Successful Engineers. [By Peter Ellis, Wellington.]

Progress, Volume II, Issue 10, 1 August 1907, Page 382

Successful Engineers. [By Peter Ellis, Wellington.]

Successful engineering is the outcome of a happy combination of science and practical experience ; each is essential to the other. The man who is all science fails, because he carries formulas and exactitude to the verge of absurdity in real practical work, while the practical rule -of - thumb engineer fails because he depends too much on his judgment as a sufficient guide ; the balance ensuring success lies beyond the junction of the two principles each merged in the othei It is hard to say whether the workshop or the College training is the more important. Certainly a long workshop experience is an immense advantage to an engineer, and a man having such a training is less likely to develop " that superior air " the bete noire of the mere collegiate which stands so much in the

way of success to many really clever men, and renders them unpopular among the fraternity. Mathematics will never teach design ; a lively imagination is essential to that end, and imagination springs from observation and experience, for what can a man imagine but from what he knows ? If he imagines wheels, he has seen wheels ; if levers, he has seen levers ; and some men have a positive gift amounting almost to genius for combining these things in original design which have no mathematical origin whatever. It does not help practical engineering much to apply the precision of a Geneva watch to the damming of a river, and we always find the most successful of the world's engineers among those who know how to brush aside unimportant petty details and give prominence to broad practical principles.