388 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XIV. No. 350. 



this part of the problem, important as it is, 

 may well be left open until the ' scope ' of 

 the great work to be done is well in hand. 

 Dr. Thurston in his report has given an 

 interesting resume of the space occupied by 

 the student in the various German technical 

 schools, remarking that the German motto 

 ' Viel Platz, Viel Licht, Viel Luft,' would 

 be an excellent guide in determining this 

 question. He says: "Ample space, good 

 light and plenty of fresh air are essential, 

 although the architect who should be the 

 most earnest and intelligent of them all is 

 often woefully deficient in appreciation of 

 their importance when brain work is going 

 on." Dr. Thurston farther states that tak- 

 ing figures fi'om the best German technical 

 schools, which are based on the largest ex- 

 perience, the school of architecture at Ber- 

 lin has 150 feet floor space per student, the 

 engineering school 35 feet, but this latter 

 school is so much over-crowded that ar- 

 rangements are being made to give the 

 student in this department at least 75 feet 

 of floor space. In marine engineering 111 

 feet are provided and in metallurgy and the 

 chemical departments each student has 426 

 square feet of space. Professor Thurston 

 advises not less than 30 square feet per stu- 

 dent in class rooms, in drawing rooms 

 about 100 and in laboratories from 150 to 

 500 feet, according to character of the work 

 to be done and magnitude of the space 

 required for machinery and apparatus. 



The Brupswick school has 410 feet floor 

 space per student in all departments. At 

 Karlsruhe 450 square feet is provided in the 

 department of electrotechnics. The cost 

 of the Berlin building is placed at $1,000 

 per student, of the Brunswick buildings 

 $2,000 per student. From this data it can 

 be seen that an institution which may be 

 called upon to provide for a thousand 

 students at once, and perhaps three or four 

 times that number in the near future, must 

 be planned upon a most liberal scale to 



meet the demands which will be made 

 upon it, and here we shall be confronted 

 with the cost of such buildings. "With the 

 knowledge that Mr. Carnegie would not 

 be satisfied with buildings devoid of archi- 

 tectural beauty, I feel morally certain that 

 he would not be willing to invest his 

 millions in buildings not properly con- 

 structed for the specific purpose for which 

 they are intended, and with all regard to 

 the society of architects, it is to be hoped 

 that utility will be the first question solved 

 in this important undertaking. 



In a recent communication from Dr. 

 Barker, of the University of Pennsylvania, 

 upon this subject he says: "I hope the 

 mistake will not be made of spending too 

 much money upon buildings. The order of 

 expenditure should be as follows : (a) In- 

 struction ; (6) endowment ; (e) equipment; 

 {d) building ; by this I mean that the 

 securing of the very best ability in the men 

 in all the departments is an absolute de- 

 sideratum, not only as teachers but in- 

 vestigators, for technical science is advanc- 

 ing so rapidly that abstract research in pure 

 science cannot keep up with it and so ap- 

 plied science has to enter upon research 

 work to supply the data it needs. 



" Next comes endowment. In far too 

 many cases, all the money given has been 

 expended upon building and equipment, 

 leaving nothing for maintenance." Dr. 

 Barker then refers to a number of our 

 noted American universities which have 

 splendid buildings and some of them fine 

 equipment, but with little or no funds to 

 carry on research work. The members of 

 this Association know this fact too well, 

 many of them from unpleasant personal ex- 

 perience. Shall we steer clear of these 

 shoals in the new technical schools ? 



Brainy men do not need a palace in which 

 to make discoveries. Place a Newton, a 

 Napier, a Faraday or an Edison, a Watt or 

 an Ericson in a hovel and the discoveries 



