THE CIVIL ENGINEER & SURVEYOR'S MANUAL: COMPRISING Surveying, Engineering, Practical Astronomy, GEODETICAL JURISPRUDENCE, ANALYSES OF MINERALS, SOILS, GRAINS, VEGETABLES, VALUATION OF LANDS, BUILDINGS, PERMANENT STRUCTURES, ETC. BY MICHAEL MCDERMOTT. C.E., CERTIFIED LAND SURVEYOR FOR GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND; PROVINCIAL LAND CITY SURVEYOR OF MILWAUKEE and Chicago; MEMBER OF THE ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE, CHICAGO R. B. Rifenberich, Cincinnati, O. CHICAGO: FERGUS PRINTING COMPANY, 244-8 ILLINOIS STREET. 1879. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1879, by MICHAEL MCDERMOTT, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 67 I have been born on the 10th day of Sep., 1810, in the village of Kilmore, near Castlekelly, in the County of Galway, Ireland. My mother, Ellen Nolan, daughter of Doctor Nolan, was of that place, and my father Michael McDermott was from Flaskagh, near Dunmore, in the same County, where I spent my early years at a village school kept by Mr. James Rogers, for whom I have an undying love through life. Of him I learned arithmetic and some book-keeping. He read arithmetic of Cronan and Roach, in the County of Limerick. They excelled in that branch. John Gregory, Esq., formerly Professor of Engineering and Surveying in Dublin; but now of Milwaukee, read of Cronan, which enabled him to publish his "Philosophy of Arithmetic," a work never equalled by another. By it one can solve quadratic and cubic equations, the diophantine problems, and summation of series. After having been long enough under my friend Mr. Rogers, I went to the Clarenbridge school, kept by the brothers of St. Patrick, under the patronage of the good lady Reddington. I lived with a family named Neyland, at the Weir, about two miles from the school, where I had a happy home on the sea-side. There I read algebra, grammar, and bookkeeping. After being nearly a year in that abode of piety and learning, I went to Mathew Collin's Mathematical school, in Limerick. He was considered then, and at the time of his death, the best mathematician in Europe. His correspondence in the English and Irish diaries on mathematics proves that he stood first. I left him after eight months studying geometry, etc., and went to Castleircan, near Cahirconlish, seven miles from Limerick, where I entered the mathematical school, kept by Mr. Thomas McNamara, familiarly known as Tom Mac, and Father of X, on account of his superior knowledge of algebra, he was generally known by the name of "Father of X." Of him I read algebra and surveying; lived with a gentleman farmer — named William Keys, Esq., at Drimkeen, about one and one-half iniles south-east of the school. Mr. Mac had a large school, exclusively mathematical, and was considered the best teacher of surveying. After being with him nearly a year, I left and went to Bansha, four miles east of the town of Tipperary. Here Mr. Simon Cox, an unassuming little man, had the largest mathematical class in Ireland, and probably in the world, having 157 students, gathered from every County in Ireland, and some from England. Like Mr. McNamara, he had special branches in which he excelled; these were the use of the globes, spherical astronomy, analytical geometry, and fluxions. The differential and integral calculus were then slowly getting into the schools. I lived |