In December 1911, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers held its 32nd Annual Meeting at Society headquarters in New York City. More than 1,200 people attended, a remarkable turnout for an industry gathering, even by today’s standards.
I stumbled upon the Minutes of this century-old meeting the other day and it got me thinking about the trajectory of Engineering in our society.
There’s a part of me that thinks, eh: the first wave in Silicon Valley created the chip; the second the computer; the third the Web (or at least the post-bubble Heavy Hitters on the Web); and the fourth the App. Devo. We went from watching iconic engineers design the infrastructure of our information world to having graduate Engineering students flock to start-ups intent on making us the “Mayor” of the local pancake house.
Meanwhile, our image of engineers has trended geekier and geekier.
But then, there’s a part of me that thinks, “Hey, pal, you’re the son of an engineer and maybe the father of one someday and married to one, so think again.” That’s when I remembered we have engineers designing bionic limbs and spacecraft and iPads and boxes that turn saltwater into freshwater. We have personable, good looking, charming--dare I say, sexy and beautiful engineers.
That’s what I meant to say in the first place.
All of which leads to the question: Were engineers as charming and sexy a century ago?
Here are some details from the 1911 ASME conference:
Panels over the three-day meeting included Tests of Sand-Blasting Machines, Die Castings, Variable-Speed Power Transmission, and Design Constants for Small Gasoline Engines. (Charming AND sexy, no?) There was a forum on Expense Burden (which sounds, now and probably then, like one to be avoided). The booming Textile industry also came in for its share of discussion. One talk that seemed particularly interesting had to do with the Turret Equatorial Telescope, built the prior year in Springfield, Vermont, and featuring a revolutionary motor drive to compensate for the movement of the earth.
There were some great extracurriculars, too. On Thursday afternoon members were able to tour the White Star S.S. Olympic, an ocean-liner that four months later would rush to the aid of her sinking sister ship, the Titanic.
On Friday afternoon, participants could chose from a number of interesting excursions to nearby state-of-the-art facilities: the Thomas A. Edison Lab in Orange, New Jersey; the Brooklyn Navy Yard; the Bush Terminal Company in Brooklyn; E.W. Bliss Company in Brooklyn; and, the Ward Baking Company in New York. (Ah, my old stomping grounds: the once and future cutting-edge Brooklyn.)
Wikiepedia says the Bush Terminal Company was a large and historic complex of piers, docks, warehouses, factories, and rail sidings on 200 acres on the waterfront. It was designed as a massive intermodal shipping, warehousing, and manufacturing center and rail-marine terminal and was the first facility of its kind in New York. E.W. Bliss was making “torpedoes and telegraph codes.” And the Ward Baking Company had just opened its huge, new facility that could turn out 250,000 loaves of bread a day.
We probably get the most insight on the engineers of old, though, from the President of the ASME, E. D. Meier. He addressed delegates in a speech that firmly placed the mechanical engineer at the vanguard of a better future. In it, he noted the expansion and splintering of the engineering trade, saying “A century ago the distinction between civil and military engineer sufficed, but a few decades ago it became necessary to differentiate in turn the mechanical and electrical engineer.” Now, Meier remarked, “upwards of a hundred specialties were enumerated in the attempt to define the activities of the profession.”
The major contribution of Engineering, Meier believed, was eradicating superstitions and traditions. The “altruistic men who give their life to science. . .are the high priests” of this movement. The modern engineer “is a devout believer in natural laws. . .He needs no Supreme Court to define them as reasonable.”
Meier concluded by saying the future of the race is placed in the hands of engineers: “If our future professional brethren do their duty, and we know they will, the golden rule will be put in practice through the slide rule of the engineer.”
And has his prognostication not come true? The modern engineer: charming, sexy, brilliant and leading us to a brighter future.
That’s precisely how I was trying to describe things in the first place.
0 Response to "Charming, Sexy and Brilliant (How Could I Be Confused?)"
Post a Comment