The ideal engineering society: President´s address

WE ARE meeting here today for the third consecutive year in a midwinter convention of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers. It is an innovation which, as I have indicated started two years ago and has been so successful in the previous attempts that the indications are it will continue. We trust that this particular midwinter convention will be no exception to the rule of success which has attended the previous meetings. Perhaps I can do no better in the introductory remarks I am to make than to indicate my conception of some of the functions of the ideal engineering society. To go back to first principles, I conceive that the simplest form of an engineering, society — the original model, if you please — is found in the engineering college student who has encountered some question or problem — be it calculus, mechanics, descriptive geometry, or what not — which he finds himself unable to understand thoroughly. He takes that problem to his professor or instructor, or possibly to a fellow-student, and asks for assistance or enlightenment. The meeting of those two minds in the request for, and the giving of information, constitutes an engineering society in its simplest form. This quest for information on the one hand and ability to give it on the other, constitute the fundamental basis of this as well as every other engineering society. We have increased in numbers, to be sure — we are nearly eight thousand strong — and we have limited the scope. This Institute deals only with problems electrical; but we have not altered to the slightest degree the fundamental reason behind the meeting of those two minds; the one in quest of information, and the other with the ability, or at least the willingness, to give that information.