IEE SCIENCE, EDUCATION & TECHNOLOGY DIVISION: CHAIRMAN'S ADDRESS

Engineering and enchantment

Prof. J.H. Calderwood, M.Eng., Ph.D., D.Sc, F.lnst. P., C.Eng., F.I.E.E.

Indexing terms: Engineering, History

Abstract: Magic and technology appear at first sight to be very far removed from each other. Nevertheless,both in mythology and history, the threads of magic and technology sometimes run close together, andindeed occasionally seem to be woven into a single fabric. Both magic and technology are capable of effectinghighly desirable transformations, but each is also capable of unleashing powerful forces sometimes fraughtwith terrible dangers. For hundreds of years there has been a conflict between those who believed that tech-nology was a benign influence helping the progress of mankind, and those who thought that it was a banefulforce leading to ultimate ruin. The present argument between those who see technology as saviour and thosewho see it as destroyer is really a continuation of the old disagreement. But the tension is greater today thanin the past because the stakes are higher; more people are affected, and more seriously, by the way in whichthe argument is resolved. Engineers therefore should be concerned with the likely effect of their work onsociety, although a responsible approach is not to be equated with one that is overcautious and unenter-prising. It is impossible to avoid all risk.

1 Introduction

'Bid me discourse, I will enchant thine ear'. Not my claim,may I hastily add, but that of one more beautiful than I,namely Venus, as recorded by Shakespeare. He himselfoften does succeed in fulfilling that promise, especiallywhen he is spinning the gossamer webs of magic tales, as in'The Tempest' and 'The Midsummer Night's Dream'. Theneed to be carried away by the images of fantasy seems tobe very deep in us. When we are children, Andersen andGrimm take us by the hand. When we are old enough to getpast the X certificate, we can chill our spines with thesupernatural in Cinemascope. The steady stream of suchfilms is ample evidence of the number of customers waitingto see them, despite the fact that we live in the technologi-cal age.

2 The link of language and the magic of mythology

But really, the use of the word 'despite' is out of place here.For indeed the illusive world of magic, although it mayseem opposed to the rational world of science, is in anothersense closely allied to it. Those scientists who have becomefascinated with spoon bending belong to an old tradition,for historically the worlds of learning and magic have beenclose. Long before the grammar schools were abolished, oreven created, the word 'grammar' meant learning, comingfrom the old French 'gramaire1;-which had that meaning.Stemming from the same root is the archaic word 'gramarye'meaning magic or necromancy, and so learning and magicare close relatives, at least linguistically. Gramarye is a wordno longer in use, but many of you will remember it fromthe final verse of 'Puck's song', in which Kipling praisesEngland:

'She is not any common Earth,Water or wood or air,But Merlin's Isle of Gramarye,Where you and I will fare!'

Paper 8407 S, delivered before the IEE Science, Education & Tech-nology Division 18th October 1979Prof. Calderwood is Dean of the Faculty of Engineering, Universityof Salford, Salford M5 4WT, England

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0143-702X/80/010038 + 08 $01.50/0

England is here seen as an enchanted island under the pro-tection of Merlin. He first appears in mythical history as theall-powerful magician at King Arthur's right hand. Thelegend of Arthur and Merlin exercises an enduring fasci-nation, and is currently the subject of at least two popularnovels and a television serial. Tennyson in his 'Idylls of theking' puts into verse an earlier version of the story, the'Morte d'Arthur' by Malory. Merlin is introduced byTennyson as

'Him, the most famous man of all those times,Merlin, who knew the range of all their arts,Had built the King his havens, ships, and halls,Was also Bard, and knew the starry heavens;The people call'd him Wizard;. . .

. . . the great Enchanter of the Time'

That description closely couples Merlin's technological andmagic powers, making him the engineering wizard of hisday. Notice that when Tennyson says that Merlin '. . . knewthe range of all their arts', he is giving the word 'art' its old17th-century meaning of 'magic', although in the 18thcentury 'art' came to mean 'technology'. That the sameword 'art' changed its meaning from 'magic' to 'technology'is an indication of the close relationship which was believedto exist between the two.

A notable feature of the Merlin legend is that in a sensehe still lives, a belief applied to many folk heroes ancientand modern, as the graffiti testify. Merlin is supposed tocontinue to keep guard over England, and to be ready toreturn at the hour of gravest peril. Certainly the SecondWorld War was such an hour, and if any one machine couldbe said to have saved England then, that machine mustsurely be the Spitfire. One cannot help wondering whetherits engine was named in a spirit of invocation. Rolls Roycecalled it the Merlin.

3 The enchanted Elizabethans

But not only the kings of mythology relied on theirmagicians. Ancient Greece and Rome had their oracles andsoothsayers, and coming home and nearer to our own time,Dr Dee, a Manchester schoolteacher, was astrologer toQueen Elizabeth I. In fact, the sudden upsurge in scientific

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interest encouraged by the Renaissance brought about apeak of enthusiasm for magic, especially Astrology andAlchemy in the sixteenth century. Scientific knowledge wasconsidered as 'occult', and the secret forces of alchemy,which affected the nature of matter, and astrology, whichaffected the pattern of human life, could only be handledby the initiated. It is not surprising that this view influencedthe drama of the time. The archetypal drama of magic andits pitfalls is Christopher Marlowe's 'Dr. Faustus'. He seesmagic as power, and he virtually identifies this power-givingmagic with technology:

'0 what a world of profit and delightOf power, of honour, of omnipotence,Is promis'd to the studious artisan!'

However, Faustus puts his dearly bought magic powers totrivial uses, such as providing out-of-season grapes for apregnant Duchess, and playing practical jokes on the Pope.He did rather better by conjuring up the shade of Helenof Troy, so that he could see 'the face that launched athousand ships, fairer than the evening air, clad in thebeauty of a thousand stars'. But even she was only a shade,and it all ends up badly by Faustus being dragged into themouth of Hell by devils, belatedly promising to burn hisbooks. 'Ugly Hell, gape not! Come not Lucifer! I'll burn mybooks!'

Shakespeare, born in the same year as Marlowe (1564),was also influenced by the widespread interest in magic. Infact, his work ended on a magical note. His last play 'TheTempest' has a magical theme, although Prospero, unlikeFaustus, only deals in 'white magic' and uses his 'art' wiselyand well. But, in the end, he too destroys his book,. . . 'butthis rough magic I here abjure', and he goes off to resumehis political career as the Duke of Milan. There is a feelingthat magic, and by association technology, is dangerouseven if the intention is to use it for a good purpose, and thisis an idea which has persisted up to the present time. Weshall return to it later.

4 The sorcery of sound

Prospero's last use of his magic powers is to require someheavenly music. Shakespeare took a never-ending delight inmusic, and eloquently denounced those who 'are notmoved with concord of sweet sounds'. Music does indeedseem to have a magical power to move us, and technologywas directly involved with music making from the earlydays of music boxes and musical clocks. Mechanical musicon a somewhat larger scale has been produced by barrelorgans since the 16th century. They are operated byturning a handle which works the bellows and also rotatesthe barrel. Pins on the barrel operate a mechanism causingthe pipes to sound at the appropriate time. Sir WilliamEdward Parry, a pioneer of British Arctic exploration, sailedin 1819 to try and find a North-West passage to link theAtlantic and the Pacific Oceans. He took a barrel organ onboard, and when the weather was too bad for the men toleave the ship and exercise on the ice, 'they were ordered torun round and round the deck, keeping step to a tune onthe organ . . . Among the men were a few who did not atfirst quite like this systematic mode of taking exercise; butwhen they found that no plea, except that of illness, wasadmitted as an excuse, they willingly and cheerfully com-plied

But although the early barrel organs belonged indoors,the colourful, garish, magical atmosphere of the fairgroundwould lack a vital component without their more powerfulrelation, that other musical product of technology, thesteam organ. Their sound carries us back to ride again onthe magic roundabout of childhood.

It was to be expected that astrology would make itsimpact on music. Gustav Hoist wrote The Planets' duringthe First World War. He was music master at St. Paul's GirlsSchool where he had a soundproof room; I am not surewhether the object was to keep the sound of his music in orthe noise of the girls out. Hoist had a strong interest inastrology, and depicted the characteristic influence of eachplanet in his music. But the association of the planets withmusic began much earlier; it goes back to medieval times.The heavenly bodies were seen as moving inexorably inspace and time obedient to regular and inexplicable laws,according to a kind of cosmic clockwork (Fig. 1). This gaverise to one of the most enchanting features of the medievaluniverse; the harmony of the motion of the heavenly bodiesproduced the celestial music of the spheres. This notion wastoo poetical for Shakespeare to pass it by. Lorenzo uses itto good effect on Jessica in 'The Merchant of Venice':

'How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!. . . look, how the floor of heavenIs thick inlaid with patines of bright gold:There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'stBut in his motion like an angel sings.'

But 17th century astronomy silenced this celestial music.Addison wrote: 'Since Newton, the planets rejoice . . . inReason's ear', but the instinct to associate our science andtechnology with music remains, and a couple of centuriesor so after Addison, at the opening of the Newcastle andCarlisle Railway, the engines were not only employed topull the trains, but one devoted some of its energies to drivea steam organ playing patriotic airs.

Fig. 1 The system of the universe according to the ideas prevalentin the middle ages

['Larousse encyclopedia of astronomy' (Paul Hamlyn)]

5 Poets and politicians, pro and con

Not only did Newton silence the music of the spheres,but he explained the colours of the rainbow. JamesThomson, an 18th century poet mainly remembered for theimmortal line 'Oh! Sophonisba! Sophonisba! Oh!', was

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filled with a sense of awe and wonder at the magnitude ofscientific and technological progress. He found the rainbowmore, not less, enchanting since Newton had examined pris-matic effects and discovered the amazing truth that whitelight is full of colour, visible to the 'sage instructed eye'(The Seasons', 'Spring').

But by the 18th century condemnation of science andtechnology was fairly widespread, and Newton was excep-tional in escaping it. Even the biting Alexander Popeexempted Newton, and wrote the well known lines, sinceextensively parodied, intended for his epitaph:

'Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night:God said "Let Newton be!"And all was light.'

Pope could take a view of science and technology whichwas unusually benevolent for him. He wrote a somewhatpompous poem urging the undertaking of public workswhich was not in his usual style at all:

'Bid Harbours open, public Ways extendBid Temples, worthier of the God, ascend;Bid the broad Arch the dang'rous Flood contain,The Mole projected break the roaring Main;Back to his bounds their subject Sea command,And roll obedient Rivers thro' the Land;These Honours, Peace to happy Britain brings,These are Imperial Works, and worthy of Kings.'

But his attitude to science and technology was ambivalent,and he reverted to type, in his 'Essay on Man':

'Go wond'rous creature! Mount where Science guides,Go, measure earth, weigh air, and state the tides;Instruct the planets in what orbs to run,Correct old time and regulate the sun.Go, teach Eternal Wisdom how to rule —Then drop into thyself, and be a fool!'

Pope's contemporary, Jonathan Swift, who could bite justas well, was certainly against science and technology, andattacked the Royal Society in the third book of 'Gulliver'sTravels' with a satire on getting sunshine out of cucumbers,supposed to be possible because sunshine has to go intocucumbers to make them grow.

During the 18th century, pro- and anti-science andtechnology factions grew up not only in literature, butalso in politics. The Whigs tended to be in favour, seeingtechnological progress as a means of ushering in the secondgolden age, seen as a reincarnation of classical Rome. Thisnotion caused widespread reverberations which particularlyaffected architectural style. Palladian mansions were all therage. But if the Whigs were Roman, the Tories were Greek.They saw the scientists as being guilty of hubris, that isinsolent pride or presumption, which would inevitably leadto nemesis, that is to their disastrous downfall. That hubrismust be followed by nemesis is an essential ingredient ofGreek classical drama, and the Tories believed that theywere hearing an old tale retold.

6 The influence of the iron industry

Mining technology was the basis of the 18th century 'age ofiron'; thus the very substance of Britain was seen to be atthe heart of technological development. This concept isromanticised by the Reverend Thomas Yaldon who, writingof mining, foretells through Sabrina, nymph of the RiverSevern, a glorious age to be ushered in by the transform-

ation of the mythological 'matter of Britain' into techno-logical development. The very earth itself was to be thesubstance of the new technological world. Not surprisingly,Sabrina makes this speech to Merlin, who, as Kiplingreminded us at the beginning of this paper, was the pro-tector of England's uncommon earth.

The idea of the elements themselves being involved inthe creative process to the extent that they are at leastpartially the cause of it is a very old one. In Book I of'Metamorphoses', Ovid tells the creation myth of how thechaos of the elements was harmonised and so the worldcame into existence. The idea of the harmony of theelements is the basis of a descriptive poem, written by theReverend John Dalton in 1755, addressed to two ladies ontheir return from viewing the mines near Whitehaven.

'Sagacious Savery! taught by theeDiscordant elements agree.Fire, water, air, heat, cold, unite.'

This time the elements are uniting to drive the steamengine, essential for the new coal mines. Incidentally,'Sagacious Savery' although he did have the basic idea ofthe principles of the steam pump, and indeed took out apatent in 1698, did not really make the engineering inven-tions of the control valves which were necessary to makethe pump an efficacious reality. Credit for that belongs toNewcomen, and his engines, (with their characteristic oscil-lating beams,) were soon widespread throughout the land(Fig. 2). There was even a riddle about them in 'The LadiesDiary' in 1725 in the form of a rhyme:

'I sprang like Pallas from a fruitful BrainAbout the time of Charles IPs reign.On mighty arms, alternately I bear,Prodigious weights of water and of air.'

As a scientific description, that is not too bad!

Fig. 2 Newcomen's atmospheric steam engine

[Dickinson, H.W.: 'A short history of the steam engine' (CUP, 1939)]

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The steam pump inspired several protechnology poems.One of these is 'The Botanic Garden' by Erasmus Darwin,in the first part of which he describes the pump in action:

'Press'd by the ponderous air the piston fallsResistless, sliding through its iron walls;Quick moves the balanced beam, of giant birth,Wields his large limbs, and nodding shakes the earth.The Giant-Power from the earth's remotest caveslifts with strong arms her dark reluctant waves;Each cavern'd rock, and hidden den explores,Drags her dark coals, and digs her shining ores.'

Here Darwin is concerned to celebrate the power of themachine, but the image of the giant is ominous. Themachine is an enslaved Titan, buried like the giants whodefied the Olympians in the 'Metamorphoses', beneathpiled up mountains and perhaps capable, like them, ofpeopling the earth with 'sons of blood'. Indeed, Ovid sawmining as a sign of greed and depravity. 'Not only did mendemand of the bounteous fields the crops and sustenancethey owed, but they delved as well into the very bowels ofthe earth; and the wealth which the Creator had hiddenaway and buried deep amidst the very Stygian shades, wasbrought to light, wealth that pricks men on to crime'.Perhaps Darwin was unknowingly influenced by Ovid, whenhe wrote of the 'giant birth', but Darwin's subconsciousimagery of technology as monster became explicit with theRomantics. Perhaps the most celebrated example is MaryShelley's 'Frankenstein', who created a monster of unrival-led popularity, if that is the right word!

The heart of the mining and iron-making revolution wasCoalbrookdale in Shropshire. It was in 1709 that AbrahamDarby began to smelt iron ore using coke as his fuel,although Coalbrookdale had been the site of iron workingfor a long time before that. The history of the developmentof Coalbrookdale is quite widely known as there has beenan upsurge in interest in it recently. Throughout theremainder of the 18th century, furnaces were built and

rebuilt, and a great number and variety of products weremade, especially steam engines. But the most famousCoalbrookdale project was the building of the iron bridgeover the River Severn at a point a mile or two from theworks. The sides of the Severn gorge are steep, and bargetraffic on the Severn was heavy, and so a single-span bridgewas very desirable. The building of the bridge was under-taken by Abraham Darby III, and the work took aboutthree years from start to finish, the bridge being opened onNew Year's Day 1781. It represented a great technologicalachievement for its day, and was the first structure of itskind in the world (Fig. 3). As we might expect, the designof the bridge was very much influenced by the designof bridges made from wood or stone. In fact, the ironmembers of the bridge are fitted together using the kind ofjoints which are employed in carpentry. It was designedwith what we should today think of as an extraordinarilyhigh factor of safety, 378 tons of iron being used. But thebridge has lasted well, outliving some other similar bridgesthat were built later, although some fairly extensive preser-vation work has been necessary during the last decade.

But while the Darbys were smelting their iron andbuilding their engines, there was no lack of voices raised incondemnation of what was happening in Coalbrookdale. Atthe opposite pole from the Reverend Thomas Yaldon, AnnaSeward saw technology as a demythologjsing force andcondemned it in 'The Swan of lichfield', where shedescribed Coalbrookdale:

'Scene of superfluous grace, and wasted bloom,Oh, violated Coalbrook! In an hourTo beauty unpropitious and to song,The genius of thy shades, by Plutus brib'dAmid thy grassy lanes, thy wild wood glens,Thy knolls and bubbling wells, thy rocks and streamsSlumbers! — while tribes fuliginous invadeThe soft, romantic consecrated scenes;Haunt of the wood nymph . . . '

Fig. 3 The Iron Bridge 1779 (from an engraving by Michael Angelo Rooker 1782)

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[Aberdeen Art Gallery]

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She deplores the destruction of natural beauty, sacrificed totechnological progress in the form of the iron works, andthe pursuit of wealth. She sees the presiding genius of theplace as a hireling of Pluto, god of riches and of the under-world, whose realm is the kingdom of dead souls. She goeson The gentle train of Dryads and fair hair'd Naiads hasvanished'. The wood nymphs, and presumably the ReverendYaldon's Sabrina have departed, leaving no forwardingaddress!

Another contemporary writer, Arthur Young, wroteabout That variety of horrors art has spread (in Coalbrook-dale); the noise of the forges and mills, with all their vastmachinery, the flames bursting from the furnaces with theburning of the coal and the smoak of the lime kilns, arealtogether sublime'. Here art is used to mean not magic buttechnology. When Young describes the scene as 'sublime' hedoes not mean, as we might mean today, that it is beautiful.Sublime then meant something more akin to enchanted,implying a sense of grandeur, mystery, even terror.

Arthur Young was not the first to object to the noise ofengineering work. A 14th-century writer, who obviouslylived near a forge, complained:

They have heavy hammers, that are well used,They strike great blows on the steel anvilSuch an awful noise would drive out the devil.All these horses outfitters; Christ give them sorrow.No man can rest at night for these blacksmiths.'

A more subtle attack on industrial development wasmounted by Thomas Carlyle who, in his 'Signs of" the Times'(1829) pointed out that These things. . . indicate a mightychange in our whole manner of existence. For the samehabit regulates not our modes of action alone, but ourmodes of thought and feeling. Men are grown mechanical inhead and heart, as well as in hand'. In other words, it is notjust the environment that is damaged, it is ourselves.

Although to Anna Seward engineering developmentsdestroyed enchantment, the sublime character of the indus-trial scene appealed to landscape painters, and the resultwas many pictures, most of them of a rather indifferentquality. Alone among the great artists who were fascinatedby the awe-inspiring furnaces and engines of the industrialrevolution was Turner. He saw beauty in furnaces, steamships, and railways and he saw that the discovery of steamand mechanical forces broke the close link between manand nature which had existed as long as man had had torely on animals, the winds, and himself for transport andpower. The feeling of an end of an era is beautifullyexpressed in Turner's well known picture of the 'Fighting'Temeraire" being tugged to her last berth to be broken up.The 'Temeraire' had fought at Trafalgar, but her days ofglory were over, and she is shown being towed from theMedway to the breakers yard at Rotherhythe. Symbolically,she is using the channel followed on her maiden voyage,and being pulled by a steam tug representative of the powerof the new era lying ahead. That power was perhaps per-sonified by Brunei, and is celebrated in one of the bestknown of Turner's pictures 'Rain, steam and speed',showing one of Brunei's broad-gauge expresses crossing theRiver Thames at Maidenhead. These two pictures are, asthey deserve to be, among the very few that almost every-body in Britain knows.

7 19th century negation

But, although we have now moved into the 19th century,

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the reaction against technology still continues relentlessly.The writers particularly kept up the pressure. Wordsworth,in The Excursion' condemned the factory as a temple 'togain, the master idol of the realm'. Dickens mounts asustained attack in 'Hard Times', associating enslavementto machine in factories with the mentally and emotionallyrestrictive effects of the scientifically oriented educationchampioned by Bentham. Children in Mr Gradgrind'sschool were brought up on 'Facts, facts, facts' and sternlytold 'You are not to fancy'. The model pupil, Bitzer, growsup into a calculating machine incapable of affection, pity orcompassion. Here Dickens is an echo of Carlyle.

In Tess of the d'Urbervilles', Hardy sees the steamthreshing machine as 'the red tyrant that women had cometo serve' and its 'inexorable wheels' dictate the rhythms oftheir labour. The industrial landscape, especially mining,serves Lawrence as a metaphor for the inhumanity, uglinessand repression of modern life. This theme runs throughseveral of his books, and is one of the lesser known featuresof his 'Lady Chatterley's Lover'. Blake too was a prophet ofdoom, seeing the industrial revolution as enslaving men indrudgery, binding them in ignorant servitude to a machine.In his poem 'Night' he saw men

' fileAnd polish brass and iron, hour after hour, laborious

workmanship,Kept ignorant of the use; that they might spend the

days of wisdomIn sorrowful drudgery, to obtain a scanty pittance of

bread'.

However, when he spoke of the 'Dark Satanic Mills' he wasreferring not, as is commonly supposed, to the cotton millsof Lancashire, but to the colleges of Oxford.

It is true that there are some poetic celebrations ofengineering, but they are mostly at best windy platitudes,and sometime hilarious exercises in bathos. Take thisexample by John Close (1816-91):

'All hail to Steam! All hail to men of Brain,Who sweep all obstacles before them,Cut down the hills, and through the mountains bore,And make admiring crowds adore them . . . '

Not everybody shared his enthusiasm for the new railways.Hugh Hughes in 1831 was not be be found among theadmiring crowds: he published some satirical anti-railwaysketches such as The inconvenience of a blow up', (Fig. 4),which are drawn from another viewpoint.

8 The turn of the century and the tide?

In due course, steam gave way to electricity, the electricalengineers took over, and people began to feel more secure.John Betjeman wrote of the passengers on the newly elec-trified Metropolitan Railway:

They felt so sure on their electric tripThat Youth and Progress were in partnership.'

In fact electrical engineers got a much better-press thantheir elder brethren, the mechanical engineers, and themerits of speedy communication of information werequickly recognised. A cartoon in 1878 is an example: itshows a police vehicle arriving with a flourish before thepoliceman is off the telephone (Fig. 5). It is not often,however, that one reads a balanced view, giving the pros

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Fig. 4 'Showing the inconvenience of a blow up', by Hugh Hughes 1831

[Elton collection, Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust. Shropshire]

Fig. 5 The Chicago police has called up a police vehicle by telephone for a man hurt in an accident, details of which are passed on to thepolice-station (1878)

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[de Vries, L.: 'Victorian Inventions' (John Murray, 1973)]

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and cons, showing both sides of the coin. Tennyson does soin 'Locksley Hah":

'For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see,Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that

would be;Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic

sails,Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly

bales;Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rain'd a

ghastly dewFrom the nations' airy navies grappling in the central

blue.'

Not a bad prophesy for one who was not in the same classas Jules Verne as a science fiction writer! Kipling too,although extolling the virtues of the machine, adds awarning note in his 'The Secret of the Machines'. Themachines are speaking:

'We can pull and haul and push and lift and drive,We can print and plough and weave and heat and light,We can run and race and swim and fly and dive,We can see and hear and count and read and write! . . .But remember, please, the Law by which we live,We are not built to comprehend a lie,We can neither love nor pity nor forgive,If you make a slip in handling us, you die!'

This is a welcome change from those who simply see tech-nology as a good or bad thing. Both Tennyson and Kiplingsaw that machines can be used for good or ill, and theresponsibility lies with man. Kipling ends his poem with thelines:

'Because, for all our power and weight and size,We are nothing more than children of your brain!'

Parents have some responsibility for their children, andengineers are often told that they have responsibility forthese children of their brains. Today, the arguments for andagainst technology, which as we have seen were simmeringthrough the centuries, seem to be reaching the boil. Engin-eers are still being upbraided continually for ruining theenvironment, and at the same time for failing to developnew scientific ideas into practical applications, and soincrease everybody's standard of living. They are askedwhether they really have the right to do much of their workat all, and particularly whether they have the right to carryout research, especially in certain areas. Great imputus wasgiven to this kind of questioning by the construction ofnuclear weapons, made possible through studies in nuclearphysics, and the development of the necessary associatedengineering. Even Churchill remarked, 'The stone age mayreturn on the gleaming wings of science'. The argumentnow goes on about the development of nuclear powerstations, and in the fields of biology^and medicine, the rightto carry out studies which lead to the possibility of what istermed 'genetic engineering' is being strongly questioned.The scientist is now cast in the role not of sorceror, as inmedieval times, but of sorceror's apprentice. You rememberthat the magic proved mightier than he, and he was carriedpowerless into chaos by a spell of his own making. Arewe in the same position? Is the road to hell paved withgood inventions? Are we in danger of suffering the incon-venience of a blow up?

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9 Risk and responsibility

So the question is, should the research worker draw lines,and at some point say 'hold — enough'? If so, how shouldhe decide where the line should be drawn? Or should 'Fairliberty' be all his cry? Should he say that truth mattersmore than man and that research must go on whatever thehuman and social consequences; lfiat veritas et pereatmundus' - 'let the truth be spoken, though the worldperish'? This is a deep philosophical problem fraught withdifficulties. Any serious study of it would require a morerigorous discussion than is .possible here. Nevertheless, somebroad conclusions are fairly obvious. Most of the productsof engineering are capable of being used in a good or badway. If the engineer has good grounds for believing that theproducts of his work will be used well, he cannot be blamedif somebody else uses them badly. Of course, he will haveto make a judgement about the probability of whether theoutcome of his activities will be to the benefit or detrimentof mankind, taking into account the nature of his work,and how it is likely to be used. If he believes the answer tobe favourable, then he is justified in going ahead, and mighteven have the duty to do so, even though he knows there issome degree of risk. Even if events proved him wrong, therewould have been nothing immoral about his decision. Theworst he could be guilty of would be poor judgement.

We should remember that we can never escape all risk.As Alfred North Whitehead, in his 'Adventures in Ideas'says 'It is the business of the future to be dangerous. . .The major advances in civilisation are processes that all butwreck the societies in which they occur'. There is nothingto be gained by the vain search for a risk-free society. Whena nation becomes obsessed with safety it is a sign that it haslost its nerve, that it has become like Timorous in 'Pilgrim'sProgress'. 'Timorous answered that they had got up thatdifficult place: "But", said he, "the further we go, the moredanger we meet with; wherefore we turned and are goingback again."' If we do seek safety at all costs, we put our-selves in danger, the danger that we might end up withneither safety nor liberty.

Nevertheless, despite the conclusion that the scientistand engineer are not responsible for the misuse of scienceand technology, there still lurks the suspicion that perhapsthey should be somehow engaged more tightly with themoral issues, that they should somehow be more able toembrace the problem as a whole, and so be able to exertmore influence. Of course the consequence is that theywould then have more responsibility and be more to blameif things went wrong. Perhaps this suspicion is only sympto-matic of the way scientists and engineers keep worryingover a problem, never quite satisfied that the answer isright. The worm of doubt always remains. It is perhaps aswell that it does, for, as Gargantua wrote to Pantagruel,'Science without conscience is but the ruin of the soul'.

The feeling of those involved with work which mighthave evil results may be that they are blameless, whilethey yet wish for deeper involvement, even though it carriesthe risk of their incurring guilt. This feeling was well put bya Polish philosopher and poet, Karol Wojtyla, in his shortpoem, written in 1957 and called 'The Armaments FactoryWorker'.

I was reminded of that poem towards the end ofSeptember as its author was being acclaimed by more thanone and a quarter million people in Phoenix Park in Dublinon his arrival from Rome. The mention of a religious leadernaturally brings us back to the subject of my address, since

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the word 'enchantment' is derived from the word 'chant',and chanting has been a feature of religious practice fromthe earliest times. The continuous repetition of a word orphrase has an effect on the mind, which tends to reinforcebelief. The use of this effect is not confined to religion; wemeet it in politics, with crowds being encouraged to repeat-edly shout mindless slogans. We even meet it in engineering;the continuous repetition of the word 'microprocessor' is arecent example.

10 Enchantment as touchstone

But so far we have been talking about enchantment ashaving its first meaning in Samuel Johnson's dictionary,namely 'spells and sorcery'. But he gives a second meaningtoo, namely, 'overpowering delight'. Newton was so be-witched by his train of thought that he often forgot tosleep or eat, and his dress was notoriously untidy. Heclaimed that this single-minded absorption was the causeof his achievement. Perhaps he was enchanted in the firstsense, that of being under a spell. Certainly the best engin-eers are enchanted in the second sense, feeling a delightedfascination for their work. We have Kipling's ship's engin-eer, McAndrew, vigorously protesting that steam is reallymuch more romantic than sail. 'Lord', he pleads, 'Senda man like Robbie Burns to sing the Song o' Steam!'

Engineers particularly need that intuitive poetic insightwhich should operate along with our more rational thoughtprocesses, and which serves to complement them. Most ofthe major advances in science and engineering have beenbrought about by this sort of sensitive perception. Indeed itis perhaps necessary for it to be brought into play for anyreally bold leap forward at all. It is as if by a kind of directintuition the facts as known at the time are suddenly seenilluminated from a different angle so as to form a picturecharged with a new and forceful meaning. The successfulengineer must have a mastery of all the principles of hissubject and yet he must have an imagination that can roveas freely as that of any artist or poet. In fact, his responsi-bility to make his products aesthetically pleasing is greaterthan the artist's, for the artist's work may so easily beturned to face the wall.

The engineer must know the relationship between hisimaginative ideas and the possibilities to which they giverise in real life. Whatever he makes should be designed withintellectual care and built with technical skill. It should besuitable for the job it has to do, it should solve the prob-lem; even if its working is complicated, it should have the

unity that comes from its fitness for its purpose. If it has, itwill ring true. It will provoke in us the intuitive response tosomething in which elegance is of the essence, in which thefit of form and function is perfect. It will be somethingwhich can stand up to being tested, so that, after our firstreaction of pleasure is over, it will survive our scrutiny. Inshort, we will be enchanted (in the second sense!), with thisthing of delight and beauty. If we are not, it is a warningthat something about it is not right, for beauty, in thewords of Gerard Manley Hopkins, 'keeps warm men's witsto the things that are'. Keats had said much the same thingearlier:

'Beauty is truth, truth beauty, — that is allYe know on earth, and all ye need to know.'

11 Driving briskly with a pretty woman . . .

That might have been a good point on which to end, butwe started with a woman, and we should end with one.In any case, it is always wise to leave the last word to awoman. The woman I have in mind is Fanny Kemble, anactress who, in 1830, fresh from her triumph as Julietat Covent Garden, was beautiful and twenty and acting inLiverpool. She was invited by its directors to take a trip onthe Liverpool to Manchester railway about a month beforeits official opening, the railway equivalent to a theatricalpreview. The locomotive, probably the 'Northumbrian', wasdriven by George Stephenson, and while he was her seniorby 30 years, he was also an engineer, and one who made thebest use of his opportunities. Naturally, he invited Fanny tojoin him on the footplate. She wrote a letter to a friendgiving a vivid account of the journey: 'You can't imaginehow strange it was to be journeying on thus, without anyvisible cause of progress other than the magical machine . . .I felt as if no fairy tale was ever half so wonderful'. As forMr Stephenson, he is 'the master of all these marvels, withwhom I am horribly in love . . . He has certainly turnedmy head'. Clearly, she had the right reaction to engineeringand the engineer. The lady was truly enchanting - andenchanted!

12 Acknowledgments

My grateful thanks are due to Miss Patricia Richardson,Miss Anna Duffy, Miss Pauline Myerscough and Miss JillMitchell who helped considerably in the preparation of thisaddress.

IEEPROCEEDINGS, Vol. 127, Pt. A, No. 1, JANUARY 1980 45