The Erection of Sydney Harbour Bridge

The President (Mr. R. H. Harry Stanger, F.C.S.A.M.Inst.C.E.), said he had noticed that the authorities responsible for education for the engineering profession tried to cram an immense amount of work into a very short time. Whereas a generation ago a young man studying for the engineering profession would spend three years at College and could acquire a fairly good knowledge of his subjects in that period, in modern times, science having become so vast, a man had to devote almost the whole of his life to his stmudies. With regard to the problem of examination, the President expressed his agreement with the policy of the Institution’s late President, who had insisted that if he wished to examine any of the candidates orally after the examination papers had been sent in he was to be allowed to do so, because he had found that many men were almost incapable of indicating on paper the real extent of their knowledge. The President urged that teaching staffs should support that policy, so that men who really had the requisite knowledge should receive their diplomas or degrees, even though, in their papers, they might have made a number of silly mistakes which in the ordinary course of events they would never make; not everyone had the temperament for examinations.

The CHAIRMAN (who was accompanied on the platform by Major F. M. Du-Plat-Taylor, M.Inst.C.E., M.I.Mech.E., M.I.Struct.E., the President of the British Section of the Societe des Ingenieurs Civils de France) expressed a hearty welcome to the members of the Section, and said that the occasion was an important and a happy one, inasmuch as the members of the two bodies were meeting together to hear a lecture on a subject of mutual interest.

To the EDITOR of The Structural Engineer. DEAR Sir,-In your correspondence column in the current issue of The Structural Engineer, "Controvertist" states that I have misunderstood the basic theory from which his formulae were developed, and that my criticism, being misapplied, is worthless.