Repository: UIHistories Project: Dedication - Engineering Hall (1894) (and Inauguration of President Draper) [PAGE 82]

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ol will do what m, but the measure of their will be d rmii ve lai by the means that are I at th Her elsewhere, success will not be al without larg xj tnditur* >. Si s 11 indu rial ways d e p e n d s upon the nice adstment of m e a n s to e n d s : and I s u p p o s e the science which most perfectly a c c o m p l i s h e s this result is that of engineering. Into this science, in its several branches, has gone much of the most ingenious and inventive t h o u g h t of the past half century. The men of affairs tell us t h a t the margin between profit and loss is often so small that the balance is turned this way or that bv a very trifling difference between one machine and another. T h e other day I was looking over the characteristics of a very carefully designed steam heating plant, when s i g n e r told me that the mechanical stoker is the result of fifty years of evolution, at the hands of the best mechanical e gineers of the time. T h e great problem now is to convert as large a proportion of the fuel as possible into power; and so lon^ as it remains true, as I am told it is at present, that only about fi\ per cent, of the heat of the coal burned in a locomotive is devoted to doing its work, it is easy to see that m u c h remains to be d o n e in kinematics, as well as in thermod namics, and in the d jning of machines. In electricity the field is probably even wider, and the possibilities greater. So many miracles have recently been wro t, that we now refuse to be astonished at anything. Th >rince of the Power of the Air lias disclosed his secret; Th su