Chapter 2
"But how come you made it to scale? That drawing is a complete plan and elevation of an ice-boat, drawn accurately to scale." He looked thoughtful. "I don't understand it. You ought to take up with drafting, my boy, when you get a little older. I never knew of a case like it. What does your father do?" he suddenly asked.
"He's an ice-dealer,"[1] replied the discomfited boy. "I just made it--that's all. We need it, too, to go ahead." Turning to his playmate, "Come on out, Jack; the gang is waiting."
Which terminated the interview.
Yet the thing was the beginning of a career for the boy. The boat in time somehow got itself built and out upon the little river; but owing to the fact that its materials were stolen, the river failed to freeze over that winter, and for three winters following--not till the boat itself had fallen apart from disuse and lack of care--which points its own moral, as hinted at above. If you must build ice-boats, and you are a kid with mechanical yearnings, pay for the material that goes into the making of your product. But the thing--as I say--was the beginning of a career for the lad. In time, through the kindly office of his playmate's father, he became apprenticed in a drafting-room of a large manufacturing-plant--and the rest was easy. In his first year, on paper, he devised a steam-engine with novel arrangement of slide-valves, and thereafter for years designed engines and machinery about the country, always quite successfully.
The successful engineer, while possessed of certain spiritual characteristics, must also--if I may be so bold as to say so--be possessed of certain physical characteristics. One of these is large, and what is known as capable, hands. Short, spatulate fingers, with a broad palm, appear to be a feature of the successful engineer. Of course, there are exceptions, as there are exceptions to every rule, but in the majority of cases which have come under the writer's observation the successful engineer has had hands of this shaping. He likewise has had wrists and arms to match with such hands, and--in the practical engineer--that is, the engineer whose particular gift is coping with ordinary problems of construction, as against the genius who blazes new trails, like Watt and Westinghouse and Edison and Marconi and the Wright brothers--a head whose contour was along the "well-shaped" lines. The so-called genius usually has an odd-shaped head, I've noticed, but for purposes of this book we shall confine ourselves to the average successful man in engineering.
Thus you have, roughly, the engineering type. I have sketched only the major characteristics. The minor characteristics embrace many features. There is patience, for one--patience to labor long with difficulties; concentration, for another; application, for a third; certain student qualities, for yet a fourth. Many graduate engineers have gone off into other work immediately after leaving college because of a clearly defined dislike for detail in construction. The average successful engineer will be a man interested in the shaping of the details of his machine or bridge or plant. To many, details are irksome. If the young man who is reading this book knows that he dislikes a detail of any character whatsoever, unless he be possessed of the creative genius of a Westinghouse or an Edison, he would better take up with some other profession. For engineering, in the last analysis, is the manipulating of detailed parts into a perfect whole--whether it be a bridge or a machine or a plant.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The boy's father always wanted to be a carpenter.
IV
THE FOUR MAJOR BRANCHES
The four major branches of engineering are civil, mechanical, electrical, and mining. I give them in the order of their acceptance among engineers. Each is separate from each of the others, and each is a profession in itself, and as distinctive from each of the others as is the allopathic from the homeopathic among men of medicine, though not with quite the same distinction. Whereas the several groups of physicians seek to relieve pain and correct disorder by way of diversified channels, the several groups of engineers each work in a field of endeavor actively apart from each of the other groups. Sometimes one group will lap over upon another group, in certain kinds of construction work, but even then the branches will hold sharply each to its own.
Civil engineering embraces, roughly, all work in the soil. The surveyor is a civil engineer. He constructs dams, builds viaducts, lays out railroads, and in the war, where he was known as a pioneer, he was responsible for all tunneling and trench projects, besides keeping the highways clear and the wire entanglements intact. Civil engineering is a profession which keeps its followers pretty well out in the open. A civil engineer will go long distances, and frequently must, in order to get to his work, and, having reached the scene of his labors, enters upon a rugged outdoor life in camp where he remains until the job is completed. The Panama Canal was a civil-engineering job--probably the largest of its kind ever undertaken--and its success, after failure on the part of another government, is a high tribute to the genius of our own civil engineers.
Mechanical engineering is a profession whose medium of endeavor lies in the metals. Mechanical engineers shape things out of iron or steel or brass or other metal compositions, and put these things into engines or machines for service. All machinery, whether it be printing-presses or automobiles or steam-engines, is the work of mechanical engineers, though in the matter of automobiles this has become a profession by itself, one of the minor branches known as automotive engineering. The mechanical engineer as a rule works within doors, just as the civil engineer works out of doors, and his work, consequently, is more confining. In the pursuit of his profession he spends much of his time supervising the design of mechanical units, and is the one man responsible for correct construction and security against fracture of the machine itself when in operation. Actually the mechanical engineer has more opportunities in his daily routine for the exercise of his creative faculties than has any one of the other kinds of engineers, for the simple reason that no two machines even for the same purpose--speaking of types, always--are exactly similar in construction. Two lathes of like size and scope, if manufactured by two separate organizations, will be different in their minor features, and each in some particular will be the work of a mechanical engineer whose ideas are at variance with those of the mechanical engineer who designed the other type. Engineers, like doctors, often disagree, which accounts for the many different types of machinery serving the same purpose which are found on the market.
Electrical engineering is, as its name implies, a profession embracing all construction whose basis is the electrical current. Any unit whatsoever, so long as it utilizes or eats up or carries forward a current of electricity, is the work of electrical engineers. The profession is a comparatively recent one perforce, owing to the fact that but very little of a practical nature was known about electricity until a very few years ago. The wonderful progress in this field made within the past twenty years is one of the marvels of the engineering profession. Dynamos, motors, arc-lights, alternating current, the X-ray--these are a few of the things which followers of the profession have created for the uses of mankind. The field is yet practically unexplored, and offers to engineering students an outlet for their energies--provided they enter this branch of engineering--second to none of the other branches. A fascinating study, doubly so because of the fact that nothing is known about electricity itself--its effects only being understood--electrical engineering should appeal to the curious-minded as no other vocation can. It is a profession shrouded in mystery, and not the least mysterious of its recent developments is the wireless telegraph. What this one development alone holds for the future nobody can say. All sorts of inventions can be imagined, however, and among them I myself seem to see automobiles operated from central stations--indeed, all mechanical movements so operated--to the end that individual engines in time will cease to be.
The profession of mining engineering, last of the major branches, embraces all work having to do with the locating and construction of mines--coal-mines, iron-mines, copper-mines, diamond-mines, gold-mines, and the like. Also it establishes the nature of the apparatus used, though more often than otherwise the mechanical engineer in this regard is consulted, since much of the machinery utilized in mining operations is the direct work of mechanical engineers. Screens and hoppers are mechanical devices the result of mechanical engineering genius; but the work of shoring up, done with timbers, and the work generally of supervision of all mine operations, rests solely with the mining man. The shaping of these timbers, though--the cutting of tenons, for instance--is the work, again, of the mechanical engineer; though the placing of these timbers, to revert back once more, is the work of the mining engineer.
There are many minor branches, and more are rapidly coming into prominence. Chemical engineering is one of the older minor branches; while industrial engineering--following closely upon automotive engineering--belongs properly with the more recent of the newcomers. Efficiency engineering is a branch which to-day is making a strong bid for recognition as a profession, although the work as yet, lacking, as it does, proper foundation in scientific truth, even though strongly humanitarian in its motives, has still to prove itself acceptable among the engineering groups. Structural engineering, on the contrary, "belongs." Its work consists of the design and layout of modern steel structures--this roughly--while the minor branch known as heating and ventilating engineering, as its name would indicate, deals with the proper heating and ventilating of buildings, and as a profession is closely allied with that of structural engineering. Out of these minor branches come yet other branches, more particularly groups, with each in the nature of a specialty, such as gas engineering, aircraft engineering, steam engineering, telephone engineering, and so on.
Students about to enter engineering colleges usually select one or another of the major branches and then after graduating begin to specialize. But infrequently Fate has much to do with this specialization, since after leaving college the average young engineer will turn to the nearest or most promising vacancy offered him in his chosen field--a major branch--and in the work eventually become expert and a specialist. If it be a concern manufacturing steam-turbines, say, the young engineer in time becomes expert and a specialist in steam-turbines. So, too, with graduates in mining engineering, in electrical engineering, in civil engineering, although the opportunities for specialization in any of these latter branches are not so good as in the mechanical field. However, entering upon a certain kind of work, the student usually follows this work to the end of his days, which is probably what engineering schools expect. All strive to educate only in the principles of each of the major branches. The rest is up to the graduate, who is permitted, and generally does, the shaping of his own career afterward.
It is a feature of our democratic form of government--thanks be! Germany does--or did--the other thing. Germany made careers for her young men, instead of young men for careers, with the result that she also made machines out of them. America is a nation of individualists, which is what makes America what it is, and our schools and school systems are responsible.
V
MAKING A CHOICE
About to make a choice among the branches of engineering, the prospective student, unless he have a decided preference to start with, finds himself confronted with many difficulties. Engineering is engineering, whether it be mining or electrical or civil or mechanical, and this fact alone is not without its confusions. Yet if the young man decides for a mining career, say, the choice may take him, after graduating, off to South Africa, whereas if his choice lay in the electrical field he may never get any farther from home than the nearest electrical manufacturing plant in his town or state--and remain there for the duration of his life. This making of a choice is a momentous thing in a prospective engineer's life. It should be approached with all caution, and with due regard for the nature of the life he would lead after graduating from school. If he have a penchant for outdoor life, then the choice, in a way, is easy. He should select mining or civil engineering as his particular vocation. If he be of those who prefer to remain more or less indoors in the practice of his profession, mechanical or electrical engineering should be his choice.
These are the major advantages or disadvantages, depending upon the point of view. The minor ones are not so easily stated. Speaking always for the young man without a decided preference, it is the writer's opinion that the prospective student should analyze his particular feelings in the matter and decide accordingly. Large projects may interest him more than smaller ones. In this regard, he will find greater satisfaction in following the profession dealing with large projects, which is, of course, the civil engineering profession--although mining, too, has its large ventures, which, however, do not "break" as frequently as they do in civil engineering. On the other hand, the young man may find himself attracted to the development of small propositions, such as adding-machines and typewriters and sewing-machines, and the like. Finding himself attracted to these no less important phases of engineering than the development of mines or the opening up of new country, the young man can, of course, make no better choice than to enter the mechanical or the electrical field.
It all depends upon the point of view. Nor is there any hard-and-fast rule tying a man down to a single branch once he finds that he does not like it, or finds that he likes one of the other branches better, after he has given his chosen branch a trial in the years immediately following graduation. Not a few mining graduates drift over into straight civil work after leaving school, and, likewise, not a few in the electrical branches find themselves in time pursuing mechanical work. Fate here, as in the matter of specialization, works her hand. A prominent publisher of technical magazines in New York took the degree of Arts in Cornell in his younger days; and more writers of fiction than you can shake a stick at once labored over civil-engineering plans as their chosen career. Herbert Hoover is a mining man who best revealed his capabilities in the field of traffic management--if the work which he supervised in Belgium may be so termed. Certainly it had to do with getting materials from where they were plentiful to where they were scarce, which is roughly the work of the traffic manager.
And so it goes. The young man in this particular must decide for himself. Actually, there is more of mystery and fascination in the electrical field than in any of the other three branches, and to prospective students this may be not without its especial appeal. To others, the work of mining may possess its strong attraction, since this work takes its followers into strange places and among strange people frequently, where oftentimes the mining engineer must live cheek by elbow with the roughest of adventurers. To yet a third group, civil engineering, with its work of blazing new trails through an unknown country, and wild outdoor existence through forests and over mountains and across valleys--may have its strong attraction. While to a fourth group of prospective students the quiet career, as represented in that of mechanical engineering, always a more or less thoughtful, studious life, may hold out its inviting side. The mechanical engineer, like the electrical engineer, is a man who generally commutes, a man who comes and goes daily between office and home, doing his work at regular hours within the four walls of his office--a quiet, professional man. Such a life would appeal to the man of family rather more strongly than either of the outdoor professional branches. Yet the prospective student must make his own choice.
To the young man who has no particular preference, and who would put it up to the writer as to just which branch to follow--the young man more or less in need--the writer unhesitatingly would advise mechanical engineering. It is the one branch offering the largest and quickest returns, and as a branch it fairly dominates all the other branches, for the reason that whereas the mechanical engineer can get along without the mining engineer or the civil engineer or the electrical engineer, neither the mining engineer nor the civil engineer nor the electrical engineer can always do without the services of the mechanical engineer. No other branch so overlaps the other branches as does mechanical engineering. The work of the mechanical engineer is seen in almost every piece of construction reared by the civil man, just as it is seen in every bit of construction work of the mining and the electrical engineers. At first glance this may not appear to be true, but a close analysis of different jobs will bring out the truth of this statement.
Thus mechanical engineering offers largest and quickest returns. It does this for another reason. Because of this very overlapping upon the other three branches, for every position open in the electrical field, or the mining or the civil field, there are a dozen vacancies in the mechanical field. It cannot but be otherwise. Not one of the other branches but what has need at times for--as I have stated--a mechanical engineer. The casings and base-plates and supports of motors, for instance, while the motor itself--its windings and the like--is the work of the electrical engineer, are due to the designing genius of some mechanical man. Likewise, in the mining field, where shaking screens, to name only one of the many mechanical units necessary in mining operations, are an essential factor--units operated with pulleys and belts and cams and levers--all the province of the mechanical engineer--the mechanical man finds his uses. So in civil work, especially in dam construction where gates are necessary; and in chemical engineering--to drop into a minor branch--where tanks and vats and ovens and stirring paddles and the like are used. No matter in which branch a man may go, always he will find evidence of the presence some time of the mechanical engineer. The mechanical engineer dominates all the other branches, as has been said before. He is given second place in the order of the branches merely because the civil engineer happened to be the first and oldest kind of engineer to be given recognition as a profession. This man made himself a professional man, just as did the early practitioners of medicine--concocters of herbs in the beginning.
The proper selection will depend upon the young man's predilections and tastes. If he selects wisely, following out his predilections and tastes with a degree of accuracy, he cannot go wrong. He cannot go far wrong even if he doesn't follow out his hunches, for the reason that he can always swing over into any one of the other branches whenever he sees fit to do so. The thing is done every day, and will continue to be done throughout all time. Merely, it would be well for the young man, of course, to select in the beginning that branch which most appeals to him, and to stick to it like glue. Success is certain to be his. For in no other walk of life are the rewards so sure and so ample and so immediately responsive as in the engineering professions. These--like the matter of his selection from among the four major branches--are solely a matter up to the individual.
VI
QUALIFYING FOR PROMOTION
Immediately upon graduating--indeed, often several months before graduating--the engineering student finds his first job awaiting him. Frequently he finds a number of first jobs awaiting him and must make a selection. For it is the custom with large manufacturing concerns to send out scouts in the early spring of each year to address the engineering student bodies, with the idea in mind of securing the services of as many graduates as the scouts can win over for their respective organizations through direct appeal. What is usually offered the coming graduate is a brief apprenticeship in the shop, at a living wage, with promise of as early and rapid promotion in the organization as the work of the apprentice himself will permit, or improves.
These offers are generally splendid opportunities. The graduate may learn much of a practical commercial nature which perforce has been denied him in his student days, and also, having entered upon this apprenticeship, he not only gets acquainted with production on a large scale, but he is brought into touch with what constitutes most recent acceptable practice as well. This, provided he be a mechanical or an electrical engineer. Graduates in civil and mining engineering, while offered positions from executives in these particular branches also, have no such large opportunities offered them. The work itself does not permit it. Yet in any of the branches there is never a scarcity of jobs open to graduates upon their leaving college.
To qualify for promotion in any work, but more especially in the professions, one must know one's business. That is a trite statement, but it will bear repeating. The young graduate at first will not know his business. His mind will be a chaos of theories based upon myriads of formulæ which cannot but confuse him in the early days, when he is most earnestly trying to apply one or more of them to the more or less petty tasks which will be assigned to him. All he can do under the circumstances--all anybody could do under the circumstances--is to wait patiently, the while doing the best he can. Problems have a way of working themselves out--the correct formula will present itself; its true application will become manifest--and thus the young engineer has learned something of a practical nature which need not forsake him throughout the remainder of his engineering career.
Engineers are especially tolerant of one another's mistakes and errors. They are much more so than medical men, for instance. In the field of medicine one must show by many practical cases wherein a certain treatment has proved effective before the fraternity at large will even give the practitioner a hearing. This is not so among engineers. Engineers turn to one another in difficulties with earnest desire to help if they can help; and when one of their number is in trouble in his efforts to solve a difficult problem the whole body will turn to him with friendly encouragement and advice, if the latter is wanted. The young graduate who is struggling with a problem come up in his daily work, if he will but make the fact known to the engineers on the job in association with him, will find himself surrounded by engineers every one of whom will be seriously concerned for him and anxious to render assistance.