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 desira ble 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 1861, 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 rather 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. 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 manufacture and furnishes additional incentive to thoroughness and exactness. After 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 At the Mastach meette Institute the time devoted to the shop and laboratory i as follows: vis At Cornell shop work is given 3 hours a week throughout the course of 4 years, except that during the spring term of the last year 12 hours are allowed to investigations and work. Work in the mechanical laboratory is given during the last two years for two hours throughout, except in the case of the spring term, as above specified. Let us now consider a class of schools of quite a different character as far as manual training is concerned. As a type we may take the Lehigh University course in mechanical engineering. The object of its course is the study of the science of machines. The principal subjects taught are: The nature, equivalence, and analysis of mechanisms, the mechanics or theory of the principal classes and practice of machine design. To obtain "the practical engineering data which they will most need when beginning their work as mechanical engineers the students are required to pursue a course of shop instruction which does not necessarily involve manual labor and manipulation of tools, but is principally devoted to familiarizing them with those points in patternmaking, molding, forging, fitting, and finishing, which they will need to know as designers of machinery." In brief, the student is an observer, and is familiarized with processes as a foreman rather than experienced in carrying them through to a successful issue as a mechanic. To insure the attention and develop the reason, a full description of the process under observation and the means by which it is accomplished are required of each student during a series of properly graded examples of patterns, castings, forgings, and finished pieces which are not being constructed in the shops at the time, the blue prints for which have been given to them on entering the shops. The attention of the student is directed by these drawings, a printed programme, and a teacher who examines the pupil's notes and sketches and questions him. works of the Bethlehem Iron Company, the railroad shops at Easton and other engineering establishments in the vicinity are visited, each visit having a definite object in view. The As this approaches, perhaps, in a measure, duplicates, the characteristics of a German Technische Hochschule or Polytechnicum, an illustration of the programme of one of these schools is given. The periods represented are the first semester of the first and of the fourth years of the course. The charts are given to illustrate the way in which the German school carefully notes the difference between the lecture during which the student listens and the hour during which he is an active agent while working at drawing or descriptive geometry. Such work is called Uebungen [practical exercises] in German, and the word seems to have been understood in some of our schools to mean practical work. Thus, when it is asked, How many hours do you devote to theory, how many to practice? the correspondent is nonplussed to know whether we mean to include an exercise in descriptive geometry as practical work or not. This opportunity may therefore be taken to say that drawing in any of its forms, even designing machinery which is to be made, or making out specifications of buildings or works to be constructed, is not considered by this Bureau as practical work. Some years ago when the polytechnic idea reached America it might have been considered such, but the advance of the age in the way of organizing industrial instruction has rendered a truer definition of the term practical work necessary, or at least rendered it necessary to reserve it for the work done in the shop, latoratorty, or field. The printed page is not adapted to describing the technicalities of a machine shop and even photo illustrations are more useful as evidences of the equip ment 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 Zine 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. Emery testing machine. Watertown Arsenal. (3) Types of modern pumping engines. Leavitt walking-beam and fly-wheel type and Worthington direct-acting type. Boston sewage-pumping station, Dorchester. 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 . 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. Mills. Bernard (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: Metal lathe Pattern-making. Miller Drill press Carpentry Brass-turning. Hours. 225 100 65 Steam-fitting. 40 Metal-testing. 40 Elasticity of pine beams 40 40 32 24 24 25 Flow of water through pipes.. Indicator card.. Total a This total has been very materially reduced of late. Hours. 20 16 16 8 8 8 8 a747 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. |