Engineering Wonders of the World
Volume I

conquests of territory are far more permanent than those of an Alexander or a Bonaparte. The waterfall, once regarded as a mere impediment to navigation, he has turned to account as the producer of motive power for industrial cities. To big centres of population he brings a copious supply of wholesome water; from them he leads, by cunningly devised drains, obnoxious sewage. The machines which he constructs enable us to convert raw material into wealth with a minimum amount of labour, and fill the poor man’s house with what, a few decades ago, were the luxuries of the well-to-do. He digs canals and. makes harbours and docks for our shipping' ■ spans or burrows under rivers; pierces mountains and fills valleys for the passage of the locomotive. His telegraph and telephone wires reach to the very outposts of civilization. THS TITL8. The publication to which these paragraphs are the foreword covers practically the whole field of engineering. The day has long- passed when the world’s engineering wonders could be reckoned on the ten fingers, or even in three figures. Engineering has advanced rapidly with the correlated sciences, and is now a very complex science indeed. Therefore, in treating of engineering “ wonders,” our attention must not be confined to descriptions of the most notable feats, though these are dealt with at length. The principle is often as wonderful and worthy of notice as the great enterprises to which it has been applied. To make mere magnitude and diffi- culty of accomplishment the standards of measurement would be to miss the mark in many cases, seeing that the wonders of engineering consist largely of methods devised to avoid difficulties. Nor should we confine ourselves to feats that are visibly imposing. A ferro- concrete building is scarcely an object to wax enthusiastic about, as regards its external appearance ; but when the marvellous nature of ferro-concrete construction is grasped, it stands revealed as a wonder of engineering. This method of treatment increases the educative value of the work as a whole. It may at times afford the reader some slight mental exercise, but will surely result in his taking a deeper interest in what the engineer has done and is doing. A large part, be it noted, of the letterpress is from the pens of professional engineers, whose status is sufficient guarantee for the worth of their respective