July 19, 1901.] 



SCIENCE. 



87 



men of great natural ability and good judg- 

 ment, and capable of conceiving and exe- 

 cuting great projects. One of the greatest 

 of them, John Smeaton, who was the first 

 Englishman to call himself a civil engineer, 

 thus expressed his conception of the profes- 

 sion which he adorned : 



" Civil engineers are a self-created set of men whose 

 profession owes its origin not to power or influence, 

 but to the best of all protection, the encouragement 

 of a great and powerful nation, a nation become so 

 from the industry and steadiness of its manufacturing 

 workmen and their superior knowledge in practical 

 chemistry, mechanics, natural philosophy and other 

 useful accomplishments." 



Smeaton was himself an investigator, but 

 he is the "only one of the civil engineers of 

 Great Britain during the eighteenth century 

 who strove to discover the laws which gov- 

 erned the operations of Nature. 



The most eminent civil engineer in Eng- 

 land in the year 1800 was Thomas Telford, 

 who was born in 1757. Beginning life as 

 a mason, he developed an extraordinary 

 faculty of generalization, combined with an 

 intimate acquaintance with the details of 

 workmanship in all the methods of con- 

 struction known in those days. In the 

 building of canals, highways, harbors, 

 bridges and docks he displayed great grasp 

 of the subject of the improvement of 

 transportation facilities, as then existing, 

 and great boldness of design and ingenuity 

 in construction. 



But it must be borne in mind that at that 

 time the canal was considered the only 

 possible mode of increasing facilities of 

 transportation and reducing cost, no motive 

 power except animal force was known, the 

 metals were but little used in construction, 

 and a framed structure adapted to bear 

 heavy loads was unknown. As ' an emi- 

 nent mathematician,' quoted in the Edin- 

 burgh Review in 1805, remarked : 



" "While we give ourselves infinite trouble to pur- 

 sue investigations relating to the motions and masses 

 of bodies which move at immeasurable distances from 



our planet, we have never thought of determining: 

 the forces necessary to prevent the roofs of our houses 

 from falling on our heads." 



It is related of Telford that when on one 

 occasion he was consulted by a young man 

 as to the advisability of his engaging in 

 civil engineering, he said to him : " I have 

 made all the canals and all the roads and 

 all the harbors. I don't see what there is 

 that you can expect to do." 



His ideas regarding the training of the 

 civil engineer are given at some length in 

 his Personal Memoirs prepared shortly be- 

 fore his death. 



"Youths of respectability and competent education 

 who contemplate Civil Engineering as a profession, 

 are seldom aware how far they ought to descend in 

 order to found the basis for future elevation. Not 

 only are the natural senses of seeing and feeling req- 

 uisite in the examination of materials, but also the 

 practiced eye, and the hand which has experience of 

 the kind and qualities of stone, of lime, of iron, of 

 timber, and even of earth, and of the effects of human 

 ingenuity in applying and combining all these sub- 

 stances, is necessary for arriving at mastery in the 

 profession. For how can a man give judicious di- 

 rections unless he possesses personal knowledge of 

 the details requisite to effect his ultimate purpose in 

 the best and cheapest manner? 



"It has happened to me more than once, when 

 taking opportunities of being useful to a young man 

 of merit, that I have experienced opposition in taking 

 him from his books and his drawings and placing a 

 mallet, chisel or trowel in his hand, till rendered con- 

 fident by the solid knowledge which experience only 

 can bestow, he was qualified to insist on the due per- 

 formance of workmanship and to judge of merit in 

 the lower as w^ll as the higher departments of a pro- 

 fession in which no kind or degree of practical 

 knowledge is superfluous." 



This is doubtless good, sound doctrine, 

 but it does not betoken any very lofty con- 

 ception of the aims and ends of the profes- 

 sion. But during the first quarter of the 

 nineteenth century Telford stood at the 

 head of the profession of civil engineering, 

 and when, in 1820, the recently formed as- 

 sociation of its practitioners for mutual ad- 

 vancement in science, which was termed 

 the Institution of Civil Engineers, desired 



