be illiterate and his entire power plant consist of a second-hand fifty horse-power engine.
At present an "electrical engineer" may be a man who designs, or sells, or installs electrical machinery, or he may be a man in temporary charge of a five horse-power motor. Some bell hangers are called electrical engineers and so advertise themselves. In Great Britain an "engineer" may be one of the greatest men in the empire or he may be merely an employe in an engineering works, or, as we term them in the United States, machine shops or factories.
With all the confusion the public, through the medium of the press is coming to a better realization of the engineer and his work so that the professional engineer is taking rank among educated people, with the lawyer, the surgeon, the physician and the clergyman. With this better conception of the professional side of the calling there has also crept in the idea that it is a remarkably well-paid business, embracing the romance and adventure of the soldier's life with that of Aladdin, who merely rubbed an old lamp when he needed money.
ENGINE, French, engin; from Latin, Ingenium, a genius, an invention.
