily repeating 

 old work suggested and begun by engineers of 

 sixty years ago. For example, men like Fair- 

 bairn and Robert Napier would long ago have 

 found out the behavior of materials under com- 

 bined stresses. We do not even know the condi- 

 tion of strength of iron or steel in a twisted shaft 

 wliich is also a beam. The theory of strength 

 of a gun or thick tube under hydraulic pressure 

 is no clearer now than it was fifty years ago. The 

 engineer asks for actual information derived from 

 actual trial, and we offer him the ' cauld kail het 

 again ' stuff falsely called ' theoretical,' which is 

 found in all the text-books (my own among 

 others ) . These great colleges of university rank 

 ought to recognize that it is their duty to increase 

 knowledge through the work of their advanced 

 students. The duty is not neglected in the 

 electrical departments of some of the colleges. 

 Perhaps the most instructive reference is to the 

 work done at the Central Technical College of the 

 City and Guilds Institute at South Kensington, as 

 described by Professor Ayrton in some of the 

 papers already referred to. I cannot imagine a 

 better development of the Finsbury idea in the 

 work of the highest kind of engineering college. 



and not of the tiny specimen. Junior 

 students loaded wires and beams, or twisted 

 things with very visible weights, and saw 

 exactly what was happening, or they 

 studied vibrating bodies. Many hours 

 were devoted to experiments on a battered, 

 rusty old screw-jack, or some other lifting 

 machine, its efficiency under many kinds 

 of load being determined, and students 

 studied their observations, using squared 

 paper, as intently as if nobody had ever 

 made such experiments before. There was 

 one piece of apparatus, an old fly-wheel 

 bought at a rag-and-bone shop, to which 

 kinetic energy was given by a falling 

 weight, which, I remember, occupied the 

 attention of four white-headed directors of 

 electric companies in 1882 (evening stu- 

 dents) for many weeks. A casual first 

 measurement led on to corrections for fric- 

 tion and stiffness of a cord, and much else 

 of a most interesting kind. At the end of 

 six weeks these gentlemen had gained a 

 most thorough computational acquaintance 

 with every important principle of mechan- 

 ics, a knowledge never to be forgotten. 

 They had also had a revelation such as 

 comes to the true experimenter— but that 

 is too deep a subject. 



Perhaps teachers in the greater colleges 

 will smile in a superior way when they 

 hear of this kind of experimental mechan- 

 ics being called engineering laboratory 

 work. True, it was elementary mechanics ; 

 but is not every principle wliich every en- 

 gineer constantly needs called a mere ele- 

 mentary principle of mechanics by superior 

 persons? I find that these elementary 

 principles are very much unknown to men 

 who have passed through elaborate mathe- 

 matical studies of mechanics. Students 

 found out in that laboratory the worth of 

 formula; they gained courage in making 

 calculations from formula, for they had 

 found out the extent of their own ignorance 

 and knowledge. 



