June 1920: Electrons and The Engineer

The Engineer, especially in its early years, was very much a practical journal; the stuff of nuts and bolts, big lumps of iron and steel, rivets and steam. There wasn’t much space for the world of pure science, although applied mathematics, of course, was always well to the fore. So it was with an almost audible grinding of mental gears that the journal took a stab at describing the world inside the atom and what it might mean to engineers in 1920.

This was the height of the discoveries of the quantum mechanical revolution in physics. Ernest Rutherford had split the atom in 1917, and three years later gave a lecture at the Royal Society describing some of his findings. The Engineer sent a representative to the lecture, who found himself wondering on what significance the discovery of the electron, in particular, might have for engineers.

The article starts with an attitude which is still common among engineers: that a ‘practical man’ might ‘echo the opinion which has of late found vigorous expression in some quarters, that such research is “important”, but he is content to leave it to a small band of enthusiastic workers whom he is inclined to regard with something between indifference and the semi-contemptuous tolerance which he accords to people who are not “practical”.’ But, the article adds, it should be obvious that Rutherford’s discoveries were bound to ‘affect our practical lives and perhaps to alter the whole aspect of human life and activities,’ and this would happen ‘probably sooner rather than later.’