The Engineer and Civilization Source: The Scientific Monthly, Vol. 22, No. 1 (Jan., 1926), pp. 84-86 Published by: American Association for the Advancement of Science Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/7624 . Accessed: 02/05/2014 17:45 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . American Association for the Advancement of Science is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Scientific Monthly. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 62.122.73.84 on Fri, 2 May 2014 17:45:50 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Transcript
The Engineer and CivilizationSource: The Scientific Monthly, Vol. 22, No. 1 (Jan., 1926), pp. 84-86Published by: American Association for the Advancement of ScienceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/7624 .
Accessed: 02/05/2014 17:45
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
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American Association for the Advancement of Science is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve andextend access to The Scientific Monthly.
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This content downloaded from 62.122.73.84 on Fri, 2 May 2014 17:45:50 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
''cosmic" waves just discovered by Mil- likan-continue to claim the attention of our leading physicists.
These Nobel prizes, each originally of the value of about $40,000, were estab- lished by the will of Alfred Nobel, who died in 1896. Nobel was born in Stock- holm in 1833; he studied in St. Peters- burg, and began to assist in his father's engineering works, but soon took up the study of high explosives. In 1864 he took out a patent for dynamite, obtained by incorporating nitro-glycerine with some porous substance. Later he in- vented ballistite, a nitro-glycerine smoke- less powder, but his claim that the patent covered cordite was disallowed by the courts after a lawsuit against the British government. From the manufacture of dynamite and other explosives at his works in Ayrshire and from developing the Baku oil-fields he amassed the great fortune with which he founded the prizes that bear his name.
Three of the awards during the past two years have not been made. The Chemistry Prize of 1924 was assigned to the reserve fund of the Nobel Institute's Chemical Section. Both the physics and chemistry prizes for 1925 have been re- served. The Nobel Institute's statutes provide that if there is no occasion in any one year to award a prize as pre- scribed by the testator's will, the prize shall be reserved for award in the follow- ing year; if, even then, the prize can not be awarded, the prize money must be either added to capital or used to form a special fund for promoting scientific re- search independently of the yearly prizes. Awards of the peace and med- ical prizes have been withheld on five oc- easions, the amount of the prize money in each case being added to capital. Seventeen prizes in all have thus been funded.
THE ENGINEER AND CIVILIZATION
IN his presidential address before the American Society of Mechanical Engi- neers, meeting in New York City from October 30 to November 4, Dr. William F. Durand, of Stanford University, re- viewed the beginnings of engineering, the great antiquity of the engineering profession and its contribution to mod- ern civilization. In concluding his ad- dress he said:
To sum up the whole matter, the engi- neer, either as an individual or as a col- lective type, is simply a link in the chain of human progress-a chain the links of which, in one form or another, run back into a past removed from our own time by tens of thousands of years, to go to no higher figures. With the trend of human progress as it now is, he seems, moreover, to be a very necessary link. lIe has taken upon himself the peculiar function of developing and translating
into use for the needs of civilization the constructive materials of the earth and the inorganic energies of nature, and in connection with the exercise of such function he has acquired peculiar and weighty duties and responsibilities.
There are naturally the duties of self- development and improvement, both in- dividually and collectively as organiza- tions such as our own. This is the duty so well inculcated by the Scriptural parable of the talents. Likewise there are the duties of friendship and of co- operation for the realization of larger ends, and again, both individually and collectively as organizations.
And then it is peculiarly the duty of the engineer to see that, so far as in him may lie, these stores of Nature, of which he is the custodian, are used frugally, with due regard to their limited supply, and having in mind the needs of future
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generations. Again, it is his duty to leave behind him some definite increment to that great store of knowledge through which we are able to enter into partner- ship with Nature, and only by means of which we may hope to more effectively align ourselves with her laws, and thus maintain an ever-ascending gradient of human progress.
Again we must individually as we may, and collectively with definite pur- pose, endeavor to cooperate helpl ully with agencies charged with the training of recruits for our ranks, to the end that there may be a continued and adequate supply to the younger strata in our
guild, whence we may hopefully look for leadership and guidance in the future.
And finally, since in the exercise of his functions as an engineer he must of necessity develop and employ habits of mind and methods of study which may be usefully employed in dealing with problems as they arise in all activities in life, therefore should the engineer stand ready to serve, not only in his chosen sphere, but wherever and whenever his habit of mind, his training and his ex- perience may enable him to contribute a helpful element in this great coopera- tive enterprise which we call civilization.
THE TOTAL ECLIPSE OF JANUARY THE FOURTEENTH
MEASUREMENTS of the heat of the solar corona, to be made by astronomers from Harvard University during the total eclipse of the sun visible on the 14th of next January in Sumatra and Borneo, may aid scientists in a solution of the problem of what caused the ice ages that visited the earth at times in the past. The Harvard party, the third group from American institutions to go to Sumatra, is now en route on the "Presi- dent Harrison," which sailed from San
Francisco on Novemnber 7, and will be' chiefly concerned in measuring the radi- ation from the corona. This announce- ment was made by Dr. Harlow Shapley, director of the Harvard College Observa- tory. The expedition is in charge of Dr. Harlan True Stetson, assistant professor of astronomny, whose article on shadow bands observed at the last eclipse ap- peared in the December issue of the MONTHLY. It will also include Dr. W. W. Coblentz, physicist at the U. S.
