It may be that some one of
you will develop a talent in the direction of organization and be the
means of aiding in the solution of this great problem. Please think of
the matter seriously, watch the law of evolution while you are
advancing your professional knowledge, and if the opportunity offers,
do all you can to aid in a cause so important and beneficent.
One writer has criticised the technical schools because they do not
teach mechanical intuition. The schools have enough to do in the time
available if they teach principles and sufficient practice to enable
the principles to be understood. The aptitude to design, which must be
what is meant by mechanical intuition, requires very considerable
practical experience, which you will readily learn if you do not keep
yourself above it. If you have used your leisure hours to study why a
certain piece of mechanism was made in a certain way rather than in
another; if you have wondered why one part is thick in one place
rather than in another, apparently in defiance of all rules of the
strength of material; if you have endeavored to ascertain why a
particular device is used rather than another more evident one; if you
have thought and studied why a boss is thrown in here and there in
designs to receive bolts or to lengthen a journal, and if you have in
your mind, by repeated observation, a fair idea of how work is
designed by other people, the so-called _mechanical intuition_ will be
learned and found to be the _combination of common sense and good
practice_.
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