geometers (earth measurers), land surveyors or engineers, call them what you please, were always employed to set out work and no doubt from very early times surveying was a large part of the work of practical builders, architects and contractors, later of engineers. The old-time civil engineer had to be a draftsman also, for drafting is a universal language understood alike by the trained engineer, the architect and the building mechanic. The surveyor had also to be a draftsman in order to make maps of his surveys. To be a good surveyor and draftsman implied a good knowledge of mathematics. The student in a modern American high school receives more instruction in mathematics than the best engineer of two hundred years ago. The old-time engineer then was a man of ingenuity and common sense with little mathematics. The engineer of to-day must have fully as much ingenuity and common sense as the engineer of olden time, together with much more mathematics.
Hero of Alexandria is styled the first engineer of recorded history. He invented a fountain and a steam engine, besides many other things of service to mankind, although his steam engine remained a toy and the principle has only lately been applied in the turbine engine, which is regarded by many as the coming engine. His writings consisted of fourteen books treating on the whole of practical surveying and construction work as they were
