The Project Gutenberg eBook, Opportunities in Engineering, by Charles M. Horton

Title: Opportunities in Engineering

Author: Charles M. Horton

Release Date: February 24, 2008 [eBook #24681]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OPPORTUNITIES IN ENGINEERING***

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OPPORTUNITIES IN
ENGINEERING

Opportunities in Engineering

Copyright 1920, by Harper & Brothers
Printed in the United States of America
Published April, 1920

CONTENTS

OPPORTUNITIES IN
ENGINEERING

I

ENGINEERING AND THE ENGINEER

Several years ago, at the regular annual meeting of one of the major engineering societies, the president of the society, in the formal address with which he opened the meeting, gave expression to a thought so startling that the few laymen who were seated in the auditorium fairly gasped. What the president said in effect was that, since engineers had got the world into war, it was the duty of engineers to get the world out of war. As a thought, it probably reflected the secret opinion of every engineer present, for, however innocent of intended wrong-doing engineers assuredly are as a group in their work of scientific investigation and development, the statement that engineers were responsible for the conflict then raging in Europe was absolute truth.

I mention this merely to bring to the reader's attention the tremendous power which engineers wield in world affairs.

The profession of engineering—which, by the way, is merely the adapting of discoveries in science and art to the uses of mankind—is a peculiarly isolated one. But very little is known about it among those outside of the profession. Laymen know something about law, a little about medicine, quite a lot—nowadays—about metaphysics. But laymen know nothing about engineering. Indeed, a source of common amusement among engineers is the peculiar fact that the average layman cannot differentiate between the man who runs a locomotive and the man who designs a locomotive. In ordinary parlance both are called engineers. Yet there is a difference between them—a difference as between day and night. For one merely operates the results of the creative genius of