Science and Technology 235science, although the term would seem to be a misnomer, for there is no
other science than pure science.”^33
When some engineering leaders took a more moderate position, they
often echoed Gano Dunn. Presidents of professional societies for electri-
cal, mechanical, and civil engineering defi ned engineering as the “art”
of applying science to useful ends. Civil engineer Harrison Eddy noted
that “while there are wide differences in engineering activities, some lying
within the defi nition of an art, and others within that of a science, there
cannot be any doubt that Engineering is both an art and a science.” But
since Eddy’s main purpose was to argue that engineering was a “learned
profession,” he followed this sentence by saying that “from both points of
view Engineering depends in large measure upon the sciences.”^34
Most of the scientists and engineers who occupied the other end of
the spectrum were committed to the practice and teaching of engineering
research. Even the NRC’s new inner circle in the 1930s included one such
advocate, physicist Karl Compton. Compton’s rhetoric changed after he
became president of MIT in 1930. In speeches to engineering and scien-
tifi c groups in the 1930s, Compton described MIT’s successes in “engi-
neering research,” referred to “fundamental theories of engineering” as
a necessary part of the MIT curriculum, and cited Dunn’s defi nition of
engineering as the “art” of applying science.^35
Other advocates of engineering research in academia took rather weak
rhetorical stances against the NRC’s pure- science ideal, mainly by not-
ing the similarities between scientifi c and engineering research. Chester
Dawes at Harvard noted in 1929 that the “artifi cial dividing line between
electrical engineering and physics is rapidly disappearing.” Researchers
generated “fundamental” knowledge in engineering, as well as in the
physical sciences.^36 Vannevar Bush told the MIT electrical engineering de-
partment in 1935 that the “conception that the scientist should discover
and the engineer apply is not suffi cient.” MIT electrical engineers had
taken up the “research spirit of the scientist.”^37
Proponents of engineering research had been making similar claims
since the war. In 1925, C. Edward Magnusson, director of the University of
Wisconsin’s experiment station, referred to “engineering fundamentals”
and “basic laws of engineering.”^38 Andrey Potter at Purdue spoke in 1930
of advancing the “frontier of engineering knowledge” and claimed that
the future of industry rested “upon new engineering knowledge.”^39
But most colleges did not emphasize the type of original research on
materials and machines pioneered by Thurston and Steinmetz. One prom-
inent engineering educator, William Wickenden, recognized this state as
vice president of the engineering section of the AAAS in 1938. “Engineer-