40 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXII. No. 810 



is largely applied physics. A civil engi- 

 neer at the head of that department in a 

 large technical school recently admitted 

 that engineering students should take a 

 course in light because of their use of op- 

 tical instruments in surveys and locations, 

 but he expressed the opinion that they had 

 no use for the study of sound. And yet 

 the abatement of serious and unnecessary 

 noises in large cities is already the avowed 

 object of several voluntary organizations. 

 Any observant traveler, who has occasion 

 to patronize the New York subways, will 

 readily admit that some attention to the 

 avoidance of noise on the part of the civil 

 engineers who designed the subways would 

 have been of great benefit to the patrons 

 of that wonderful artery of travel. When 

 the London Central was first put in service 

 seventy-five feet below the surface, com- 

 plaints and suits at law were numerous on 

 the ground of serious vibrations transmit- 

 ted to buildings overhead. These vibra- 

 tions have largely been eliminated by re- 

 constructing the electric engines to prevent 

 their pounding the rails. Such facts as 

 these the modern engineer would do well 

 to heed. 



An engineering course should include 

 instruction in history and economics. The 

 great civic and economic facts of the larger 

 world should be a part of the engineer's 

 outfit. His part in the world's work has 

 close connection with those social and eco- 

 nomic movements that are conditioned on 

 future development; and the only guide 

 we have for the -future is the teaching of 

 the past. 



If present courses in engineering are to 

 conform to these suggestions, some modifi- 

 cations in the purely technical subjects are 

 requisite. Instmction in these may well 

 be confined more closely to fundamental 

 principles and to the enforcement of them 

 by the concrete examples furnished by the 



exercises in the laboratory. A multitude 

 of details do not belong in the instruction 

 given to iramature students, but to the 

 actual work of the practising engineer. If 

 inquiry is made of the experienced engi- 

 neer from whom he got the most help in 

 his college course, he will not mention the 

 teacher whose instruction consisted largely 

 of a category of details of the engineering 

 art, but rather the one who marshaled the 

 leading facts of the subject under general 

 principles, brought out clearly the correla- 

 tion between them, and enforced them by 

 the work of the laboratory, which had obvi- ' 

 ous and vital connection with the instruc- 

 tion of the class-room. 



My friends, I have seen young men de- 

 velop into engineers who are now engaged 

 in leading work in the world. They are 

 directing large operations in telephone 

 companies, holding influential posts in elec- 

 tric light and power industries, directing 

 new enterprises destined to develop re- 

 sources, superintending mamifactures of 

 large moment, and supervising construc- 

 tion undertaken by the Reclamation Serv- 

 ice of the federal government. Such men 

 as these give me great hope for the future 

 of this institute planted in the most at- 

 tractive spot in the empire of California 

 south of the Tehachepi. This is a region 

 abounding in undeveloped possibilities. 

 Its water powers, its mines, its reservoirs- 

 of liquid fuel, its irrigation possibilities, 

 coupled with a soil in which nature has 

 been lavish in her gifts of productiveness, 

 and its ocean shore in touch with the 

 wealth of the orient, all combine to offer a 

 field to the aspiring engineer unsurpassed 

 in history and written all over M'ith fetch- 

 ing inducements to noblest effort. 



The young man who wishes to become a 

 component part of this empire as an engi- 

 neer will enter this institute and take a 

 straight course, looking for no short cuts- 



