Download or read book Henley's Encyclopaedia of Practical Engineering and Allied Trades, Vol. 1 (Classic Reprint) written by Joseph Gregory Horner and published by Forgotten Books. This book was released on 2017-06-05 with total page 558 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from Henley's Encyclopaedia of Practical Engineering and Allied Trades, Vol. 1 The publication of this comprehensive work, intended to cover the entire practice of civil and mechanical engineering, is justified by the present conditions of that practice. Men in the offices and shops, in active professional and commercial work, and students in the schools are all to a great extent hampered by the ever extending character of engineers' work, and its intensified specialisation. The term engineering alone has now too vague a meaning to denote anything definite, without some qualifying prefix. The vast profession, or industry, or craft, is subdivided into more than a hundred well-defined and separate fields, and many of these are broken up into still more specialised departments. It is thus a fact, that competent and experienced engineers who have devoted their whole lives with absolute singleness of purpose to their chosen pursuits, cannot possibly intimately know the practice of more than a few of the related sections. Every great industry in which motors and machines are used is now catered for by manufacturers who mostly confine their business to the demands of a single industry, and in which alone their experience lies. Of all outside that, their knowledge is in a sense that of amateurs. What is true of the individual fields of action 18 true also of the separate crafts which are carried on in the separate shops and sub-departments of a single big works. The divisions between these, following the passing of the old race of mill wrights, grow sharper, more stringent, and more minute as time goes on. A workman is no longer a turner, or a machine hand, or a boilermaker, or a moulder, but he is a man doing one sub-section of work, or an attendant of one kind of machine. He is also either a mechanic, or a machine-minder. His speciality is thus as well defined as that of the group of manufactures carried on in the firm of which he forms a unit. This intensity of specialisation produces narrow views, and narrow ideals, and tends to induce only a languid interest in the related work that lies beyond. It renders the acquisition of minute knowledge in 'the other fields very difficult. Especially on those of limited means do these conditions press hardly. The mass of technical literature is too great to be purchased or even assimilated, neither is it essential except to a few. The requirements of most people are met by a special knowledge in one branch, and a general acquaintance with others related thereto. Hence the popularity enjoyed by encyclopaedias of a literary and scientific cast. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.