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freshmen and sophomore years of electrical engineering courses, has resulted.

In short, it is believed that instructional work during the war has in many instances, opened our eyes to possibilities of improvement in our regular technical courses, but has not materially altered fundamental pedagogical principles, nor the subject matter of the curricula.

REPORT OF COMMITTEE NO. 18-MINING
ENGINEERING.

Thus far the Mining Engineering Committee has confined its investigation and study to the subject of laboratories for undergraduate students. The committee first attempted to ascertain the prevailing practices in American mining schools in the use of laboratories for the instruction and training of undergraduate students. The results of this investigation were reported to the society in 1917.

The following conclusions and recommendations are now respectfully submitted for consideration:

1. Mining Laboratories.-The nature of the equipment must vary with different localities, but as far as possible should be standardized and designed to instruct students in the principles of drilling, breaking ground and supporting excavations. Experimental work with explosives should in general be of a demonstrative character conducted by an instructor of practical experience with small sections of the class at a time, say three or four students in a section.

2. Assay laboratories should be designed to teach principles of assaying and sampling rather than endeavor to reproduce commercial assay laboratories. Speed and routine analysis work should be discussed rather than practiced.

3. Ore dressing laboratories should be laid out with standard small size machinery. Emphasis should be placed on the individual machine rather than an attempt made to connect up a series of machines to imitate the flow sheet of some particular commercial mill. Commercial methods and flow sheets should be discussed in connection with the study of principles on the individual machines.

It is the opinion of this committee that:

1. The above-mentioned laboratories, equipped substantially

as suggested, are essential for the efficient instruction of mining engineering students.

2. The study of metallurgy does not appear to lend itself readily to laboratory practice above that which is afforded in the assay and general chemical laboratories.

3. In nearly every laboratory practice the normal physical, chemical and mechanical actions of small scale operations and small size machinery are consistent with the actions of commercial scale machines and operations. Notable exceptions to this rule are rock drills in mining laboratories and drop stamps in ore dressing.

The investigation of questions of curricula and pedagogic methods seems desirable as the immediate future activity of the committee.

F. W. SPERR,

Chairman.

REPORT OF COMMITTEE NO. 20-STANDARDIZA

TION OF TECHNICAL NOMENCLATURE.

The first report of the committee as at present organized was made in 1915 and may be found in Volume 22 of the PROCEEDINGS of the S. P. E. E. Summed up briefly, the evidence in possession of the committee at that time showed that there was variation in the spelling and abbreviating of many fairly common technical terms and that the national engineering societies of the country did not agree in their usages. The 1915 report contained a number of these technical terms which were submitted for criticism. Among the questions that arose was the absolute lack of uniformity in the practice of American technical journals in the spelling of compound terms, such as connecting rod, crank pin, which puzzled the committee considerably.

The second report of the committee as at present organized was made in 1916 and may be found in Volume 24, 1916. By this time the committee had had an opportunity to investigate technical compound terms with more care and to consult editors and technical writers. This report gave three rules for the hyphening of compound technical terms which have been discussed a good deal since that time, and which have been adopted, in principle, by a number of the engineering societies as representing intelligent practice. In this connection it may be stated that the four founder societies do not yet agree in the practice of spelling and hyphening technical compound nouns, technical compound nouns being understood to mean expressions consisting of two words which must be taken together correctly to express the concept, such as the expres sions boiler room and railroad.

It may interest those of you who have not followed the reports carefully to know that there is wide divergence of prac

tice in the dictionaries of the country in regard to hyphening. After the committee had arrived at its three rules, it learned that the practice it recommended was best represented by the Webster Dictionaries, which also are followed by the Style Book of the Public Printer. Briefly stated, the idea of the committee is that where technical compound terms are used as nouns, as, for instance, railroad, connecting rod, they should not be hyphened. In other words, they should be written either as one word, as railroad, windshield, or as two words, as boiler room. When common practice among men leads to the connecting of the two words into one, as had transpired in the case of railroad and windshield, then it will be time for the technical man to follow; but in no case is the technical compound noun to be hyphened. The committee's rule advises the use of the hyphen in compound adjectival forms. For instance, boiler room is written as two separate words when it is a noun, but in the expression boiler-room economy, a hyphen should connect the words boiler and room, because both the words boiler and room must be taken together correctly to express the meaning intended and because the words occur in adjectival form. There is much difference of opinion about the use of the hyphen, and there are some members of the society who disagree absolutely with the committee, but this rule appears to represent the general tendency at this time and there is a definiteness about it which is extremely satisfactory when the chaos of the present practice is observed.

There is, of course, a lack of definiteness in the use of technical compound terms when used as nouns. Since these are to be written either as solid words or as two words, the choice is narrowed to two possibilities. There is the greatest difference in practice in this regard. The sane and intelligent thing to do seems to be to wait until the man in the street writes the words together. For instance, the word windshield. is now written as a solid word because the man in the street thinks of it in that way, and writes it in that way. The term boiler room is probably an older term, but is not in common

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