Universities are still for the most part less than fifty years old, they are now associated with almost all Universities. In many the Engineering School is, numerically at any rate r the strongest school of all. The Queensland University began with Schools in Arts, Science, and Engineering, and none in Medicine nor Law. So did the University of Western Australia. Even the Institution of Civil Engineers, a body of practical professional men, for long holding very conservative views with regard to methods of training of Engineers, has for some years recommended a minimum course of three years at the Engineering School of a University, the recommendation being unanimously adopted by the committee appointed to report upon the subject.
The first country to establish schools of advanced teaching in Engineering and Technical Science was France. The military needs of the country, felt in the years preceding the French Revolution, resulted in the establishment by the Government of a number of schools that are still in active work at the present time. The School of Bridges and Roads (Ecole des Fonts et Chaussées) was founded in 1747, the School of Mines (Ecoles des Mines) in 1783. It was not till much later that the first British School of Engineering was established at University College,. London, in 1828. Rankine was appointed Professor of Mechanical Science at Glasgow in 1855. Since then Engineering Schools have been established at one University after another, until to-day even Cambridge has its Engineering laboratories and a Mechanical Science Tripos, and Oxford its Department of Engineering Science.
In the address given by the Governor, Sir Drummond Jervois, at the laying of the foundation-stone of the Adelaide University in 1879, he said: "But the engineer, whether he is to be a railway engineer, or mining engineer, or a mechanical engineer, whether he learns classics or not, must, in addition to a knowledge
