Question 9. No part of this question can be satisfactorily answered. I will remark on the three items.

a The Sheffield Scientific School is but a department of the university, and all of its instruction was carried on in buildings belonging to "The Prs dent and Fellows of Yale College" for the first twenty-five years of its existence. Now, three large and several small buildings are used by this department exclusively, but much of the instruction goes on in buildings whose use is shared by other departments of the university. A part of the drawing is taught in the Street Art School: geology, mineralogy, paleontology, and zoology in the Peabody Museum which contains the university collections belonging to these sciences. Then, too, the university library, gymnasium, reading room, etc., etc., are used by our students in common wi h the rest of the universi y. To include all these in the property of the Sheffield Scientific School would be untrue and would grossly overrato its riches and possessions. On the other hand, to leave them all out would be to un ruthfully underrate its facilities for instruction. As a part of the university, this school gets more or less benefit of all the varied possessions which constitute the material part of the university, the ownership of which is peculiarly complicated. They represent the growth of two centuries. Of the buildings in our exclusive use, two were originally built for other purposes, and later adapted to our use. I have never seen any inventory of the grounds and buildings of the university, as a whole, nor any attempt to estimate what the value of those of our department would be without the others.

(b) The same is true of apparatus and collections; some belong to the Scientific School especially and some belong to the University. I am not aware that any attempt at an inventory has ever been made, and any estimate would be but a rude guess. The collections are largely the collections of the University and represent the accumulations of about a century. The apparatus in the exclusive use of the Scientific School represent the accumulation of about fifty years. A set equivalent to the latter could probably be got together for $40,000, but it cost originally very much more than that. Some of it now has merely a historical or sentimental value, hard to estimate in money, yet it has still an educational value.

(c) "Productive funds." Here the answer is still more difficult, as it is more complicated. Some belong to the Scientific School, some to the University, a portion is for special purposes, others for general purposes. We now have the income of some university funds, which we may not have when certain university instruction is given in some other way. We have some funds of our own; we share in the use of others for general university uses; we share in still o her special endowments; and any statement we might make would be a matter of bookkeeping rather than an exhibit of the capital of the Sheffield Scientific School. The treasurer's report gives the names and status of the various funds, but of some of these funds even he does not attempt to decide whether they should be considered in this schedule as belonging to The Sheffield Scientific School" or "Yale College" or "Yale University." They are in the possession of the Yale corporation for certain uses. The University can apply the income for instruction or use in the department which it thinks fulfills most nearly the objects intended by the donor. I have spent some time with the treasurer trying to compile satisfactory answers, but I can not answer either division of this question in a way that will be both truthful and satisfactory, or that will show the money value of the educational plant we have here. For a solution we wou d have to go away back to colonial times for a part, and the answers are complicated in a great variety of ways.

Question 10. This refers to the special library in the school. This department shares in all the use and facilities of the university library, hence there is no attempt to make a large collection of books of our own; most of our books are to supplement those in the main library, or else those needed in the laboratories, cr for handy reference.

Yours, truly,

WM. H. BREWER.

15 Missouri School of Mines and Metallurgy .

25 University of Tennessee

II.

COURSE IN MECHANICAL ENGINEERING.

The instrument of the civil engineer is the transit and his sphere of practice the open country, but the instrument of the mechanical engineer is the hammer and his place is in the shop. The Roman roads and aqueducts are standing evidences of the skill of the Roman people, the pyramids and Lake Moeris testify to the ability of the Egyptian engineer, and the cathedrals of France to that of the master masons of the Middle Ages, but an "industrial revolution" waited for the invention of a steam engine that was something more than a curiosity or a toy. This industrial revolution may be said to have reached its majority, so to speak, about the middle of the present century, at least in England, where from peculiar circumstances it found a congenial soil. Progress in industry, however, must not be confounded with progress in that kind of industrial education which is given in schools. Neither the Greek literary and artistic genius nor the English industrial and political genius was born within the walls of an educational edifice. But when a nation has manifested its genius it is possible and desirable to have persons study the manifestations of that genius, formulate and teach the results, and thus mechanically a naturally less gifted or enterprising nation is elevated to a stage of culture in which the less gifted nation may reap the same intellectual or material benefits the more gifted enjoy.

In 1855, at the time of the reorganization of the Rensselaer Institute, a department of "Mechanics, Machines, and Constructions" was established in the school, with a set of text-books printed mostly in Paris and London, and in two cases in Germany, but there was no course leading to a degree in mechanical engineering, the instruction in that art being a part of the course in civil and mining engineering. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1864 there was in the fourth year a course of mechanical engineering separate from the civil engineering course after the close of the third year. At the School of Mines of Columbia College, New York City, a course of machines which is essential in a course of mining engineering was given, about 1864, during the third year. The first practical schools of mechanical engineering were the Worcester Institute and the Stevens Institute of Technology, though it may be objected to them that they are schools for making master workmen råther than engineers. Nevertheless, as the practical work of the course of mechanical engineering is what distinguishes the institutions in which it obtains from all other educational institutions, it is well to begin with a consideration of it.

At the Worcester Institute the regular course of instruction is prefaced by an "apprentice half year," in which the four studies that the average student of mechanical engineering has been found to be deficient in are followed from January to June. These studies are English and French literature (6 hours a week), free-hand drawing (6 hours a week), and shop practice in woodwork and moulding (36 hours a week). Then during the three years of the course 10 hours a week are devoted to "practice, which in the second term of the last year includes machine design.

After

In this shop practice two principles are observed: First, that while labor with hand tools and machines should be wisely blended, yet since machinery has a constantly increasing share in the conversion of material into useful forms, the educated mechanic should know how to design, construct, and assemble the parts of a machine as well as how to make its product; and, second, that excellence in construction is to be sought as a most valuable factor in instruction. The power of the engineer, says the faculty, to decide upon general grounds the best form and material for a machine and to calculate its parts is greatly increased by blending with it the skill of the craftsman in manipulating the material, and the fact that the product is to be tested and used kindles interest in its manufac ture and furnishes additional incentive to thoroughness and exactness. the earliest lessons the practice is on commercial goods and follows the best methods of commercial production. Thus, while the institute offers a good education, based on mathematics, the living languages, physical sciences, and drawing, and sufficient familiarity with some branch of applied science to secure to its graduates a livelihood, its two peculiar features are: (1) that in addition to the general course of study and to the regular work of all students in the laboratories each student devotes at least ten hours weekly to practice in the department he has chosen; and (2) that the practice of the students in the department of mechanical engineering is in well-equipped shops in which a manufacturing business is carried on. Construction accompanies instruction at every step.

ED 90--61

The printed page is not adapted to describing the technicalities of a machiné shop and even photo illustrations are more useful as evidences of the equipment of the school than of the value of its work to the future engineer. It will, then, suffice to say that in the third year of the Worcester Institute the students build one or more machines from their drawings, which, though made from definite specifications, are intended to afford ample field for the personal responsibility and originality of each student in making correct design and arrangement of parts of the machine in hand. While the work is not copying, it must not depart essentially from the best practice among manufacturing mechanics. Thus one class has constructed a 25 horse-power Corliss engine, another a 10 horse-power upright reversible engine, another a 40 horse-power Buckeye engine. The class of 1885 constructed an engine lathe 18 feet in length; the class of 1886 a Hendey shaper, etc.

The Stevens Institute is, as its catalogue claims, "a school of mechanical engineering." There are departments of physics and of chemistry, and applied electricity is taught, but the object of the school is to provide a systematic course in the theory of machine construction and a study of existing systems. Mathematics, pure and applied, mechanical drawing, shop practice and experimental mechanics, experimental physics, and chemical analysis, all are more or less powerful auxiliaries to the object of the systematic course in the theory of machine construction and the study of existing systems. But as we are now particularly concerned with the shop work, it is necessary to keep to that.

The work-shop course of the institute is intended to supply the student with a knowledge, as complete as possible, of the best existing methods and processes necessary to the construction of such mechanical designs as the theoretic part of the course will enable him to originate. But dependence is not entirely placed on the necessarily elementary and limited instruction that can be given in the machine, blacksmith, and carpenter shops, and the iron and brass foundry; but, after differences in machines, tools, and methods of manipulation are comprehended by the student, he is taken to establishments where real work is being carried on. The usual tour of the senior class is as follows:

April 1.-Bethlehem. Eagle Hotel. Steel and zinc manufacture. Bethlehem Iron and Zinc Works.

April 2.-Philadelphia. Girard House.

(1) Welding, fitting, and testing of wrought-iron pipe. Morris & Tasker's Pascal Iron Works.

(2) Arrangement and outfit of first-class machine shops. Seller's Machine Works.

(3) Locomotive manufacture. Baldwin Locomotive Works.

(4) Marine engines and shipbuilding. Cramp Ship Yard.

April 5.-Hartford. Allyn House.

(1) Machine tools, taps and dies, and standard gauges; gear-cutting by machinery, and drop forgings. Pratt & Whitney Company.

(2) Improvements in automatic screw machinery; recovery of oil from metal cuttings; straightening of bar iron. Hartford Screw Company.

(3) Machinery for manufacture of repeating rifles; manipulation of Gatling gun; construction of disc and Baxter engines; automatic wood-screw machinery; latest attempt at setting type by machinery. Colt's Armory.

(4) Latest methods of heating and ventilation. Hartford statehouse.

(5) Extreme case of use of fast-speed engines for large steam-power plant. Willimantic Linen Mill.

April 6.-Springfield. Massasoit House.

(1) Construction and use of turbine water wheels. Holyoke Machine Works. (2) Testing of turbines. Holyoke Testing Flume.

(3) Manufacture of paper. Dickinson Paper Mills.

April 7.-Boston. United States Hotel.

(1) Most improved machinery for rapid working of brass. Hancock Inspirator Company's shops.

(2) Testing of large sizes of materials.

Arsenal.

(3) Types of modern pumping engines. type and Worthington direct-acting type. chester.

Emery testing machine. Watertown

Leavitt walking-beam and fly-wheel
Boston sewage-pumping station, Dor-

April 8.-Providence. Narragansett House. (1) Manufacture of machines in duplicate by most improved machine processes. Wilcox & Gibbs's sewing machine, machine molding, pickling and annealing of cast iron for milling machine work. Brown & Sharp Manufacturing Company. (2) Supply water to cities and towns; direct distribution. Hope street station. Corliss (5) cylinder direct engine and Nagle geared form of engines. Reservoir

distribution, Pawtucket Water Works. Corliss compound engines and Swan turbine water wheels.

April 9.-Fall River. Wilbur Hotel.

(1) Manufacture of cotton fabrics and standard single Corliss engine. Bernard

Mills.

(2) Medium high-speed engines and latest types of compound mill engines Globe Mills.

The shop exercises of the institute are finished before the close of the third year, the course being of four years. The time devoted to shop work by each student is distributed as follows:

a This total has been very materially reduced of late.

It will be observed that 40 of these hours are consumed in what is called experimental mechanics, and so can not be called shop work in the sense of manual labor. For the fourth-year class there is a regular course in experimental mechanics given during a supplementary term of three weeks. Assistants chosen from the last graduating class take charge of a group of exercises and aid other students to secure without loss of time the data belonging to experiments. As soon as the data of any one experiment are secured the students report to the chief instructor, who directs such calculations as are necessary to be deduced. This done the next exercise is entered upon. The following chart will explain the character of this laboratory work:

Order of exercises in experimental mechanics, class of 1891.

The figures 1 to 18 represent groups of students, consisting of generally two each, who are due at the test opposite their group number horizontally and at the date opposite their number vertically.

There must be just twice as many groups as there are exercises, so that every other day can be devoted to a test and to the computation of that test alternately. The instructors are always graduates, either of the last senior class or earlier ones. The exercises really consist of nine groups, each of which is so designed as to afford experimenting sufficient to occupy a full day of eight hours, and the computations occupy another interval of eight hours.