THE COMMERCIAL ELEMENT IN TECHNICAL EDUCATION.

Cromwell Argus, Volume XXVI, Issue 1323, 28 August 1894, Page 6

THE COMMERCIAL ELEMENT IN TECHNICAL EDUCATION.

No more exasperating thing can occur to the young graduate coming forth with his brain filled with visions of thermodyamics, co-efficients, neutral axes, radii of gyration, &c., than to be asked the price of a six-inch pulley, and have no idea of the answer nor know where to get the information ; or to be asked the relative value of two different types of engines, and to find, after having given their water consumption or their economy based thereon, that the relative value from a commercial standpoint was wanted, or the cost per horse-power, day or year. I doubt if there are very many engineering schools in the country where the pupils are taught when to use a compound engine or when to use a condenser. Many an elaborate plan and many a well laid scheme has fallen through because of the commercial element having been entirely neglected or not thoroughly understood. It will be argued, and justly so, that a student cannot cram his head with a mass of data whose value is as constantly fluctuating as the prices of different machines and their parts, but their value can be economically determined and retained, and the economical principles of the machine business can be readily taught. I would recommend a system or course of instruction, in shop and construction accounts and book-keeping, together with the methods of determining the cost of construction, and pacticein estimating; in bridge work, the method of determining the cost of a bridge, with the variation of price dependent upon the variation of span and weight of bridge ; in shop work, shop accounts, piece work versus day work, arrangement of tools and buildings with relation to the work to be done. It will not be possible to go into all the details of this subject, but the fundamental principles can be very readily covered. Let it ever be kept before the student that the profession of an engineer is essentially a commercial one, and that he must build no better than the exigencies of the case demand. He is a middle man between the producer of facts and the consumer; between the scientist and investigator and the business man, and that to succeed he must combine, to a certain extent, in his own person the qualities of both. — Prof. L. S. Randolph, in Cassier’s Magazine.