Southern engineer Volume 13, no. 5 - Tapa blanda

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1910 Excerpt: ...between the engine runner of fifty or seventy-five years ago and the engineer of today is not due wholly to the greater size of apparatus. A man can learn to run a large engine about as easily as he can learn to run a small one. But a given percentage of waste in the large engine means a greater amount of money than in the small one. To keep costs at the lowest possible figure requires a great deal more than knowing how to run an engine and boiler. It demands an intimate knowledge of fundamental principles and their application which the engine runner of former times knew nothing about. The application of these principles in practice demands wide experience and a thorough technical training that no foreman or superintendent can hope to possess in addition to the demands made upon him along other lines. For this reason the gap between engineer and superintendent has broadened to a chasm of no mean proportions--one that can never again be bridged as easily as it was fifty or seventy-five years ago. Those who have attained the highest positions in operative steam engineering today will he found to be business men in every sense of the term. They are organizers and managers of no mean ability. They practically represent the sole head of a large manufacturing establishment, superintending every department and every process from the buying of raw material to the delivery of the finished product. They have the expenditure of vast sums of money and must devise methods of accounting to show where every penny goes and exactly what is obtained in return. They manage labor, purchase material, specify when and where purchases are to be made and what prices are to be paid; they draw-up specifications, ask for bids, award contracts, and superintend construction which ofte...