much for their profession, even if they have done considerable for the
world at large.

Looking backward, our calling may properly be considered the oldest in
the world. It is older, in fact, than history itself, for man did not
begin to separate from the main part of animal creation, until he began
to direct the sources of power in Nature for the benefit, if not always
for the improvement, of his particular kind. In Bible history, we find
early mention of the first builder of a pontoon. This creditable
performance is especially noted, and the name of the party principally
concerned prominently mentioned. The same thing cannot be said of the
unsuccessful attempt at the building of the first sky-scraper, for here
the architect, with unusual modesty, has not given history his name,
this omission being possibly due to the fact that the building was
unsuccessful. If an engineer was employed on this particular
undertaking, the architect had, even at that early stage of his
profession, learned the lesson of keeping all except his own end of the
work in the background.

The distinctive naming of our profession does not seem, however, to go
back any farther than the period of 1761, when that Father of the
Profession, John Smeaton, first made use of the term, "engineer," and
later, "civil engineer," applying it both to others and to himself, as
descriptive of a certain class of men working along professional lines
now existing and described by that term.

Remarkable progress has certainly been made in actual achievements since
that time, and I know of nothing more impressive than to contemplate the
tremendous changes that have been made in the material world by the
achievements of engineers, particularly in the last hundred years. This