Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 76.djvu/118

114 boat so large and successful as to convince the world of a new mode of transportation. In recent times the question of developing the power of Niagara involved the construction of turbines larger than had ever been built. These were built in Philadelphia, by means of the technical skill there existing, but the designs were made in Geneva by the well known engineers Faesch and Piccard. As a matter of fact the Swiss had long since developed the theory of the turbine, and were prepared to design one of any size on the principles already found sound. More recently the steam turbine has come into the field formerly the exclusive possession of the reciprocating steam engine. Curiously, the first successful turbines came from England, then a large number were developed in Germany and France, while at the present time we have one very successful American turbine. Now the physical principles involved in the turbine are quite different from those of the reciprocating engine, and involve considerable theoretical knowledge of the properties of fluids in rapid motion, some of which were familiar in the case of water, but which were of a different sort for an expansive vapor like steam. It is very noticeable that the best treatises on the steam turbine to-day are German, and begin with a large amount of theory on the properties of rotating discs, then of the thermodynamics of vapors, and finally of the flow of steam through jets, before the technical matters are touched. We are now hoping for the development of the gas-turbine, which shall combine the two advantages of the gas-engine and the turbine, and which will demand for its success all the knowledge of thermodynamics which we possess. As a final example take the case of wireless telegraphy. This country was a pioneer in ordinary telegraphy, having not only Morse to contribute the technical knowledge, but before him Henry with his scientific development of the electromagnet, but the wireless telegraph was imported in an advanced state of development, from England, where the scientific acumen of Maxwell had predicted the action of the electric waves. I am sorry to say that I feel that there is a tendency among our engineers or at least among our engineering students to try to do their work with a very small amount of scientific thinking, and it seems to me that this tendency must be overcome if we wish to maintain a successful competition in either science or technology with such a thorough-going scientific nation as Germany.

There is a tendency to-day in some quarters to disparage the use of hypotheses. With this tendency I do not sympathize. It is difficult to see how scientific advances can be made without the use of hypotheses, nor has that been the ordinary custom. The phrase of Newton has been quoted, "Hypotheses non hingo," but certainly that must be interpreted as meaning that he did not form unnecessary explanations of phenomena rather than that he did not proceed by means of working