Sayfadaki görseller
PDF
ePub

Chiefly Mechanical Engineering.

Kinematics

Machine elements

Elementary design
Mechanical laboratory

Shop machinery

Constructive design

Steam and pumping machinery

Motive machinery design

Pneumatic hydraulic and refrigerating machinery.

Steam boilers

[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]

strictly professional subjects of the junior and senior years with detailed calculations and written reports critcised by the professor of English give desirable training in these two fundamentals?

For comparison with the table of the committee I append hereto a table of the courses given in the L. C. Smith College of Applied Science, Syracuse University. The hours are made up by assuming that each hour of recitation requires two study hours and that the actual hours of laboratory and shop and drawingroom are those of the schedule, allowing nothing for time to prepare note-books. Each semester is taken as sixteen weeks of actual study and recitation after deductions are made for holiday and semestral examinations. The titles of the courses are those given in the annual bulletin, April, 1905.

The total number of hours for civil engineers appears to be greater than for mechanical and electrical engineers, but the time spent by the latter in visits, reports and thesis, in addition to the scheduled time, will make the actual hours about equal in the three branches.

An inspection of this table in comparison with the committee's table will show that in Syracuse less than one half of the time is devoted to preparatory and general subjects instead of more than four sevenths.

The table indicates that mechanical engineers get a rather small amount of electrical engineering, but this is more apparent than real for the mechanical engineers get a great deal of electricity in the physics of the sophomore year, in the study of power plants, and in the shop and mechanical laboratory.

This Syracuse schedule has now been in use for three years with only trifling modifications. It is working very well, and there is no desire on the part of the faculty to make any important changes in it.

THE TESTING ENGINEER.*

BY CHARLES B. DUDLEY,

President American Society for Testing Materials.

The gradual widening of the scope of the word "engineer" is very interesting. Used apparently as long ago as the time of William the Conqueror, to designate men who had the ability to design and construct works of value, such as castles, or fortifications, or bridges, especially in connection with military affairs, it soon took on a wider meaning, and was properly applied to men having ability to design and construct works of practical utility in times of peace. The military men having simply been called "engineers," it became desirable to designate those who were doing similar work during peace times, in some way to distinguish them and accordingly in contradistinction from the military engineers, they were called "civil engineers," a designation which remains up to the present, and characterizes some of the ablest men of the time. It would hardly be possible, or perhaps worth our while, to attempt to follow up historically the successive developments of this word "engineer." Suffice it to say that as time progressed, those who were able to design and construct something of value in the realm of mechanics, or other fields of human effort, were called "mechanical engineers," "mining engineers," "naval engineers, ""electrical engineers," or, indeed, "chem

* Presidential address read at the joint meeting of the American Society for Testing Materials and this Society.

ical engineers." It is worth while to notice also, that as time has progressed, the meaning of the word, as well as its application, has broadened. Primarily applied apparently to one who had genius born in him, and therefore who had within himself the power to originate and to execute; in course of time, we find the term applied to those also who simply direct, or carry to successful conclusion something they may have taken in hand. Indeed at the present time, the one who controls the machinery of a ship, as well as the one who handles the throttle of a locomotive, is called an "engineer." And, finally, it is apparently no abuse of words to say of a man who has guided any scheme in which he was interested, with ingenuity and tact, or overcome obstacles by contrivances and effort, that he has successfully engineered his project through. In view of these thoughts, we are perhaps justified in regarding the man engaged in testing as an engineer and not only in choosing "The Testing Engineer" for our title, but also in discussing in some of his relations, that man who, if we read the signs of the times rightly, is becoming every day more and more prominent in the industrial world, and, as time progresses, is destined to play continually, a more and more important part in the development of our civilization.

The field which the testing engineer occupies, and the cause to which his loyalty is due, may perhaps wisely claim a few moments attention. It is plain that the testing engineer acts in a three-fold capacity. He is either an investigator, or a counsellor, or a judge. He is finding out new truths, he is protecting the interests of his client the producer, or he is determining by

« ÖncekiDevam »