Institution of Civil Engineers of Ireland 1835-1968
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CALLED TO SERVE Ronald Cox & Dermot O’Dwyer Engineers Ireland CALLED TO SERVE Presidents of the Institution of Civil Engineers of Ireland 1835-1968 Ronald Cox & Dermot O’Dwyer Published 2014 by: Engineers Ireland 22 Clyde Road Dublin 4 Copyright: Engineers Ireland, 2014 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers. ISBN: 978-09502874-1-6 This book has been sponsored by the ESB Printed by Read’s, Sandyford, Dublin 18 2 Contents Introduction 1 The Institution 2 The Presidential Addresses 3 Biographical Sketches of Presidents Reference Sources Authors Ronald Cox is a Chartered Engineer and a Research Associate in the Department of Civil, Structural & Environmental Engineering at Trinity College Dublin. He was formerly a Senior Lecturer in Civil Engineering and one-time Dean of Engineering at Trinity College Dublin. Dr Cox is a Member of the Institution of Civil Engineers, a Fellow of the Institution of Engineers of Ireland, a Fellow of the Irish Academy of Engineering, a Member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, and the current chairman of the Engineers Ireland Heritage Society. Recent publications include Civil Engineering Heritage: Ireland (1998), Ireland’s Bridges (2003), Engineering Ireland (2006), and Ireland’s Civil Engineering Heritage (2013). Dermot O’Dwyer is a Chartered Engineer and an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil, Structural & Environmental Engineering at Trinity College Dublin. He is a Member of the Institution of Civil Engineers and of the Institution of Engineers of Ireland. Professor O’Dwyer represents Engineers Ireland on the ICE Panel for Historical Engineering Works and is a member of the Editorial Panel for the peer-reviewed journal Engineering History and Heritage. 3 ‘Reading makes a full man, writing an exact man, and speaking a ready man’ (Francis Bacon) Introduction Past Presidents of the Institution of Civil Engineers of Ireland (ICEI) have interpreted their role in a variety of ways, including chairing meetings of the council, presiding at the presentation of technical papers, and representing the Institution and the engineering profession, both nationally and internationally. The tradition of presenting a presidential address during the term of office of each president was begun in 1856 by George Willoughby Hemans. Since that time, with few exceptions, each president has addressed the membership in their own individual style, often drawing on the experiences gained during their respective careers. The feelings of the presidents faced with this tradition can best be illustrated by quoting Alfred Delap (President 1927) on the subject: ‘The whole question of a Presidential address is a very difficult one, and one on which very little, if any, help can ever be hoped for. Past Presidents are certainly not going to help their successors to evade or avoid an ordeal which they have successfully gone through; future or potential Presidents naturally feel that such a simple matter will give them no trouble when their time comes, and so your President is left in isolation to face the inevitable’. ‘But is a Presidential Address inevitable?’ ‘Our Institution was founded in 1835, and the first Presidential address was, I believe, not delivered till 1856, by Hemans, and from time to time since, the value of the Presidential addresses has been seriously questioned. (The speaker will feel that he has not lived, or spoken, in vain if his address finally convinces the Institution that it would be wiser to let its Presidents preside in as nearly absolute silence as possible)’. ‘It must be faced that an address from your President is customary and, therefore, necessary, as he has not sufficient courage to open his year of office by ignoring, or departing from, the recognised custom. (Besides, a time will, I hope, come when I shall have the opportunity of seeing others in the embarrassing position, in which I now stand, of having to address my fellow Members on some subject, while feeling very strongly that I know nothing about anything that can possibly interest anyone)’. In this book, the presidential addresses have been analysed in an effort to present their highlights and insights in an historical context. The full presidential addresses were published in the Transactions of the Institution, which are now available online in digital format at http://digitalcollections.tcd.ie/home/. It is hoped that the analyses presented in this publication will serve to whet the appetite for a more detailed study of the individual addresses. The analyses of the presidential addresses are preceded by a brief history of the ICEI up to its unification with the Engineers Association (Cumann na nInnealtóirí) in 1969. This is presented in order to provide a framework within which the presidential addresses may be considered. It consists of extracts from the fuller treatment of the history published previously in Cox (2006). A major portion of the book is devoted to short biographies of each of the presidents - from John Fox Burgoyne in 1835 to James Clement Ignatius Dooge in 1968. The support for the project of the members of the Heritage Group of the Irish Academy of Engineering is gratefully acknowledged. 4 Chapter One The Institution On Thursday 6 August 1835, a meeting of twenty civil engineers was held at the office of the Board of Public Works (Ireland), located at the time in the Custom House, Dublin, and presided over by Colonel (later Field Marshal Sir) John Fox Burgoyne, chairman of the Board. It appears that the meeting was a sequel to a preliminary meeting at which a further sixteen engineers were in attendance and signified their support for the formation of a society for their own improvement. The number of founder members thus totalled thirty-six, composed mainly of engineers working for the Board. Burgoyne pointed out that the profession of civil engineering had been at a low ebb in Ireland and that persons without education or skill had frequently been employed in operations of importance, resulting in bad or injudicious works, wasteful or fruitless expenditure and a certain degree of discredit to the country. He explained that they were now adopting the measure best calculated to prevent the recurrence of these evils, by organising a society, which it was hoped might be the means of adding respectability to the profession of civil engineers in Ireland and rendering some service to the country. Thus came into being The Civil Engineers Society of Ireland - a name, however, that was soon to be changed. The society had for its object 'the promotion of science in general, but more particularly as connected with the profession of Civil Engineers'. A general meeting of the society was held on 17 August 1844 in the Custom House with Burgoyne as chairman and Robert Mallet acting as secretary, when it was resolved that ‘The Institution of Civil Engineers of Ireland be formed for the promotion of mechanical science and more particularly for the acquisition of that species of knowledge which constitutes the profession of a Civil Engineer’. The Institution of Civil Engineers of Ireland (ICEI) was to retain this title for the next 125 years. Burgoyne remained as president and three vice-presidents and ten other members constituted the council. Most of the credit for the rejuvenation of the ‘Institution’ was due to Mallet and it was he who prepared a Code of By-Laws that placed the ICEI on a firm footing. In those early years, the Board of Public Works provided an office and meeting rooms in the Custom House, although it would seem that on occasions, meetings were held in the rooms of the Geological Society. Regular meetings were held until the Board had to terminate the arrangement when the rooms were required for the accommodation of a large emergency staff recruited to administer relief measures following the Great Famine. Thus, in 1853, the headquarters of the ICEI were moved to apartments rented from the Richmond Institute for the Blind at 41 Upper Sackville Street (as O'Connell Street in Dublin was then named). This change proved a strain on the resources of the organisation, partly due to the cost of furnishing the new premises and maintenance charges out of all proportion to the size of the member- ship. Membership had been falling owing to a change in government policy at the time and the lessening of the provision for public works, with consequential lack of work for engineers. Although many administrative and structural problems had arisen, the essential aims and objects of the founders were being fulfilled. Meetings were held frequently and papers presented and discussed. A good deal of time was devoted to the description of models and to the demonstration of engineering instruments, as the era of technical journals and commercial shows and exhibitions was in its infancy. Through the generosity of individual members, there was already a considerable accumulation of books and models for which rooms had to be provided and a curator appointed. Sadly, the models were later dispersed and only remnants of the library collection have survived to form an archive, now housed at 45 Merrion Square under an arrangement with the Irish Architectural Archive. The Transactions (technical papers) of the ICEI were first published at the end of the session 1844-45. They contain in individual papers, and the often substantial presidential addresses, an impressive record of the contribution that engineers have made to the economy, to the welfare of the community, and to the country as a whole. 5 The perilous seven years with headquarters at Sackville Street were ended by a most magnanimous ges- ture by the Board of Trinity College Dublin who undertook, at the request of the Professor of Civil Engineering, Samuel Downing, to house and safeguard the collection of models and library items and to provide suitable rooms for council and general meetings, including fuel and light, free of charge and without limitation as to period.