Mechanical Men

Last week several thousand members of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and delegations from 15 foreign countries arrived in Manhattan, unpacked suitcases, settled down to celebrate the Society's 50th anniversary.

The program included a one-act play depicting the founding of the Society, a pageant of engineering progress written by Yale's George Pierce Baker, dozens of speeches, the presentation of a score of medals.

Engineers have sometimes been as soundly damned as they are highly praised for bringing on the Machine Age; for taking men from their small home "factories" to work in great industrial centres. Sensitive to this criticism the engineers retaliated at their convention with dozens of papers pointing out advantages of the new order.

Along a like line of thought was the student-enacted pageant at the auditorium of the Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken. Unlike most pageants, this one was rapid moving, took only one hour. The first part, showed "The Beginnings." First scene: a perfectly blank, dark stage, allowing the audience to picture whatever they wished.

The first character on the stage, a Stevens undergraduate, depicted a Neanderthal type of man. He loped apelike across the stage on naked 20th Century legs. He was awed by the forces of Nature until he discovered weapons, tools. Toward the end of this section "Control," a child, appeared to befriend the undergraduate. "Control" then stepped gingerly to the front of the stage and delivered himself of a speech to the effect that without tools man is nothing, with them he is everything.

Section Two, "The Age of Steam," showed man in a somewhat better light. The audience beheld the emergence of the mechanical engineer and some of his inventions. Toward the end this act took on the gala aspect of a football game as a parade of students appeared bearing banners with the names of various engineering schools. After a short stretch showing how the society was founded "Control," now almost full grown, again popped to the front of the stage, said: ". . . Engineering . . . has been one of the means . . . by which civilization has advanced."

Third Section, "The Age of Electricity," was introduced with a flashing of lights. Then came a display of inventions. Then "Control," now a lusty, up and coming young man, stepped once more to the front of the stage to say: "I am the engineer. . . . I control, I convert. I do not create."

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