Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III QUALIFICATIONS NECESSARY OR DESIRABLE FOR THE CIVIL ENGINEER Foe the successful practice of Civil Engineering, as of other occupations, specific qualifications of a professional and of a personal kind are requisite, or if not absolutely necessary, are at least desirable. Professional qualifications are those qualities or acquirements which affect mainly his knowledge, and which, therefore, supply the basis for his intelligent dealing with the problems to be solved. Personal qualifications are those qualities which fit him to apply his knowledge properly, economically, and effectively, and so to accomplish the result which his professional knowledge and skill indicate to be desirable or necessary. The two kinds of qualifications do not always go together, yet their union is necessary for the highest success. An engineer may have great professional ability, yet on account of the lack of some personal quality, such as tact or promptness, may be a miserable failure in certain kinds of work. On the other hand, an engineer possessed of all the personal qualities necessary, but lacking professional knowledge, such as of the properties of the materials to be used, or the laws of nature applicable to the case, may find his plan or his structure a costly failure. Professional Qualifications Remembering that civil engineering consists in applying the laws, forces, and materials of nature, economically, for the use and convenience of man, it is at once evident that the knowledge, or professional qualifications of the engineer, must include: 1. A knowledge of the forces of nature, and of the laws governing them; in other words, a knowledge of natural science, logic, and mathematics. 2. A knowledge' of the materials applicable in construction. 3. A training in t...