Author: fitz

There never was yet any perfect Vocabulary, or Nomenclator in any Language; and though this may ſeem a Paradox to ſome, I ſay, there never was, nor is there any that can ſpeak a Language ſo exactly, as to call every thing he meets withal by its name; put caſe the perfecteſt Linguiſt in the Engliſh now living, ſhould go aboard a ſhip, then to a Carpenters ſhop, or ſome other Artiſans, thence go abroad a hawking or hunting, then walk in a botanical Garden, I believe it is impoſſible for him to name all the Tacklings of the firſt, all the Tools of the ſecond, all the terms of the third, and the names of all the flowers, fruits, and herbs he ſhall find in the laſt, and if he chance to go thence to any Apothecary ſhops, ’twill gravel him to name all the Drugs and Simples he finds there.

James Howell

Revised Edition of Randle Cotgrave’s French and English Dictionary – 1650

—Jeff Burks

Years ago I found it necessary to warn people of certain fallacies and misconceptions. There is less need of warnings to-day, yet there are dangers. Some people still think that manual labor is manual training, just as they probably think that the boy who fetches and carries books in a library is becoming a literary man.

Others think a manual training school should be a factory, and should put its goods on the market. Still others think that the chief product of manual training is found in bits of furniture and knick-nacks which pupils carry home. It is constantly necessary for us to explain that ordinary manual labor is not manual training at all. There is training in mastering the theory and the use of a tool or a machine under the guidance of an expert; but when the mastery is gained, and gained thoroughly, there is no training in its continued use, which is not for education but is for commercial ends.

My usual reply to people who betray such misconceptions is already gray with age, but it may be allowed a positively last appearance here—the more a school becomes a factory the less is it a school. The school should put one article upon the market and that is, boys; and if all the shop exercises of the year were at its close put into a furnace and burned, all the manual training would remain.
(more…)

The lathe-feed topic will bear a great deal more stirring up. The product of the lathe is of course not determined alone by the feed employed. It may often occur that one using a fine feed will turn out a quicker and better job than one using a coarse feed upon a similar piece of work. We often hear it remarked that no two men will do a job alike. Certainly not.

Still there is but one best way, and where men differ in practice there is something that one can learn of the other. It will generally happen, perhaps, that even in such a case the advantage is not all upon one side, and in some particulars each may learn of the other. The actual exchange of ideas is always mutually profitable, but there is plenty of gab perpetrated, which involves no transfer of mental currency. The man who says the most is not the man who has the most to say.

A machinist “learning the trade”—and that he always is—finds himself in the position of a young man whom a fond father was sending forth into the world to seek his fortune. “My son,” said he, “no one ever embarked in life under more favorable auspices: you have everything to gain and nothing to lose.”
(more…)