practical instruction in making firearms, machinery, glass, watches, clocks, etc. There are at present in Austria between 400 and 500 industrial schools of all classes and grades. Advanced technical education may be had in the polytechnicums of Vienna, Graz, Prague, Brünn, and Lemberg. Technical education in Austria may be divided into six classes, as follows: 1. The technical university or polytechnicum. 2. State industrial trade schools. 3. Industrial art schools. 4. Specialized industrial schools, with workshops. 5. Primary industrial school classes, where instruction is given evenings and on Sunday. 6. Technical trade museums, in connection with which instruction is given in a general way. The average industrial school is supported by the State, but the local authorities and private individuals in most cases furnish the school rooms with light and heat. The schools are under the immediate control of a school committee, the members of which reside in the community. This committee, however, acts in harmony with the wishes of the Minister of Commerce, who reserves to himself the right of confirming the appointment of the various directors and of directing the educational policies of the schools in general. FRANCE. Technical education has been the subject of much attention in France since 1878. In addition to the technical universities and technical schools for roads, bridges, mines, and civil engineers there are industrial art and trade schools for textiles, tobacco, powder, clocks, gloves, porcelain, and every other article of manufacture in France which has claims to any importance. There are many industrial schools in France which are worthy of special attention. This is true of the one in Cluses, Savoy, which was established in 1863 for the clock and watch industry. It admits pupils between the ages of 14 and 20, but every candidate must have a good elementary education. The aim of the school is to train up practical workmen for the watch and clock industry of that district. There is also an advanced course for those who wish to become manufacturers in this branch. The industrial textile schools in France are numerous, but they have not all attained the same degree of efficiency. These schools may be divided into two classes, namely, those which serve the interests of the textile industry in general and those which serve only the interests of some specific textile branch in some particular locality. When Alsace belonged to France the industrial textile school in Mülhausen was considered a model of its kind. When Alsace was ceded to Germany in 1871 the French Government established in Epinal and Rouen two industrial textile schools, which to-day are superior to the one in Mülhausen. These two schools may be considered as belonging to that division of French industrial schools which serve the interests of the textile industry in general. The course of study at Rouen lasts three years, and the curriculum is as follows: First year.-Mathematics, physics, chemistry, English, and practical work in laboratories. Second year.-Weaving, spinning, raw materials, German, and drawing. Third year.-Applied mechanics, dyeing, art of making samples, Italian, and machine construction. Similar schools have been founded by the Government in Lille, Roubaix, and Lyons. The city of Roubaix gave the lot, library, and furniture, while the State erected the building. Both city and State support the school with annual subventions. In all the industrial schools of France great stress is laid upon practical instruction in workshops. These workshops or laboratories, as the case may be, are the counterparts of machine shops and factories, so that the pupil on leaving the school may enter the ranks of the industrial army of France trained and ready for active work in the various branches of industry. ERNEST L. HARRIS, EIBENSTOCK, GERMANY, August 13, 1903. INFLUENCE OF TECHNICAL EDUCATION. (From United States Deputy Consul-General Hanauer, Frankfort, Germany.) The great influence of technical education in developing industries, increasing export trade, and augmenting a country's wealth is shown by a report which the British consul at Stuttgart lately sent to his Government concerning the technical high schools of Germany. There are nine such created and conducted by the Government; two more are now being established. Besides these State institutions, many others under private management, but subject to governmental supervision, exist in Germany, which turn out able engineers and scientifically educated craftsmen. The British consul points out that Germany, in consequence of its thorough and widespread system of technical education, has surpassed, within the last fifty years, all other nations, and now holds first place in chemical manufactures. He estimates the value of the chemical products annually made in Germany at 1,000,000,000 marks, or $238,000,000. A very large part of these (especially dyes made of coal tar) are exported to the chief manufacturing nations-the United States, England, Belgium, France, etc., as also to China, Japan, India, etc. There is scarcely a country in the world which does not use German chemicals of some sort. The transformation of Germany from a poor agricultural country to one of the first and richest manufacturing and exporting nations is, to a considerable part, due to German superior technical training. Some of the German chemical works have branch establishments in foreign countries. The German capital invested in these earns big profits and adds to the national wealth of the country. SIMON W. HANAUER, FRANKFORT, GERMANY, August 10, 1903. Deputy Consul-General. SCHOOLS FOR AGRICULTURE IN QUEBEC. (From United States Commercial Agent Johnson, Stanbridge, Quebec.) Under date of April 25, 1903, there was incorporated under the laws of this Province a royal school for the purpose of establishing and carrying on an agricultural school, experimental farms, and all works in connection therewith and subjects kindred thereto. This school is to maintain two or more schools and experimental farms in the Province of Quebec, one to be located in the district of Montreal and one in the district of Quebec. Each of the two said schools is to contain accommodations for at least 50 pupils, who will be given a full course of three years' tuition, together with board, free of charge. The school may provide educational facilities for other pupils for full or partial courses and may charge fees for such tuition. The course of tuition is to include all branches of agriculture, horticulture, and arborculture, dairying in all its branches, slaughtering and curing of meats, and carpentering, blacksmithing, and such other trades as may be useful to agriculturists. The school will establish experimental farms and farms for tuition. purposes and will clear and improve land and dispose of the same to graduates of the schools and others, and will make advances to settlers to enable them to take up lands. The school can, for the purposes above mentioned, lease, buy, sell, exchange, and deal in lands and all products of the lands, and may manufacture any and all of said products and dispose of the same. FELIX S. S. JOHNSON, STANBRIDGE, QUEBEC, August 18, 1903. IMPORTANT STEP IN ELECTRIC TRACTION. (From United States Consul-General Mason, Berlin, Germany.) A practical experiment of the highest importance and interest in the development of electrical railway service is now in progress on a suburban line between Niederschönweide and Spindlersfelde, in the southeastern quarter of Berlin. During the past week there has been in daily operation a car driven by a new motor, invented by a young Austrian electrician and built from his plans by the Union Electric Company, of Berlin. This motor achieves with apparently entire success what has not been accomplished hitherto—at least not in Europe-viz, it propels the full-sized service car at any desirable degree of speed without employing any cumbrous and expensive regulating devices, while deriving its energy from a single-phase alternating current of 6,000 volts, carried along the line on one small trolley wire and delivered directly to the motor without conversion to a lower voltage or a continuous current. The far-reaching importance of this demonstration-which will be at once recognized by every electrical engineer-will be apparent when it is remembered that electric traction, which has proven so effective and economical for interurban and suburban service, has met hitherto some very serious economic difficulties when applied to long distances. The method heretofore employed has been to send over the line alternating currents of high pressure which are taken off at intervals by substations equipped with step-down converters that reduce it to a continuous current of low voltage, which is fed into the trolley wire or third rail and thus transmitted to the motors of passing trains. As already noted, this works very well for short lines such as are required in city and suburban transit and which are thronged with constant traffic. But when the proposition is to extend the same practice to a standard railway, connecting two cities from 100 to 300 miles apart, the cost of the installation and working expenses become practically prohibitive. Besides the frequent substations equipped with transformers capable of converting the highvoltage alternating current into a low-pressure continuous one, there is the question of heavy copper conductors throughout the line, and this, added to the fact that the transformers and rotary converters must stand idle except when the converted current is taken off and used by some passing train, has hitherto rendered the proposition economically untenable. When the high-speed experiments were tried last year on the Government railway line between Marienfelde and Zossen, an alternating three-phase current of 10,000 to 12,000 volts was carried along the line on three copper wires and conducted thence by trolleys to transformers carried under the floor of the car, whence it was transformed to 1,150 to 1,800 volts and passed into the three-phase induction motors. The car, as will be remembered, easily attained a speed of 140 to 150 kilometers an hour, at which pace the rails began to give way. The further experiments had to be postponed until a more solid and substantial track could be provided. The present experiment has therefore a wholly different purpose. It involves no question of extreme high speed, but rather the transmission of a single-phase alternating current at a voltage (6,000 volts in this case) sufficient to carry it over a long line on a small and relatively inexpensive wire, and the direct use of the current, without transformation, by a motor capable of running economically at any desirable speed and which fulfills all the other requirements of electric traction. The point demonstrated by the tests now in progress is the effectiveness of the new motor for the special purpose to which it is applied. No sparking or other technical difficulty appears thus far to shadow the success of the experiments. The system eliminates the expensive substations, with their heavy initial outlay and operating expenses, and is so simple and direct in its working that it may, at least in theory, be applied to lines several hundred miles in length. If the distances are very great, of course the power may be transmitted from a distant waterfall or steam plant at any desired pressure—say, 20,000 or 50,000 volts— and then reduced in ordinary transformers, requiring no especial care, to the working-line voltage of, say, 6,000 or more. The present tests are over a line of 3 or 4 miles in extent, the length being immaterial. There may be encountered new technical difficulties when this distance is increased to as many hundred miles, but these difficulties are only such as may be met in any long-distance transmission and such as electrical science at its present stage is fully prepared to overcome. The new motor is believed to have bridged the chasm and opened the way to economical, and therefore practical, long-distance electric traction on railways of standard capacity. FRANK H. MASON, BERLIN, GERMANY, August 27, 1903. Consul-General. |