Volltext Seite (XML)
124 THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECT’S JOURNAL. May 1,1868. would save an enormous amount of money. One head nurse it was calculated could take the oversight of thirty patients, or more. If the wards were planned so that it was necessary to have a head nurse for every twenty patients, it was obvious that the expense in this item of nursing was increased one-third. A question had been asked about the average cost per bed. £500 had been, he believed, calculated as the rate for one of the larger hospitals. This was, however, considerably in excess of what was usually expended, and he was not prepared to answer the question. The gas fittings required were very simple, just enough light being needed to enable the nurse to see if anything were the matter with any particular patient during the night. A candle or lamp would then be brought to the bedside if anything particular required to be done. THE EDUCATION OF ENGINEERS. When parents are desirous that one of their sons should become an engineer, they usually place him in the office of some pro fessional man of more or less eminence, paying a considerable sum of money as a premium for his being properly educated in all the technical knowledge that is requisite to enable him to earn an income by the practice of the knowledge he has thus acquired. This is, in few words, the popular idea of an en gineering apprenticeship, and to superficial or inexperienced, observers the theory of such a transaction appears sound enough, but when it comes to be critically examined it is found to con tain some grave defects. In the first place, like many other unsound theories, there is too much taken for granted in a business arrangement of this kind. It is assumed, for example, that the engineer with whom the pupil is placed will be able so to dispose of his own time as always to be at his pupil’s side exactly at the periods when the latter is at a loss on any point; it is assumed that the pupil will, if not devote his undivided attention to his instructor, at least.be tolerably diligent to prac tice the rules and instructions given him. These are fallacies; and it is unnecessary to point but other fallacies of a similar kind which all alike tend to vitiate the supposed excellence of the arrangement. Two pupils will enter an office at the same time, apparently on perfectly equal terms, and, in fact, really so in so far as their instructor is concerned, but what a very marked difference there exists between those two at the expiration of even the first year ? What does this difference arise from if the master has been impartial 1 It arises from a variety of causes, the chief of which are to be found in the dispositions of the pupils themselves, or in that of their parents or guardians. One lad is industrious, another idle. One is quick, and another slow, or the parents may be more or less indulgent, and enjoy greater or less facility for affording their sons the means of going to this or that place of amusement, and feel more or less disposed to allow their sons to take holidays if they can get them from their masters, who, of course, can scarcely say “no” if the parents say “yes.” We almost fear we leave ourselves open to the stigma of merely reciting what is trite and familiar to every one. We are ready to acknowledge that these topics are, or ought to be, well known to all who have given apprenticeship education any thought; but yet, when we con sider the number of young men who finish their term of appren ticeship with sadly inadequate knowledge of the principles of the profession they have adopted, we cannot think that any efforts of ours to diminish their number, and to stimulate alike parents and pupils to endeavours to attain more satisfactory re sults can be tame to our readers, or time wasted by ourselves. In furtherance, if possible, of this good object, we proceed to give some few hints to pupils which, we hope, may' prove of service to them, and stimulate them with the hope that they may prove alike acceptable to those of our readers who may be walking in the thorny path of knowledge. We must, in order to be definite in our remarks, deal separately with the two great branches of the profession—the civil and the mechanical. We propose to deal, first, with the latter, although many of the points dwelt on will apply alike to either. No young man commencing the pursuit of mechanical en gineering can ever hope to attain excellence in his profession unless he completely' and thoroughly masters its first principles. All the rules he may be “crammed” with, all the routine knowledge he may' acquire, are utterly' worthless unless he first knows most entirely the fundamental principles on which those, as we may call them, “ parrot rules” are based, rules which are of immense value to (paradoxical as it may' seem) those men who, if they have them not at hand, can do very well without them, are utterly' valueless ; nay', more, become pitfalls to those ignorant of the foundations on which they' rest. Place a copy of Molesworth’s admirable little pocket-book in the hands of most pupils who have been even as much as eighteen months at work with an engineer, and mark the result. It is practically a sealed book to them, even granting them to be respectable mathe maticians. We will proceed, then, as far as possible, to direct that younger portion of our readers, to whom these lines are chiefly addressed, in the best direction to grasp those master keys, as we may' justly term them, of a very noble profession. When a pupil is called on by his master to draw out a par ticular portion of a machine of any' kind, he should not merely content himself with working the thing out on his board, ac cording to his instructions, but he should set himself to enquire the why and the wherefore that he was instructed to draw it in the particular way stated by' those who gave him the task. To make himself complete master of all the conditions to be complied with by' the portion of the machine he is “ setting out ” would be very difficult, because it would be wellnigh impossible for the most painstaking and conscientious instructor to impart all that to him in the case of one individual drawing or design. All that any master can do is to point out the direction in which the pupil must himself seek for the basis of the design. The principles of science may well be likened to lighthouses ; they are, in fact, the beacons that form the un erring guides to those who navigate the vast ocean of science, and we have been so bountifully provided also with what we may term the buoys laid down at more than usually difficult places by master minds, such as Newtcn, Faraday, &c., that to a casual observer we would seem to have but to master what is taught us by those great men to arrive at the limit of human knowledge. A thoughtful mind, however, will perceive the- truth of Newton’s comparison of himself and his labours to those of the child gathering pebbles on the shore, and the attainments of the great intellects of the past and present ought to stimulate that portion, at least, of the rising genera tion who adopt engineering to follow and, if possible, outstrip, their steps. But to do this with a hope of success they must, in the first instance, master completely all that has been at tained in the particular branch of science they may have adopted, and to learn to apply' it. No young engineer can go to work to make a name for himself with reasonable hopes of success who has not mastered, or is not labouring to master, the things already accomplished by those gone before, as well as the principles on which those works rest for their foundation. The man is always strongest in discussion who can rest his statements on the soundest principles, and who can bring for ward the most logical arguments to support his assertions. No invention or work of man’s hands is perfect, and, being defective, it is always possible to find fault with the result of our own labours or that of others ; but if perfection is unat tainable on the one hand, we have always the hope of advancing nearer to it than our predecessors have done on the other, so that our very shortcomings, if rightly viewed, become the nurses of honourable ambition ; for if perfection were attained by any individual, all others must, of necessity, become his copy'ists, or else remain his inferiors. Each young man, then, embarking in a profession has it in his power to become great therein, if he is content to labour vigorously, mind and body. If a young man studying engineering takes any work already executed, any first-class locomotive, for example, and considers it carefully, he will not fail, if possessed of mode rate intelligence, to see the beautiful fitness of each detail for the particular duty it is intended to fulfil. Having taken a locomotive as an example, we wall retain it for the present to illustrate our observations, and we will assume it to be a passen ger engine. The observer, who has previously informed him self of the various exigencies of its work, will, after some con sideration, perceive how far it is suited to comply with them. For example, it is expedient that the pistons should not have an excessive speed; consequently the driving wheels are made much larger than the other wheels of the machine, so that each stroke of the piston may propel the train through a considerable dis tance. Again, it is expedient that as much as possible of the weight of the engine should be made available for adhesion ; consequently, the driving wheels are placed as near the centre of gravity as possible without disturbing other arrangements. We might go on to an interminable length on this ; but we only desire to direct the student in the best modes of using those powers of observation which are amongst our best teachers.