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Exploring the Variety of Random
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 ENGINEERING

T he material prosperity of the last century is due to the co-

operation of three classes of men: the man of science, who
lives only for truth and the discovery of nature’s laws; the inventor,
eager to apply these discoveries to money-making machines and
processes, and the engineer, trained in mathematical investigation
and in knowledge of the physical conditions which govern his
profession, which is the mechanical application of the laws of nature.

Engineering is sometimes divided into civil, military, and naval

engineering. The term civil engineering, which will be here
described, is often used by writers as covering structural engineering
only, but it has a much wider meaning.
The logical classification is: statical engineering, including that of
all fixed bodies, and dynamical, covering the movement of all bodies
by the development and application of power.
Statical engineering can be again subdivided into structural
engineering, or that of railways, highways, bridges, foundations,
tunnels, buildings, etc.; also, into hydraulic engineering, which
governs the application of water to canals, river improvements,
harbors, the supply of water to towns and for irrigation, disposal of
sewage, etc.
Dynamical engineering can be divided into mechanical
engineering, which covers the construction of all prime motors, the
transmission of power, and the use of machines and machine tools.
Closely allied is electrical engineering, the art of the transformation
and transmission of energy for traction, lighting, telegraphy,
telephoning, operating machinery, and many other uses, such as its
electrolytic application to ores and metals.
Then we have the combined application of statical, mechanical,
and electrical engineering to what is now called industrial
engineering, or the production of articles useful to man. This may be
divided into agricultural, mining, metallurgical, and chemical
engineering.
Surely this is a vast field, and can only be hastily described in
the sketch which we are about to give.

STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING
This is the oldest of all. We have not been able to surpass the
works of the past in grandeur or durability. The pyramids of Egypt
still stand, and will stand for thousands of years. Roman bridges,
aqueducts, and sewers still perform their duties. Joseph’s canal still
irrigates Lower Egypt. The great wall of China, running for fifteen
hundred miles over mountains and plains, contains one hundred and
fifty millions of cubic yards of materials and is the greatest of
artificial works. No modern building compares in grandeur with St.
Peter’s, and the mediæval cathedrals shame our puny imitations.
These mighty works were built to show the piety of the Church
or to gratify the pride of kings. Time and money were of no account.
All this has now been changed. Capital controls, and the question of
time, money, and usefulness rules everything. Hence come scientific
design and labor-saving machinery.
The engineer of our modern works first calculates the stresses
on all their parts, and proportions them accordingly, so that there is
no waste of material. Hand labor has given place to steam
machinery. All parts are interchangeable, so that they can be made
and fitted together in the least possible time, as is seen every day in
the construction of a steel-framed office building. Our workmen
receive much higher wages than in the past, while time and cost
have been diminished.

RAILWAYS
The greatest engineering work of the nineteenth century was
the development of the railway system which has changed the face
of the world. Beginning in 1829 with the locomotive of George
Stephenson, it has extended with such strides that, after seventy
years, there are 466,000 miles of railways in the world, of which
190,000 miles are in the United States. Their cost is estimated at
forty thousand millions of dollars, of which ten thousand millions
belong to the United States.
The rapidity with which railways are built in the United States
and Canada contrasts strongly with what has been done in other
countries. Much has been written of the energy of Russia in building
3000 miles of Siberian railway in five or six years. In the United
States an average of 6147 miles was completed every year during
ten successive years, and in 1887 there were built 12,982 miles. The
physical difficulties overcome in Siberia are no greater than have
been overcome here.
This rapid construction is due to several causes, the most potent
of which has been the need of extending railways over great
distances with little money. Hence they were built economically, and
at first in not as solid a manner as those of Europe. Steeper
gradients, sharper curves, and lighter rails were used. This rendered
necessary a different kind of rolling-stock suitable to such
construction. The swivelling-truck and equalizing-beam enabled our
engines to run safely on tracks where the rigid European engines
would soon have been in the ditch.
 Our cars were made longer, and by the use of longitudinal
framing much stronger. A great economy came from the use of
annealed cast-iron wheels, with hardened tires, all in one piece,
instead of being built up of spokes, hubs, and tires in separate parts.
These wheels now seldom break, and cost much less than European
wheels. As there are some eleven million car-wheels in use in the
United States the resulting economy is great.
It was soon seen that longer cars would carry a greater
proportion of paying load, and the more cars that one engine could
draw in a train, the less would be the cost. It was not until the
invention by Bessemer in 1864 of a steel of quality and cost that
made it available for rails that much heavier cars and locomotives
could be used. Then came a rapid increase. As soon as Bessemer
rails were made in this country, the cost fell from $175 per ton to
$50, and now to $26.
Before that time a wooden car weighed sixteen tons, and could
carry a paying load of fifteen tons. The thirty-ton engines of those
days could not draw on a level over thirty cars weighing 900 tons.
The pressed steel car of to-day weighs no more than the
wooden car, but carries a paying load of fifty tons. The heaviest
engines have now drawn on a level fifty steel cars, weighing 3750
tons. In the one case the paying load of an engine was 450 tons;
now it is 2500 tons.
Steep grades soon developed a better brake system, and these
heavier trains have led to the invention of the automatic brake
worked from the engine, and also automatic couplers, saving time
and many lives. The capacity of our railways has been greatly
increased by the use of electric block-signals.
The perfecting of both the railway and its rolling-stock has led to
remarkable results.
We have no accurate statistics of the early operation of American
railways. In 1867 Poor’s Manual estimated their total freight tonnage
at 75,000,000 and the total freight receipts at $400,000,000. This
was an average rate per ton of $5.33.
In 1899 Poor gives the total freight tonnage at 975,789,941
tons, and the freight receipts at $922,436,314, or an average rate
per ton of ninety-five cents. Had the rates of 1867 prevailed, the
additional yearly cost to the public would have been $4,275,000,000,
or sufficient to replace the whole railway system in two and a half
years.
This is an illustration only, but a very striking one. Everybody
knows that such high rates of freight as those of 1867 would have
checked traffic. This much can surely be said: the reduction in cost
of operating our railways, and the consequent fall in freight rates,
have been potent factors in enabling the United States to send
abroad last year $1,456,000,000 worth of exports and flood the
world with our food and manufactured products.

BRIDGE BUILDING
In early days the building of a bridge was a matter of great
ceremony, and it was consecrated to protect it from evil spirits. Its
construction was controlled by priests, as the title of the Pope of
Rome, “Pontifex Maximus,” indicates.
Railways changed all this. Instead of the picturesque stone
bridge, whose long line of low arches harmonized with the
landscape, there came the straight girder or high truss, ugly indeed,
but quickly built, and costing much less.
Bridge construction has made greater progress in the United
States than abroad. The heavy trains that we have described called
for stronger bridges. The large American rolling-stock is not used in
England, and but little on the continent of Europe, as the width of
tunnels and other obstacles will not allow of it. It is said that there is
an average of one bridge for every three miles of railway in the
United States, making 63,000 bridges, most of which have been
replaced by new and stronger ones during the last twenty years.
This demand has brought into existence many bridge-building
companies, some of whom make the whole bridge, from the ore to
the finished product.
Before the advent of railways, highway bridges in America were
made of wood, and called trusses. Few of them existed before
railways. The large rivers and estuaries were crossed in horse-boats,
a trip more dangerous than an Atlantic voyage now is. A few smaller
rivers had wooden truss bridges. Although originally invented by
Leonardo da Vinci, in the sixteenth century, they were reinvented by
American carpenters. Some of Burr’s bridges are still standing after
more than one hundred years’ use. This shows what wood can do
when not overstrained and protected from weather and fire.
The coming of railways required a stronger type of bridge to
carry concentrated loads, and the Howe truss, with vertical iron
rods, was invented, capable of 150-foot spans.
About 1868 iron bridges began to take the place of wooden
bridges. Die-forged eyebars and pin connections allowed of longer
panels and longer spans. One of the first long-span bridges was a
single-track railway bridge of 400-foot span over the Ohio at
Cincinnati, which was considered to be a great achievement in 1870.
The Kinzua viaduct, 310 feet high and over half a mile long,
belongs to this era. It is the type of the numerous high viaducts now
so common.
About 1885 a new material was given to engineers, having
greater strength and tenacity than iron, and commercially available
from its low cost. This is basic steel. After many experiments, the
proper proportions of carbon, phosphorus, sulphur, and manganese
were ascertained, and uniformity resulted. The open-hearth process
is now generally used. This new chemical metal, for such it is, is fifty
per cent. stronger than iron, and can be tied in a knot when cold.
 The effect of improved devices and the use of steel is shown by
the weights of the 400-foot Ohio River iron bridge, built in 1870, and
a bridge at the same place, built in 1886.
The bridge of 1870 was of iron, had panels twelve feet long, and
its height was forty-five feet, and span 400 feet.
The bridge of 1886 was of steel, had panels thirty feet long, and
its height was eighty feet. Its span was 550 feet. The weights of the
two were nearly alike.
The cantilever design, which is a revival of a very ancient type,
came into use. The great Forth Bridge, in Scotland, 1600-foot span,
is of this style, as are the 500-foot spans at Poughkeepsie, and now
a new one is being designed to cross the St. Lawrence near Quebec,
of 1800-foot span.
This is probably near the economic limit of cantilever
construction, but the suspension bridge can be extended much
farther, as it carries no dead weight of compression members.
The Niagara Suspension Bridge, of 810-foot span, built by
Roebling, in 1852, and the Brooklyn Bridge, of 1600 feet, built by
Roebling and his son, twenty years after, marked a wonderful
advance in bridge design.
Thirty years later, when a new bridge of 1600 feet was wanted
to cross another part of the East River at New York, the same lines
of construction were followed, and they will be followed in the 2700-
foot span, designed to cross the North River some time in the
present century. The only radical advance is the use of a better steel
than could be had in earlier days.
Steel-arched bridges are now scientifically designed. Such are
the new Niagara Bridge, of 840-foot span, and the Alexandra Bridge
at Paris.
It is curious to see how little is said about these beautiful
bridges, which the public takes as a matter of course. If they had
been built fifty years ago, their engineers would have received the
same praise as Robert Stephenson or Roebling, and justly so, as
they would have been men of exceptional genius. When these
bridges were built, in 1898, the path had been made so clear by
mathematical investigation and the command of a better steel, that
the task seemed easy.
That which marks more clearly than anything else the great
advance in American bridge building, during the last forty years, is
the reconstruction of the famous Victoria Bridge, over the St.
Lawrence, above Montreal. This bridge was designed by Robert
Stephenson, and the stone piers are a monument to his engineering
skill. For forty winters they have resisted the great fields of ice borne
by a rapid current. Their dimensions were so liberal that the new
bridge was put upon them, although four times as wide as the old
one.
The superstructure was originally made of plate-iron tubes,
reinforced by tees and angles, similar to Stephenson’s Menai Straits
Bridge. There are twenty-two spans of 240 feet each, and a central
one of 330 feet. Perhaps these tubes were the best that could be
had at the time, but they had outlived their usefulness. Their
interiors had become greatly corroded by the confined gases from
the engines and the drippings from the chemicals used in cold-
storage cars. Their height was insufficient for modern large cars, and
the confined smoke made them so dark that the number of trains
was greatly limited.
It was decided to build a new bridge of open-work construction
and of open-hearth steel. This was done, and the comparison is as
follows: Old bridge, sixteen feet wide, single track, live load of one
ton per foot; new bridge, sixty-seven feet wide, two railway tracks
and two carriage-ways, live load five tons per foot.
The old iron tubes weighed 10,000 tons, cost $2,713,000, and
took two seasons to erect. The new truss bridge weighs 22,000 tons,
has cost between $1,300,000 and $1,400,000, and the time of
construction was one year.
 During his experience the writer has seen the rolling-load of
bridges increase from 2000 to 4000 pounds per lineal foot of track,
with an extra allowance for concentrated loads.
The modern high office building is an interesting example of the
evolution of a high-viaduct pier. Such a pier of the required
dimensions, strengthened by more columns strong enough to carry
many floors, is the skeleton frame. Enclose the sides with brick,
stone, or terra-cotta, add windows, and doors, and elevators, and it
is complete.
Fortunately for the stability of these high buildings, the effect of
wind pressures had been studied in this country in the designs of the
Kinzua, Pecos, and other high viaducts.
All this had been thoroughly worked out and known to our
engineers before the fall of the Tay Bridge in Scotland. That
disastrous event led to very careful experiments on wind pressures
by Sir Benjamin Baker, the very eminent engineer of the Forth
Bridge. His experiments showed that a wind gauge of 300 square
feet area showed a maximum pressure of thirty-five pounds per
square foot, while a small one of one foot and a half square area
registered gusts of forty-one pounds per square foot.
The modern elevated railway of cities is simply a very long
railway viaduct. Some idea may be gained of the life of a modern
riveted-iron structure from the experience of the Manhattan Elevated
Railway of New York. These roads were built in 1878–79 to carry
uniform loads of 1600 pounds per lineal foot, except Second Avenue,
which was made to carry 2000. The stresses were below 10,000
pounds per square inch.
These viaducts have carried in twenty-two years over
25,000,000 trains, weighing over 3,000,000,000 tons, at a maximum
speed of twenty-five miles an hour, and are still in good order.
Bridge engineers of the present day are free from the difficulties
which confronted the early designers of iron bridges. The
mathematics of bridge design was understood in 1870, but the
proportioning of details had to be worked out individually. Every new
span was a new problem. Now the engineer tells his draughtsman to
design a span of a given length, height, and width, and to carry such
a load. By the light of experience he does this at once.
Connections have become standardized so that the duplication
of parts can be carried to its fullest extent.
Machine tools are used to make every part of a bridge, and
power riveters to fasten them together. Great accuracy can now be
had, and the sizes of parts have increased in a remarkable degree.
We have now great bridge companies, which are so completely
equipped with appliances for both shop drawings and construction
that the old joke becomes almost true that they can make bridges
and sell them by the mile.
All improvements of design are now public property. All that the
bridge companies do is done in the fierce light of competition.
Mistakes mean ruin, and the fittest only survives.
Having such powerful aids, the American bridge engineer of to-
day has advantages over his predecessors and over his European
brethren, where the American system has not yet been adopted.
The American system gives the greatest possible rapidity of
erection of the bridge on its piers. A span of 518 feet, weighing 1000
tons, was erected at Cairo on the Mississippi in six days. The parts
were not assembled until they were put upon the false works.
European engineers have sometimes ordered a bridge to be riveted
together complete in the maker’s yard, and then taken apart.
The adoption of American work in such bridges as the Atbara in
South Africa, the Gokteik viaduct in Burmah, 320 feet high, and
others, was due to low cost, quick delivery and erection, as well as
excellence of material and construction.

FOUNDATIONS, ETC.
 Bridges must have foundations for their piers. Up to the middle
of the nineteenth century engineers knew no better way of making
them than by laying bare the bed of the river by a pumped-out
cofferdam, or by driving piles into the sand, as Julius Cæsar did.
About the middle of the century, M. Triger, a French engineer,
conceived the first plan of a pneumatic foundation, which led to the
present system of compressing air by pumping it into an inverted
box, called a caisson, with air locks on top to enable men and
materials to go in and out. After the soft materials were removed,
and the caisson sunk by its own weight to the proper depth, it was
filled with concrete. The limit of depth is that in which men can work
in compressed air without injury, and this is not much over one
hundred feet.
The foundations of the Brooklyn and St. Louis bridges were put
down in this manner.
In the construction of the Poughkeepsie bridge over the Hudson
in 1887–88, it became necessary to go down 135 feet below tide-
level before hard bottom was reached. Another process was
invented to take the place of compressed air. Timber caissons were
built, having double sides, and the spaces between them filled with
stone to give weight. Their tops were left open and the American
single-bucket dredge was used. This bucket was lowered and lifted
by a very long wire rope worked by the engine, and with it the soft
material was removed. By moving this bucket to different parts of
the caisson its sinking was perfectly controlled, and the caisson
finally placed in its exact position, and perfectly vertical. The internal
space was then filled with concrete laid under water by the same
bucket, and levelled by divers when necessary.
While this work was going on, the government of New South
Wales, in Australia, called for both designs and tenders for a bridge
over an estuary of the sea called Hawkesbury. The conditions were
the same as at Poughkeepsie, except that the soft mud reached to a
depth of 160 feet below tide-level.
 The designs of the engineers of the Poughkeepsie bridge were
accepted, and the same method of sinking open caissons (in this
case made of iron) was carried out with perfect success.
The erection of this bridge involved another difficult problem.
The mud was too soft and deep for piles and staging, and the
cantilever system in this site would have increased the cost.
A staging was built on a large pontoon at the shore, and the
span erected upon it. The whole was then towed out to the bridge
site at high tide. As the tide fell, the pontoon was lowered and the
steel girder was placed gently on its piers. The whole operation was
completed within six hours. The other five spans were placed in the
same manner.
The same system was followed afterwards by the engineer of
the Canadian Pacific Railway in placing the spans of a bridge over
the St. Lawrence, in a very rapid current. It is now used in replacing
old spans by new ones, as it interrupts traffic for the least possible
time.
The solution of the problems presented at Hawkesbury gave the
second introduction of American engineers to bridge building outside
of America. The first was in 1786, when an American carpenter or
shipwright built a bridge over Charles River at Boston, 1470 feet long
by forty-six feet wide. This bridge was of wood supported on piles.
His work gained for him such renown that he was called to Ireland
and built a similar bridge at Belfast.
Tunnelling by compressed air is a horizontal application of
compressed-air foundations. The earth is supported by an iron tube,
which is added to in rings, which are pushed forward by hydraulic
jacks.
A tunnel is now being made under an arm of the sea between
Boston and East Boston, some 1400 feet long and sixty-five feet
below tide. The interior lining of iron tubing is not used. The tunnel
is built of concrete, reinforced by steel rods. This will effect a
considerable economy. Success in modern engineering means doing
a thing in the most economical way consistent with safety.
The Saint Clair tunnel, which carries the Grand Trunk Railway of
Canada under the outlet of Lake Huron, is a successful example of
such work. Had the North River tunnel, at New York, been designed
on equally scientific principles, it would probably have been finished,
which now seems problematical.
The construction of rapid-transit railways in cities is another
branch of engineering, covering structural, mechanical, and electrical
engineering. Some of these railways are elevated, and are merely
railway viaducts, but the favorite type now is that of subways. There
are two kinds, those near the surface, like the District railways of
London, the subways in Paris, Berlin, and Boston, and that now
building in New York. The South London and Central London, and
other London projects, are tubes sunk fifty to eighty feet below the
surface and requiring elevators for access. These are made on a plan
devised by Greathead, and consist of cast-iron tubes pushed forward
by hydraulic rams, and having the space outside of the tube filled
with liquid cement pumped into place.
The construction of the Boston subway was difficult on account
of the small width of the streets, their great traffic, and the necessity
of underpinning the foundations of buildings. All of this was
successfully done without disturbing the traffic for a single day, and
reflects great credit on the engineer. Owing to the great width of
New York streets, the problem is simpler in that respect, but requires
skill in design and organization to complete the work in a short time.
Although many times as long as the Boston subway, it will be built in
nearly the same time. The design, where in earth, may be compared
to that of a steel office building twenty miles long, laid flat on one of
its sides. The reduplication of parts saves time and labor, and is the
key to the anticipated rapid progress. Near the surface this subway
is built in open excavation, and tunnelling is confined to rock.
The construction of power-houses for developing energy from
coal and from falling water requires much structural besides
electrical and mechanical engineering ability. The Niagara power-
house is intended to develop 100,000 horse-power; that at the Sault
Ste. Marie as much; that on the St. Lawrence, at Massena, 70,000
horse-power. These are huge works, requiring tunnels, rock-cut
chambers, and masonry and concrete in walls and dams. They cover
large extents of territory.
The contrast in size of the coal-using power-houses is
interesting. The new power-house now building by the Manhattan
Elevated Railway, in New York, develops in the small space of 200 by
400 feet 100,000 horse-power, or as much power as that utilized at
Niagara Falls.
One of the most useful materials which modern engineers now
make use of is concrete, which can be put into confined spaces and
laid under water. It costs less than masonry, while as strong. This is
the revival of the use of a material used by the Romans. The writer
was once allowed to climb a ladder and look at the construction of a
dome of the Pantheon, at Rome. He found it a monolithic mass of
concrete, and hence without thrust. It is a better piece of
engineering construction than the dome of St. Peter’s, built fifteen
hundred years later. The dome of Columbia College Library, in New
York, is built of concrete.
Concrete is a mixture of broken stone or gravel, sand, and
Portland cement. Its virtue depends upon the uniform good quality
of the cement. The use of the rotary kiln, which exposes all the
contained material to a uniform and constant intense heat, has
revolutionized the manufacture of Portland cement. The engineer
can now depend upon its uniformity of strength.
Wheels, axles, bridges, and rails have all been strengthened to
carry their increased loads; but, strange to say, the splices which
hold in place the ends of the rails, and which are really short-span
bridges, are now the weakest part of a railway. The angle-bar splice
has but one-third of the strength of the rail, and its strength cannot
be increased, owing to its want of depth. Joints go down under
every passing wheel, and the ends of the rails wear out long before
the rest.
This is not an insignificant detail. It has been estimated by the
officers of one of the trunk lines that a splice of proper design and
strength would save yearly enough in track labor (most of which is
expended in tamping up low joints) to buy all the new rails and
fastenings required in some time. It would save much more than
that in the wear of rolling-stock. A perfect joint would be an
economic device next in value to the Bessemer steel rail. Here is a
place for scientific and practical skill.

HYDRAULIC ENGINEERING
This is one of the oldest branches of engineering, and was
developed before the last century. The irrigation works of Asia,
Africa, Spain, Italy, the Roman aqueducts, and the canals of Europe,
are examples. Hydraulic works cannot be constructed in ignorance of
the laws which govern the flow of water. The action of water is
relentless, as ruined canals, obstructed rivers, and washed-out dams
testify.
The principal additions of the nineteenth century to hydraulic
engineering are the collection of larger statistics of the flow of water
in pipes and channels, of rainfall, run-off, and available supply. It is
now known that the germs of disease can be retained by ordinary
sand filters, and it is now an established fact that pure drinking
water and proper drainage are a sure preventive of typhoid and
similar fevers. Very foul water can be made potable. Experiments
show that the water of the Schuylkill River at Philadelphia, which
contains 400,000 germs in the space of less than a cubic inch, was
so much purified by filtering that only sixty remained. This is a
discovery of sanitary science, but the application of it is through
structural engineering, which designs and executes the filter beds
with great economy.
 The removal of sewage, after having been done by the
Etruscans before the foundation of Rome, became a lost art during
the dirty Dark Ages, when filth and piety were deemed to be
connected in some mysterious way. It was reserved for good John
Wesley to point out that “Cleanliness is next to godliness.” Now
sewage works are as common as those for water supply. Some of
them have been of great size and cost. Such are the drainage works
of London, Paris, Berlin, Boston, Chicago, and New Orleans. A very
difficult work was the drainage of the City of Mexico, which is in a
valley surrounded by mountains, and elevated only four to five feet
above a lake having no outlet. Attempts to drain the lake had been
made in vain for six hundred years. It has lately been accomplished
by a tunnel six miles long through the mountains, and a canal of
over thirty miles, the whole work costing some $20,000,000.
The drainage of Chicago by locks and canal into the Illinois River
has cost some $35,000,000, and is well worth its cost.
Scientific research has been applied to the designing of high
masonry and concrete dams, and we know now that no well-
designed dam on a good foundation should fail. The dams now
building across the Nile by order of the British government will
create the largest artificial lakes in the world. The water thus stored
will be of inestimable value in irrigating the crops of Lower Egypt.
Their cost, although great, will not exceed the sums spent by the
lavish Khedive Ismail on useless palaces, now falling to decay.
The Suez Canal is one of the largest hydraulic works of the last
century, and is a notable instance of the displacement of hand labor
by the use of machinery. Ismail began by impressing a large part of
the peasant population of Egypt, just as Rameses had done over
3000 years before. These unfortunate people were set to dig the
sand with rude hoes, and carry it away in baskets on their heads.
They died by thousands for want of water and proper food. At last
the French engineers persuaded the Khedive to let them introduce
steam dredging machinery. A light railway was laid to supply
provisions, and a small ditch dug to bring pure water. The number of
men employed fell to one-fourth. Machinery did the rest. But for this
the canal would never have been finished.
The Panama Canal now uses the best modern machinery, and
the Nicaragua Canal, if built, will apply still better methods,
developed on the Chicago drainage canal, where material was
handled at a less cost than has ever been done before.
Russia is better supplied with internal waterways than any other
country. Her rivers rise near each other, and have long been
connected by canals. It is stated that she has over 60,000 miles of
internal navigation, and is now preparing the construction of canals
to connect the Caspian with the Baltic Sea.
The Erie Canal was one of very small cost, but its influence has
been surpassed by none. The “winning of the West” was hastened
many years by the construction of this work in the first quarter of
the century. Two horses were just able to draw a ton of goods at the
speed of two miles an hour over the wretched roads of those days.
When the canal was made these two horses could draw a boat
carrying 150 tons four miles an hour. Mud, or, in other words,
friction, is the great enemy of civilization, and canals were the first
things to diminish it, and after that railways.
The Erie Canal was made by engineers, but it had to make its
own engineers first, as there were none available in this country at
that time. These self-taught men, some of them land surveyors and
others lawyers, showed themselves the equals of the Englishmen
Brindley and Smeaton, when they located a water route through the
wilderness, having a uniform descent from Lake Erie to the Hudson,
and which would have been so built if there had been enough
money.
The question now is whether to enlarge the capacity of this
canal by enlarging its prism and locks, or to increase speed and
move more boats in a season by electrical appliances. The last
method seems more in line with those of the present day.
 There should be a waterway from the Hudson to Lake Erie large
enough for vessels able to navigate the lakes and the ocean. A draft
of twenty-one feet can be had at a cost estimated at $200,000,000.
The deepening of the Chicago drainage canal to the Mississippi
River, and the deepening of the Mississippi itself to the Gulf of
Mexico, is a logical sequence of the first project. The Nicaragua
Canal would then form one part of a great line of navigation, by
which the products of the interior of the continent could reach either
the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean.
The cost would be small compared with the resulting benefits,
and some day this navigation will be built by the government of the
United States.
The deepening of the Southwest Pass of the Mississippi River
from six to thirty feet by James B. Eads was a great engineering
achievement. It was the first application of the jetty system on a
large scale. This is merely confining the flow of a river, and thus
increasing its velocity so that it secures a deeper channel for itself.
The improvement of harbors follows closely the increased size of
ocean and lake vessels. The approach to New York harbor is now
being deepened to forty feet, a thing impossible to be done without
the largest application of steam machinery in a suction dredge boat.
The great increase of urban population, due to steam and
electric railways, has made works of water supply and drainage
necessary everywhere. Some of these are on a very grand scale. An
illustration of this is the Croton Aqueduct of New York as it now is,
and as it will be hereafter.
This work was thought by its designers to be on a scale large
enough to last for all time. It is now less than sixty years old, and
the population of New York will soon be too large to be supplied by
it.
It is able to supply 250,000,000 to 300,000,000 gallons daily,
and its cost, when the Cornell dam and Jerome Park reservoir are
finished, will be a little over $92,000,000.
 It is now suggested to store water in the Adirondack Mountains,
203 miles away, by dams built at the outlet of ten or twelve lakes.
This will equalize the flow of the Hudson River so as to give
3,000,000,000 to 4,000,000,000 gallons daily. It is then proposed to
pump 1,000,000,000 gallons daily from the Hudson River at
Poughkeepsie, sixty miles away, to a height sufficient to supply the
city by gravity through an aqueduct. This water would be filtered at
Poughkeepsie, and we now know that all impurities can be removed.
If this scheme is carried out, the total supply will be about
1,300,000,000 gallons daily, or enough for a population of from
12,000,000 to 13,000,000 persons. By putting in more pumps, filter-
beds, and conduits, this supply can be increased forty per cent., or
to 1,800,000,000 gallons daily. This water would fill every day a lake
one mile square by ten feet deep. This is a fair example of the scale
of the engineering works of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
By the application of modern labor-saving machinery, the cost of
this work can be so far controlled that the cost to the city of New
York per 1,000,000 gallons would be no greater than that of the
present Croton supply.
All works of hydraulic engineers depend on water. But what will
happen if the water all dries up? India, China, Spain, Turkey, and
Syria have suffered from droughts, caused clearly by the destruction
of their forests. The demand for paper to print books and
newspapers upon, and for other purposes, is fast converting our
forests into pulp. We cannot even say, “After us the deluge,” for it
will seldom rain in those evil days. When the rains do come, the
sponge-like vegetation of the forests being gone, the streams will be
torrents at one time of the year and dried up during the rest, as we
now see in the arid regions of the West.

MECHANICAL ENGINEERING
 This is employed in all dynamical engineering. It covers the
designs of prime motors of all sorts, steam, gas, and gasoline
reciprocating engines; also steam and water turbines, wind-mills,
and wave-motors.
It comprises all means of transmitting power, as by shafting,
ropes, pneumatic pressure, and compressed air, all of which seem
likely to be superseded by electricity.
It covers the construction of machine tools and machinery of all
kinds. It enters into all the processes of structural, hydraulic,
electrical, and industrial engineering. The special improvements are:
The almost universal use of rotary motion, and of the reduplication
of parts.
The steam-engine is a machine of reciprocating, converted into
rotary, motion by the crank. The progress of mechanical engineering
during the nineteenth century is measured by the improvements of
the steam-engine, principally in the direction of saving fuel, by the
invention of internal combustion or gas-engines, the application of
electrical transmission, and, latest, the practical development of
steam turbines by Parsons, Westinghouse, Delaval, Curtis, and
others. In these a jet of steam impinges upon buckets set upon the
circumference of a wheel. It was clearly indicated by the Italian
engineer Bronca, in 1629, but he was too early. The time was not
ripe, and there were then no machine tools giving the perfection of
workmanship required.
Their advantages are that their motion is rotary and not
reciprocal. They can develop speed of from 5000 to 30,000
revolutions per minute, while the highest ever attained by a
reciprocating engine is not over 1000. Their thermodynamic losses
are less, hence they consume less steam and less fuel.
It is a very interesting fact that the basic invention upon which
not only steam turbines and electric dynamos, but, indeed, all other
parts of mechanical engineering, depend, is of such remote antiquity
that we know nothing of its origin. This is the wheel which Gladstone
said was the greatest of man’s mechanical inventions, as there is
nothing in nature to suggest it.
Duplication of parts has lowered the cost of all products.
Clothing is one of these. The parts of ready-made garments and
shoes are now cut into shape in numbers at a time, by sharp-edged
templates, and then fastened together by sewing-machines.
Mechanical engineering is a good example of the survival of the
fittest. Millions of dollars are expended on machinery, when suddenly
a new discovery or invention casts them all into the scrap heap, to
be replaced by those of greater earning capacity.
Prime motors derive their energy either from coal or other
combinations of carbon, such as petroleum, or from gravity. This
may come from falling water, and the old-fashioned water-wheels of
the eighteenth century were superseded in the nineteenth by
turbines, first invented in France and since greatly perfected. These
are used in the electrical transmission of water-power at Niagara of
5000 horse-power, and form a very important part of the plant.
The other gravity motors are wind-mills and wave-motors. Wind-
mills are an old invention, but have been greatly improved in the
United States by the use of the self-reefing wheel. The great plains
of the West are subject to sudden, violent gales of wind, and unless
the wheel was automatically self-reefing it would often be destroyed.
Little has been written about these wheels, but their use is very
widely extended, and they perform a most useful function in
industrial engineering.
There have been vast numbers of patents taken out for wave-
motors. One was invented in Chili, South America, which furnished a
constant power for four months, and was utilized in sawing planks.
The action of waves is more constant on the Pacific coast of America
than elsewhere, and some auxiliary power, such as a gasoline
engine, which can be quickly started and stopped, must be provided
for use during calm days. The prime cost of such a machine need
not exceed that of a steam plant, and the cost of operating is much
less than that of any fuel-burning engine. The saving of coal is a
very important problem. In a wider sense, we may say that the
saving of all the great stores which nature has laid up for us during
the past, and which have remained almost untouched until the
nineteenth century, is the great problem of to-day.
Petroleum and natural gas may disappear. The ores of gold,
silver, and platinum will not last forever. Trees will grow, and iron
ores seem to be practically inexhaustible. Chemistry has added a
new metal in aluminum, which replaces copper for many purposes.
One of the greatest problems of the twentieth century is to discover
some chemical process for treating iron, by which oxidation will not
take place.
Coal, next to grain, is the most important of nature’s gifts; it can
be exhausted, or the cost of mining it become so great that it cannot
be obtained in the countries where it is most needed; water, wind,
and wave power may take its place to a limited extent, and greater
use may be made of the waste gases coming from blast or smelter
furnaces, but as nearly all energy comes from coal, its use must be
economized, and the greatest economy will come from pulverizing
coal and using it in the shape of a fine powder. Inventions have been
made trying to deliver this powder into the fire-box as fast as made,
for it is as explosive as gunpowder, and as dangerous to store or
handle. If this can be done, there will be a saving of coal due to
perfect and smokeless combustion, as the admission of air can be
entirely regulated, the same blast which throws in the powder
furnishing oxygen. Some investigators have estimated that the
saving of coal will be as great as twenty per cent. This means
100,000,000 tons of coal annually.
Bituminous coal will then be as smokeless as anthracite, and can
be burned in locomotives. Cities will be free from the nuisance of
wasted coal, which we call soot. This process will be the best kind of
mechanical stoking, and will prevent the necessity of opening the
doors of fire-boxes. The boiler-rooms of steamships will no longer be
“floating hells,” and the firing of large locomotives will become easy.
 Another problem of mechanical engineering is to determine
whether it will be found more economical to transform the energy of
coal, at the mines, into electric current and send it by wire to cities
and other places where it is wanted, or to carry the coal by rail and
water, as we now do, to such places, and convert it there by the
steam or gas engine.
In favor of the first method it can be said that hills of refuse coal
now representing locked-up capital can be burned, and the cost of
transportation and handling be saved. Electric energy can now
transport power in high voltage economically between coal-mines
and most large cities.
The second method has the advantage of not depending on one
single source of supply, that may break down, but in having the
energy stored in coal-pockets near by the place of use, where it can
be applied to separate units of power with no fear of failure.
It seems probable that a combination of the two systems will
produce the best results. Where power can be sent electrically from
the mines for less cost than the coal can be transported, that
method will be used.
To prevent stoppage of works, the separate motors and a store
of coal, to be used in cases of emergency, will still be needed, just
as has been described as necessary to the commercial success of
wave-motors.

ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING
Any attempt by the writer of this article to trace the progress of
electricity would be but a vain repetition, after the admirable manner
in which the subject has been treated in a former paper of this
series by Professor Elihu Thomson.
 We can only once more emphasize the fact that it is by the union
of four separate classes of minds—scientific discoverers, inventors,
engineers, and capitalists—that this vast new industry has been
created, which gives direct employment to thousands, and, as Bacon
said 300 years ago, has “endowed the human race with new
powers.”

METALLURGY AND MINING

All the processes of metallurgy and mining employ statical,
hydraulic, mechanical, and electrical engineering. Coal, without
railways and canals, would be of little use, unless electrical
engineering came to its aid.
It was estimated by the late Lord Armstrong that of the
450,000,000 to 500,000,000 tons of coal annually produced in the
world, one-third is used for steam production, one-third in
metallurgical processes, and one-third for domestic consumption.
This last item seems large. It is the most important manufacturing
industry in the world, as may be seen by comparing the coalless
condition of the eighteenth century with the coal-using condition of
the nineteenth century.
Next in importance comes the production of iron and steel.
Steel, on account of its great cost and brittleness, was only used for
tools and special purposes until past the middle of the last century.
This has been all changed by the invention of his steel by Bessemer
in 1864, and open-hearth steel in the furnace of Siemens, perfected
some twenty years since by Gilchrist & Thomas.
The United States have taken the lead in steel manufacture. In
1873 Great Britain made three times as much steel as the United
States. Now the United States makes twice as much as Great Britain,
or forty per cent. of all the steel made in the world.
 Mr. Carnegie has explained the reason why, in epigrammatic
phrase: “Three pounds of steel billets can be sold for two cents.”
This stimulates rail and water traffic and other industries, as he
tells us one pound of steel requires two pounds of ore, one and one-
third pounds of coal, and one-third of a pound of limestone.
It is not surprising, therefore, that the States bordering on the
lakes have created a traffic of 25,000,000 tons yearly through the
Sault Ste. Marie Canal, while the Suez, which supplies the wants of
half the population of the world, has only 7,000,000, or less than the
tonnage of the little Harlem River at New York.

INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING
This leads us to our last topic, for which too little room has been
left. Industrial engineering covers statical, hydraulic, mechanical, and
electrical engineering, and adds a new branch which we may call
chemical engineering. This is pre-eminently a child of the nineteenth
century, and is the conversion of one thing into another by a
knowledge of their chemical constituents.
When Dalton first applied mathematics to chemistry and made it
quantitative, he gave the key which led to the discoveries of
Cavendish, Gay-Lussac, Berzelius, Liebig, and others. This new
knowledge was not locked up, but at once given to the world, and
made use of. Its first application on a large scale was made by
Napoleon in encouraging the manufacture of sugar from beets.
The new products were generally made from what were called
“waste material.” We now have the manufacture of soda, bleaching
powders, aniline dyes, and other products of the distillation of coal,
also coal-oil from petroleum (known fifty or sixty years ago only as a
horse medicine), acetylene gas, celluloid, rubber goods in all their
numerous varieties, high explosives, cement, artificial manures,
artificial ice, beet-sugar, and even beer may now be included.
 Through many ages, the alchemists, groping in the dark, and in
ignorance of nature’s laws, wasted their time in trying to find what
they called the philosopher’s stone, which they hoped would
transform the baser metals into gold.
If such a thing could be found it would be a curse, as it would
take away one of the most useful instruments we have—a fixed
standard of value.
In a little over one hundred years, those working by the light of
science have found the true philosopher’s stone in modern
chemistry. The value of only a part of these new products exceeds
the nominal value of all the gold in the world.
The value of our mechanical and chemical products is great, but
it is surpassed by that of food products. If these did not keep pace
with the increase of population, the theories of Malthus would be
true—but he never saw a modern reaper.
The steam-plough was invented in England some fifty years
since, but the great use of agricultural machinery dates from our
Civil War, when so many men were taken from agriculture. It
became necessary to fill their places with machinery. Without tracing
the steps which have led to it, we may say that the common type is
what is called “the binder,” and is a machine drawn chiefly by
animals, and in some cases by a field locomotive.
It cuts, rakes, and binds sheaves of grain at one operation.
Sometimes threshing and winnowing machines are combined with it,
and the grain is delivered into bags ready for the market.
Different machines are used for cutting and binding corn, and for
mowing and raking hay, but the most important of all is the grain-
binder. The extent of their use may be known from the fact that
75,000 tons of twine are used by these machines annually.
It is estimated that there are in the United States 1,500,000 of
these machines, but as the harvest is earlier in the South, there are
probably not over 1,000,000 in use at one time. As each machine
takes the place of sixteen men, this means that 16,000,000 men are
released from farming for other pursuits.
The “man with the hoe” has disappeared from the real world,
and is only to be found in the dreams of poets.
It is fair to assume that a large part of these 16,000,000 men
have gone into manufacturing, the operating of railways, and other
pursuits. The use of agricultural machinery, therefore, is one
explanation of why the United States produces eight-tenths of the
world’s cotton and corn, one-quarter of its wheat, one-third of its
meat and iron, two-fifths of its steel, and one-third of its coal, and a
large part of the world’s manufactured goods.

CONCLUSION
It is a very interesting question, why was this great development
of material prosperity delayed so late? Why did it wait until the
nineteenth century, and then all at once increase with such rapid
strides?
It was not until modern times that the reign of law was greatly
extended, and men were insured the product of their labors.
Then came the union of scientists, inventors, and engineers.
So long as these three classes worked separately but little was
done. There was an antagonism between them. Ancient writers went
so far as to say that the invention of the arch and of the potter’s
wheel were beneath the dignity of a philosopher.
One of the first great men to take a different view was Francis
Bacon. Macaulay, in his famous essay, quotes him as saying:
“Philosophy is the relief of man’s estate, and the endowment of the
human race with new powers; increasing their pleasures and
mitigating their sufferings.” These noble words seem to anticipate
the famous definition of civil engineering, embodied by Telford in the
charter of the British Institution of Civil Engineers: “Engineering is
the art of controlling the great powers of nature for the use and
convenience of man.”
The seed sown by Bacon was long in producing fruit. Until the
laws of nature were better known, there could be no practical
application of them. Towards the end of the eighteenth century a
great intellectual revival took place. In literature appeared Voltaire,
Rousseau, Kant, Hume, and Goethe. In pure science there came
Laplace, Cavendish, Lavoisier, Linnæus, Berzelius, Priestley, Count
Rumford, James Watt, and Dr. Franklin. The last three were among
the earliest to bring about a union of pure and applied science.
Franklin immediately applied his discovery that frictional electricity
and lightning were the same to the protection of buildings by
lightning-rods. Count Rumford (whose experiments on the
conversion of power into heat led to the discovery of the
conservatism of energy) spent a long life in contriving useful
inventions.
James Watt, one of the few men who have united in themselves
knowledge of abstract science, great inventive faculties, and rare
mechanical skill, changed the steam-engine from a worthless
rattletrap into the most useful machine ever invented by man. To do
this he first discovered the science of thermodynamics, then
invented the necessary appliances, and finally constructed them with
his own hands. He was a very exceptional man. At the beginning of
the nineteenth century there were few engineers who had received
any scientific education. Most of them worked by their constructive
instincts, like beavers, or from experience only. It took a lifetime to
educate such an engineer, and few became eminent until they were
old men.
Now there is in the profession a great army of young men, most
of them graduates of technical schools, good mathematicians, and
well versed in the art of experimenting. The experiments of
undergraduates on cements, concrete, the flow of water, the impact
of metals, and the steam-engine, have added much to the general
stock of knowledge.
One of the present causes of progress is that all discoveries are
published at once in technical journals and in the daily press. The
publication of descriptive indexes of all scientific and engineering
articles as fast as they appear is another modern contrivance.
Formerly scientific discoveries were concealed by cryptograms,
printed in a dead language, and hidden in the archives of learned
societies. Even so late as 1821 Oersted published his discovery of
the uniformity of electricity and magnetism in Latin.
Engineering works could have been designed and useful
inventions made, but they could not have been carried out without
combination. Corporate organization collects the small savings of
many into great sums through savings-banks, life insurance
companies, etc., and uses this concentrated capital to construct the
vast works of our days. This could not continue unless fair dividends
were paid. Everything now has to be designed so as to pay. Time,
labor, and material must be saved, and he ranks highest who can
best do this. Invention has been encouraged by liberal patent laws,
which secure to the inventor property in his ideas at a moderate
cost.
Combination, organization, and scientific discovery, inventive
ability, and engineering skill are now united.
It may be said that we have gathered together all the inventions
of the nineteenth century and called them works of engineering.
This is not so. Engineering covers much more than invention. It
includes all works of sufficient size and intricacy to require men
trained in the knowledge of the physical conditions which govern the
mechanical application of the laws of nature. First comes scientific
discovery, then invention, and lastly engineering. Faraday and Henry
discovered the electrical laws which led to the invention of the
dynamo, which was perfected by many minds. Engineering built
such works as those at Niagara Falls to make it useful.
 An ignorant man may invent a safety-pin, but he cannot build
the Brooklyn Bridge.
The engineer-in-chief commands an army of experts, as without
specialization little can be done. His is the comprehensive design, for
which he alone is responsible.
Such is the evolution of engineering, which began as a craft and
has ended as a profession.
In past times, civilization depended upon military engineering.
Warriors at first used only the weapons of the hand. Then came
military engineering, applied both to attack and defence, and
culminating in the invention of gunpowder. The civilization of to-day
depends greatly upon civil engineering, as we have tried to show. It
has changed the face of the world and brought all men nearer
together. It has improved the condition of man by sanitary
appliances and lowering the cost of food. It has shown that through
machinery the workman is better educated, and his wages are
increased, while the profits of capital increase also. It has made
representative government possible over vast areas of territory, and
is democratizing the world.
Thoughtful persons have asked, will this new civilization last, or
will it go the way of its predecessors? Surely the answer is: all
depends on good government, on the stability of law, order, and
justice, protecting the rights of all classes. It will continue to grow
with the growth of good government, prosper with its prosperity,
and perish with its decay.

Thomas C. Clarke.
RELIGION
 CATHOLICISM

I t is no unnatural curiosity that tempts us to recollect ourselves at

the end of a century and consider the gains and losses of three
generations, our inheritance from the past, our own administration
of the same, and the prospects of our descendants. Religion can only
gain from such a survey, for she is a world teacher on so large a
scale that all ordinary human methods of comparison and summary
are too dwarfed and insufficient for her. Her message is to all
humanity; hence only the most universal criteria are rightly
applicable to her. It seems to me that that is especially true of the
oldest historical form of Christianity, which is Roman Catholicism.

The Roman Church has had a message for all humanity in every
age ever since Saint Clement penned his famous epistle to the
Corinthians, or Saint Victor caused the Christian world to meet in
special councils for the solution of a universal difficulty. It is no mere
coincidence that, at the opening of the last century of this mystical
and wonderful cycle of two thousand years, the Bishop of Rome
should again address the world in tones whose moderation and
sympathy recall the temper and the arguments of Saint Clement, his
far-away predecessor and disciple of Saint Peter.
The year 1800 was a very disheartening one for Catholicism. It
still stood erect and hopeful, but in the midst of a political and social
wreckage, the result of a century of scepticism and destructive
criticism that acted at last as sparks for an ungovernable popular
frenzy, during which the old order appeared to pass away forever
and a new one was inaugurated with every manifestation of joy. The
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