Repository: UIHistories Project: Course Catalog - 1890-1891 [PAGE 38]

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UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS.

connections ; a large collection of drawings, photographs, and photolithographs of bridges, roofs, and engineering structures, numerous railway maps, profiles, etc.; maps of government surveys, and plans and specifications. It has access to a complete set of lithographs of the lectures and drawings used in the government polytechnic schools of France. The industrial museum contains a large collection of building materials, of wood, brick, stone, and iron. The testing laboratory has a machine with a capacity of a hundred thousand pounds for tension, compression, or bending ; also a cement testing machine. The library is well supplied with the best and latest periodicals and books upon engineering subjects, to which the students have full access.

In the fall term of the second year the class solves numerous problems in distances, areas, etc., using the chain, compass, and plane table. During the winter term the students have practice with all the engineering instruments and solve problems with the transit, stadia, level, and sextant. In the spring term the class makes a topographical survey of a locality, using the stadia and plane table as in the United States surveys. In the fall term of the third year the class executes a project in railroad engineering, which consists of preliminary surveys, location, staking out, drawings, computation of earth-work, etc. The preliminary survey consists in an examination of the locality, and in running tangent lines, with leveling and topographical sketching. The location consists in running the line over the route decided upon, with all the necessary measurements and calculations for establishing the grade, setting slope stakes, etc. The drawings include alignment, profile, etc. In the fall of the fourth year the student has practice with the altazimuth instrument in reading horizontal and vertical angles; and in determining latitude; with the astronomical transit in finding time; with the sextant in getting time and latitude; with the aneroid and mercurial barometers in measuring heights, and with the precise level in leveling.

SPECIAL STUDIES.

Astronomy.—Descriptive astronomy is given with a text book. The equatorial telescope is in constant use during favorable weather. Practical astronomy is given by lectures and the use of the alt-azimuth instrument, the astronomical transit, the sextant, and the engineer's transit, adapted to astronomical calculations. The work includes the use and adjustment of instruments, and the determination of time, latitude, longitude, and azimuth.