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Oi Toronto. Juatier KIns'i Bonch DiTition. Hiih Court e( luttico lor Ontario. An Address before the Engineers' Club of Toronto. (JANUARY ISth. 1912) BY THE HONOURABLE WILLIAM RENWICK RIDDELL. L.H.D., etr., OF TORONTO. JUSTICE. KING'S BENCH DIVISION. HIGH COURT OF -" TICE FOR ONTARIO. ^ Gentlemen Mr. Chair .. When 1 . aske ' to address the Engineers' Club of the City of Toronto, I gladly acceded to tbe re- quest, not simply for the i-eason that I am by way of being an Engineer myself-for after I graduated in Arts many years ago-more than 1 like sometimes to think of— I remained two years longer in my college and took the degree of Bachelor of Science— I think the first time that the degree of Bachelor of Science was granted in Canada ; and a great part of that post- graduate course leading to the degree of Bachelor of Science, could fairly be included in a course ot EnSne^ring. Therefore without any very great viofence done to language, I might call y;>V^y ^^j ther Engineers"; and to most ot you at least though not to an probably, I could claim to l)e an elder bro- *^'Nor is it simply for social reasons that I am glad to be here; although it is a delight to meet gentlemen of vour standing in a social way. But it is mainly because I understand and appre- ciate and admire the work which you are doing for Canada and the world. J" ;«! :* ■^ ( ( ti '1 i ■'I i ! ■ '1 ,- ' ■i . ? i ■ \ ,/i i i '■'I i ■ il M Engineering taken in its broad and general sense is nothing else than the science and art of rendering natural powers and materials beneficial to man. Any- thing which will yoke a power of nature and subju- gate it to the will of nature a lord, anything which will take the raw material which nature furnishes and reduce it to the service of man, the latest product of nature and her best, may well come within the amb't of Engineering. Engineering in a word is simply the taking of the raw material and the powers of nature and putting them to the school of art. For long (in the English-speaking world at least) in civil life, there were only the three professions for a gentleman or a gentleman's son; if he did not go into the Army or Navy, then (if he studied for any- thing) he studied for one of the three professions, Law, Medicine, Divinity — and perhaps the choice was very much in that order. And the ancient Universi- ties which were the schools for and catered for the classes which filled the professions, drew their cur- ricula accordingly. They taught, indeed, "the Humanities" by way of culture and general training ; they added to that a little medicine, a little law, u little divinity. No one who worked with the mighty powers of nature was thought worth considering. Friar Bacon, indeed, did so work, but he was a wizard; and he worked at it only during his spare hours anyway. The Engineer was not worth considering socially. Indeed, even at the present day the word "Engineer" connotes in the common mind not what it does to you and to me, a cultured gentleman of good education, probably graced with a University degree, but rather a grimy, greasy, horny-handed if clear-eyed driver of a locomotive engine. Even in Germany, the very home oi science, but the other day, the father of that Helmholtz who stood at the very head of Geraaan scientific men, hesitated before he would let } son enter a College of Engi- ncoriiiR— bof'auae, forsooth, Engineering: was noi the business oi- profession of a gentleman. Hermann Ilclmholtz, indeed, tlie man of science, wrote his bro- ther Otto that the value of work depends not upon the material handled, whi-ther in inorganic things or in mental products, but upon the amount of intellec- tual energy that is put into it and in whether the work is merely a bread earning industry or a matter of independent intellectual interest. And this very great man whoUv approved of his brother attending the Industrial Institution in Berlin to become an Engineer, though this was sorely against the wishes of iiis fatV nnd ceachers, troubled as they were with tlie thought >f "bas(> and mechanical" pursuits and full of the ^ -rv common contempt felt by the "intellectuals" for low employments, **trade." Now things have changed. The enormous strides made })v the phvsical sciences during the last century have had tlieir' effect. The Engineer has made his wav He has improved his status as he has become known for what he is, the master— the careful, skilful and accurate master anJ handler of what nature gives u^ The wealth which has been prodaced by the in- genious inventions of ' .e Engineer has had its effect. As his status is advanced, his business has become a profession. j , u v, 4. v. The Engineer is now acknowledged to be, what ne (speaking generallv) always was or might be, a gen- tleman ; and Engineering is a gentleman's profession. The newer Universities to-day acknowledge his posi- tion, thev acknowledge his merits and recoginze his wants: and they have laid do^sTi courses which help him in his chosen career. The older Universities, too, have seen that they must also, if they are to keep up Avith the times at all, provide for his needs and his tastes; and they also have for him courses, some ot them of the very highest possible character and ot the very greatest value. 3 i I I! II And it has not been found tba the Calcuhis is any less intoiestinK or any h>sa odiicativc since it has been applied to everyday aifairs and to practical matters tban it was when it was simply "the hifjfher mathematie,' ' any more tban H(»mer is the less in- teresting; because be who reads the Iliad and the Odyssey knows more about the powers of nature tban Ho'mer could possibly know. When Sir John Her- schel and Peacock and Bab})age united in the effort which was ultimately successful to sui)ersede at Cam- bridj^e the Newtonian notation by the notation of Leibnitz, to drive out the fluent and the fluxion, and to bring in the integral and the differential — or as it has been wittily put, to leplace dot-age by o-ism — they had in their mind not ahne, or principally, the men- tal culture to be derived from the differential method, but rather the ease with which the C'ab'idus could be applied to i)ractical affairs by the Engineer, the prac- tical matheni.itician, who w(»uld be trained in this method. For my own pai't, I look upon tbe New- tonian method and Xewtoni?in ^ rminology and nota- tion as quite as valuable for ...ental training as any of the methods in which the Leibnit/ian notation is taught (»r a]iplied, and more valuable than two of them; the mly one — but T shall not trench upon my friend Dr. Galbi-aith's realm. There is a good old Latin adage, Xe .sutor ultni crefiuhim, "Let the shoe- maker stick to his last"; and I shall not trouble you with any further dissertation on tbe Talculus. The Engineer must needs be a mathematician. Now I do not mean by that, that he must pay much attention to or be versed in some of the higher bran- ches of mathematics which one reaches only in an aeroplane, and which have nothing to do with ever}-- day affairs. The non-Euclidean Geometry, the Engi- neer may safely neglect (I am speaking generally) ; he need not troiible himself with the speculations and investigations of G'-ss, Lobatcliew.sky and Bolyai, Riemann, Cayiey i Beltrami. For tlie Engineei- — whatever space may be elsewhei-e — space is of such a 4 character as that the three angles of a triangle are always exactly equal to two right angles, no matter how large the' triangle ma." be; space is never hyper- bolic or elliptic. The Engineer must be a computer and a calcu- lator, a mathematician; and it is that accuracy which mathematical methods necessarily produce in the mind of him who uses them, which makes the Engi- neer the accurate, careful thinker which he is, if he is a true Engineer. "Pretty near" is not near enough. *' A little more, and how much it is, A little less, and what worlds . "ay." It is the "pretty near" which makes a Jolmsto \ dam; it is the "pretty near" which made the Psjar- dins bridge near Hamilton; it is the "pret'/ near" which made the Reid building in '..^ndon; i. is the "near enough" which is killing aL." maiming Cana- dians day by day. Accuracy is of such enormous advantage to, and has such aneffect upon, the man in whose mind it has its resting place, that it might almost be called sn end in itself. No man can be accurate in Engineering unless he is a mathematician. Nothing in Engineering is known, can be accurately known, unless it can be ex- pressed in mathematical language. But that is not all. Lord Kelvin was wont to say that although he could express a thought in mathematical language or even in a mathematical formula, he never knew^ that he had thoroughly grasped, that he was complete mas- ter of the idea, unless and until he could make a model or a machine which would exhibit his thought. Now, that is what Engineers are doing every day. The Engineer reduces his thought into formulas, specifications, and develops that thought, the for- mula, the specification into concrete form, tae budd- ing, the bridge, the machine, the mine. Therefore to 5 u • 1^ Hi 1:1 h i 1 'i- i ji i 'it 1:^ , 1 > I my mind the profession of Engineering is that which ought to give a man the most thorough knowledge and appreciation of what nature actually is. I look upon it as one of the most interesting and valuable things in your life — something which you ought to value beyond all price— that in practising your profession, you are constantly exercising your intellect, giving yourselves intellectual pleasure, the only pleasure woi-th while for an intellectual being. I remember once a painter, a well-known painter, say- ing to me, **I think I am the luckiest man in the world. Here I am painting from morning to night, from Monday morning until Saturday night, and I paint on Sundays sometimes, too ; I am doing what I would sooner do than anjrthing else in the world. If I could be allowed to do it only by paying for it, I should be glad to pay for it ; and here I am doing that very thing and people are paying me for doing it." The true Engineer ought to take a pleasure in his profession, and you are every day doing — ^true Engineers are every day and every hour doing — that which they would sooner do than anything else ; and people are paying them for doing it. I myself from time to time work through the Calculus and some of its application to practical matters, but nobody pays me. Still if I could be allowed to do that only upon the payment of a fee I should gladly pay rather than be deprived of such an intellectual pleasure. I know that you all have your Engineers' Hand- book—I know you have Trautwine or Weare, Merriman or Molesworth, or whatever hand-book recommends itself to you ; and it is well it is so. These handbooks and Engineers' Companions have formu- las, results, tables, the product of careful investiga- tion and of careful calculation; and you can't get along without them any more than a lawyer can get along without his authorities. But there are cases, and they often happen, in which the hand-book will fail; and no Engineer that is worthy the name, 6 whether his handbook is likely to fail or not, will ever make himself a slave to his handbook— to his Engineers' Handbook of tables and the like. No Engineer is worthy the name, as it seems to me, if he forgets the principles from which these fonniilas have been derived, if he forgets the methods by which these tables have been calculated. I should not think much of an Engmeer if he could not to-morrow sit down and work out for himself , cal- culate out for himself, a new table of logarithms which would correspond to the old one. Of course you don't often have occasion to call upon such knowl- edge as that, but it is knowledge of that kind you ought to have with vou. You ought not to niake your- selves the slaves of a business; then it becomes a trade. You belong to a liberal and a learned pro- fession and you ought to continue to be learned. I remember some years before I lett the mr, cross-examining a Railway Engineer; I asked him (not that I didn't know, T do ask you to be leve) what a one degree curve was, and he promptly re- Dlied "A one degree curve is a curve in which you Sake a sit-off of half a degree." I said, -What does that mean?" And he ultimately elaborated to my unmathematical mind (be(;ause I had been Professor of Mathematics for only four years, and naturally might be expected to have forgotten) that in such a cufve the angle between the tangent and the chord is half a degrel I said, ''Where does the name 'one degree curve' come fromr' "Oh, it is just called that " He didn't know that one degree at the centre had anything to do with the matter ; and after he was told that in such a curve one degree at the centre was subtended by a chord (or more accurate y an arc) ot 100 feet— even although he was told that, he \Nas doubtful about it; and anyway even ^^ ^^ vv^f^ f O' ^^ had nothing to do whatever with the termmology, the one degree curve was so called because you set off half a deglee-and that is all there was about it. 7 1 s ■: Si i ! M That kind of Engineer is not very common, but then he is not very uncommon. He is not very un- common because people allow their minds to lie fal- low in your profession as in mine, and in the pro- fession of medicine and possibly in the profession of divinity— but that is a matter of which I know nothing. It may be — no doubt it is — by reason of the fact that I am His Majesty's Justice and upon the Bench, that I am always led to consider when any profession is in my mind, what kind of evidence is to be ex- pected from the members of that profession. The habit of careful and accurate use of scientific and accurate processes ought to and in most instances does operate uDon the mind of the Engineer so to make him the very best of expert witnesses. He ought to be the veiy best of expert witnesses. An expert witness is one who is called not to speak to an objec- tive fact which anybody could see or know who had eyes to see or ears to hear, but to an opinion which was formed in and by his f)wn mind — to speak to an opinion not to an objective fact. The opinion of an Engineer should be foi-med as carefully as any fact should be determined — based upon hypotheses as well established as the existence or non-existence of some alleged fact which is brought in question. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred there is no real ground for difference of opinion in Engineers. In most instances the Engineer knows his hypotheses, knows upon what they are based and knows the con- clusion at which he ought to arrive — and it is for that reason I daresay, that the Engineer is as a rule the very best of expeii; witnesses. Not very long ago addressing an Academy of Medicine — because, as your President has said, my sympathies are wide ranging ; if I put in two years in Engineering, I also paid some attention to Medicine — I told the medical men that the position which they ought to occupy at the very head of expert witnesses, they did not occupy, but they were very near the foot ; the place which they ought to have had was occupied by the Engineer. That is my opinion formed from having a very great deal of experience with expert witnesses of all kinds. , , -r^ . -t Now expert witnesses and indeed Engineer wit- nesses are not all of that kind. Some Engineers do not bear out the expectation which one has a right to have concerning them; and Engineers even of high standing sometimes fail in that most important mat- ter Indeed it was of Sir Frederick Bramwell, the weil-known consulting Civil Engineer and expert wit- ness, that his brother, Lord Bramwell, an equally well-known lawyer and Judge in England, said, "There are three kinds of liar— the liar, the damned liar and my brother Fred." And it was said of George Biddle, the "Calculating Boy," who be- came a very celebrated Consulting Engineer, that if he were retained to give evidence before a Par- liamentary Committee, the case of those retaining him was 'almost won. Engineers may be of the very highest standing in their profession, but it they are" of such a character that they come^ within the category of liars, then they are no more deser\T^ng ot respect than the ordinary "common or garden liar that you can pick up anywhere on the streets I am thankful to say that in Ontario at least the Engineer is not often of the class, '*My brother Fred"; nor, indeed, is he of the comparative class, the damned liar, or even of the positive class, the liar I have found the evidence given by Engineers m most instances satisfactory. Sometimes, no douht, a Mining Engineer has been able to find and report feins which the person who bought the mm^ on his report has not been able to ^^^ « tr^«\?f,?^f t,7^\^ the microscope: sometimes, indeed, a Mming Engi- neer has been known to be unable to find veins which absolutely cried out to be noticed and which nobody with eyes^could possibly pass over-but these are the exception. 9 'Ili You tell me that, of course, black sheep are to be found in cvery flock ; and that is so : but there is no reason for the Mick sheep being looked upon with the same favour as the white sheep. Then, too, the black sheep of a pi ofession have some regard for pub- lie opinion, especially for that of their brethren in the profession; and if the black sheep knew that a man who made a false repoii; or who lied in the wit- ness box alleging that his opinion was so and so, when it was — and he knew it — the reverse, if he knew that a person of that kind would bo treated like the ordin- ary liar on the street or the ordinary perjuror who ought to bo in Kingston, even the black sheep would "sit up and take notice" and probably would mend his ways. Now, I am not going to preach to you. Preaching is the prerogative of two classes — one, the clorgjTiian, and I have told you I know nothing about Theology; and the other is the old man, and I absolutely and positively refuse to be considered an old man. In ray view, a person in his 60th year is just approaching the very best years of his life. So I shall not preach to you, but I do urge upon you to bear in mind a little what T have been spying. I am anxious that you, my brother Engineers, shall not lose that high place in the public estimation which you hold, that you shall be able to do for Canada, your country, and for the world at large that which Canada and the world in which you live have a right to call upon you for, that is, your verj^ best — assuredly that vou can onlv do if you are as accurate as your mathematics and as honourable as you are accurate. President Gamble: Mr. Justice Riddell, I have great pleasure in returning you the thanks of this Club for your very instructive, interesting and scholarly address. Mr. Justice Riddell: Mr. Chairman and Gentle- men, — I have just returned from the City of New 10 York in which I had the pleasure of addressing three audiences within the last few davs; I had just time to get up to my house and mako myself somewhat presentable to come ar fultll my eng. ement with you; I have not indeed even been at Osgoode Hall; I want to assure you that the opportunity of addressing this Club has given me more pleasure even tnan the opportunities affoi ..ed me by my American brethren (Canadians many of thorn were) of ad- dressing these throe societies in the City of New York. The Engineors' Club o! Toronto may at any and all times call upon mo as they desire, if they think I can do thom any good in any way ; because I look upon this club as being one of the most important of organizations and your work one of the very most important for Canada which we all love so well. ; ) 11