Abstract :
Modern tendencies are toward greater efficiency, in machinery as also in a more scientific management and in many other directions involving the saving of useless labor or wasted efforts, as exemplified for instance in simplified spelling the use of abbreviations, the Esperanto language, etc. Obsolete, old-fashioned and inefficient machinery is willingly discarded for that which is more efficient; obsolete methods of management are discarded for better ones; economy in the physical labor of man is carefully studied and practiced; yet in the very process which every engineer himself uses and which is more personal to him than any other, namely, the process of doing his mental work, the average engineer completely ignores the adoption of more efficient methods even when they are within his reach. In our numerous daily calculations we still adhere with astonishing tenacity to our antiquated, cumbersome, irrational, time robbing, inherited systems of measures, although we have within reach systems which are far more efficient in the economy of mental energy.
