military training. At them, the student will become familiar with the army and its methods, take part in and command military formations, and fire the guns, both artillery and small arms, of which he has studied, and which he will man in case of war.

The law provides certain allowances for R. O. T. C. students. In order that he may receive these, the student must pursue studies of a distinctly military value at a prescribed rate, never in excess of five hours per week. The Chief of Coast Artillery realizes that the subjects which he considers essential are by no means the only subjects of distinctly military value and has approved a list of many other subjects of this character. If the student is not pursuing the required subjects at the rate prescribed by law, courses in the additional subjects will meet the time requirement. Doubtless every engineering student will always more than meet the legal time requirement by studies ordinarily taken in the course. It is desired that his studies from the list of optional subject be as extensive as possible, for each will greatly increase his value to the service. According to the original scheme, now subject to modification, drill is not required during the college year. However, physical training is insisted upon. The student must either engage in college athletics or take other exercises to insure his physical development. The Coast Artillery officer at the institution will give every assistance in this matter and will conduct exercises at the request of the faculty, but ordinarily the direction of this work will be under the institution's own physical director.

The first of the summer camps for the Coast Artillery R. O. T. C. will open at Fort Monroe, Virginia, on the twentyeighth of June and will be attended by students from units already established.

The schedule will be strenuous but interesting, and in addition to work, necessarily of a routine character, it will include a number of lectures by specialists in their subjects and visits to points and things of interest to the military student.

The results of the entire movement will be twofold; first,

better citizens in peace, available as officers in the event of war; and second, added prestige and strength to the nation.

I would leave with you thoughts, first that of George Washington who said: "To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace. A free people ought to be not only armed but disciplined." And finally that of Mazzani, triumvir of Rome, and the spiritual force of the Italian resurrection: "Without national education there exists morally no nation. The national conscience can not be awakened except by its aid. Without national education common to all citizens, the equality of civic duties and rights. is an empty formula."

THE SOCIETY FOR THE PROMOTION OF ENGINEERING EDUCATION. A SURVEY OF ITS PAST AND A RECONNAISSANCE OF ITS FUTURE.

BY GEORGE R. CHATBURN,

Past-President, Professor of Applied Mechanics and Mechanical Design, University of Nebraska.

A quarter of a century ago an impetus was given to engineering and the industrial arts by the great Columbian Exhibition held at Chicago. Then the new world, like a fledgling, spread its wings for independent flight, and surprised itself with a showing of strength which until then no one thought it possessed. By a vigorous exercise of the indomitable "I will" which has come to characterize the great inter-oceanic city, and with the unstinted, almost prodigal, aid of every part of this vast nation, the products of the genius of man and the bounties of nature were collected and exhibited to thousands who in turn told of them to other thousands until our whole people saw and believed in their own strength. They then knew, as they before had merely thought, that this country was not only great in natural resources, but also great in achievements. They saw, too, that with the vast resources so generously supplied by nature much greater achievements might be accomplished. The past was but an inspiration for the future. The present mammoth industries were beginning their era of expansion; electricity had just started in earnest its world conquering course, and many of its greatest progeny had not yet been born; the automobile was but a frail infant; the horseless carriage was so great a novelty that the few sporadic designs drew crowds when they appeared on the street and were written up by the press under such lurid headlines as "The Red Devil Makes Another Appearance"; Chanute and

Langley were making experiments in aëronautics, but it was many years later before extended flight could be sustained in the atmosphere; even the telephone though in use was not a household necessity as at present, while wireless telegraphy and telephony were unknown and unthought. Thus might be continued a description of the condition of engineering a quarter of a century ago; of engineering industries which have since made places in the commercial world for a large moiety of our people, places that were sadly needed, for, prior to that time most of our great railroads had already been laid and the land opened up by them was largely appropriated.

The great exhibition to which reference has been made, and which encouraged and accelerated the almost miraculous industrial evolution following it, planned numerous congresses on varying subjects; among others a Congress of Engineers. The committee in charge of this congress had for its chairman the late E. L. Corthell and for its vice-chairman the late Octave Chanute, both afterwards members of this Society. Mr. Corthell being unavoidably absent, the honor of presiding over the congress fell to Mr. Chanute. For convenience and the congenial grouping or allied subjects the congress was separated into divisions: A, Civil Engineering; B, Mechanical Engineering; C, Mining Engineering; D, Metallurgical Engineering; E, Engineering Education; F, Military Engineering; and G, Marine and Naval Engineering. Of Division E, Engineering Education, Professor Ira O. Baker, to whom is given the credit of suggesting the division, was chairman. The first session of the general congress was scheduled for 10 o'clock and the first session of the division for 11:30 o'clock, Monday, July 31, 1893. Meetings were also scheduled for Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, following. The papers covered a wide range and discussed "the present state of collegiate engineering education" and also the "ideal engineering education." "Favorable and unfavorable tendencies in engineering education" received attention, and there was a "comparison between American and European methods of engineering education."

Some of the questions propounded have not yet been settled: the “maximum and minimum mathematics necessary to the engineer" is a subject frequently touched upon in presentday periodicals as well as the "training of students in technical literary work."

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In reading Volume I of the Proceedings, one is struck with the breadth and intensity of the papers presented in this first meeting, with the vision and prescience of their authors and with the solidarity and practicality of their ideas. Who can find fault with this statement? ". . . it is a safe assumption that even the ideal engineering education cannot be expected to produce young engineers so mature in the exercise of all their professional functions that nothing is left for the years of subsequent practice to accomplish in the direction of education.'* Or this, it is the whole essence of modern engineering practice so to control and adopt the laws and quantitative deductions of the ideal conditions of engineering physics as to make them fit with reasonable accuracy its very varying and complicated conditions." Another writer believes". . . that the attempt sometimes made so to educate a young man that he will step from school a practical engineer is abortive." This idea that an engineering school does not graduate engineers but men who are better fitted by virtue of their education to become engineers, recurs again and again in the twenty-five volumes of the PROCEEDINGS. The generally believed dictum that college graduates are impractical, illustrated by the story of the technical graduate who was told early one morning "to order sent one hundred feet of chain capable of carrying ten tons," and who later in the day when asked if he had ordered the chain replied, 'No, I have been figuring it out,' showing his several pages of foolscap covered with figures as proof, when a reference to a hand

*“The Ideal Engineering Education," by Wm. H. Burr, Proceedings, Vol. 1.

+ Ibid.

"Favorable and Unfavorable Tendencies in Engineering Education," by Palmer C. Rickets, Proceedings, Vol. 1.