Abstract
IN his presidential address to Section G (En-gineering) of the British Association, delivered on September 10, Prof. William Cramp took as his subject “The Engineer and the Nation” and, in the course of a very human and entertaining sketch, found opportunity to define the special functions of the engineer, to claim for him an appropriate degree of authority and independence in his own domain and to discourage the prevalent repression of technical knowledge and skill in the interest of commercial advantage or in favour of false standards of economy. The activities of the engineer, he holds, are closely linked with the national life and its progress and, to a very large extent, take the form of applying and bringing to the service of the community the knowledge previously gained by the physicist, the chemist and the metallurgist. He is not, however, detached from the work of fundamental research, for his training is in close touch with it and enables him frequently to bring to a conclusion the unfinished work of his collaborators in the field of pure science. As an instance of this, Prof. Cramp ascribed to the engineer the evolution of the Cooper-Hewitt arc rectifier from its humble beginnings to its present outstanding position as the most important converter in heavy electrical engineering.
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The Engineer and the Nation. Nature 138, 574 (1936). https://doi.org/10.1038/138574a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/138574a0