establishing it upon a sound basis as a mathematical science. There were many great investigators and writers on engineering subjects in Europe, especially in France and Germany, whose work he made free use of, but by all of these men he was looked up to as a leader and might be said to have been the father of the civil engineer. Before his time the engineer "picked up" his education and received his theoretical and scientific knowledge as best he could while burning the midnight lamp. Rankine made it possible to study engineering with the least loss of time and wasted effort. The fourth school of civil engineering was Union College, now Union University, Schenectady, N. Y.
In Great Britain it was the custom for many years, which custom has not entirely died out, to apprentice boys to some engineer for a definite term of years, paying a fee for the privilege, the amount of the fee being governed by the degree of eminence of the engineer. The boys were supposed to receive practical instruction through helping around the office and out in the field or in the works, becoming engineers through the operation of a gradual "soaking in" process. The schools were so conducted as to give one, two, or three years' instruction for a few months each year in mathematics and science, to enable the "articled" pupil to acquire the theoretical knowledge he actually needed. Since the instruction given at the schools was wholly along theoretical
