Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from An Address on the Limits of Education, Read Before the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, November 16, 1865
IN 1829 a volume was published in Boston bearing the name of Elements of Technology. This name was not then in use nor was it generally understood, except by those who drew its meaning from its etymology. It was not in Johnson's Dictionary, nor yet in Rees's Cyclopaedia. In Worcester's Dictionary, where it now has a place, no older authority is cited for its support than that of the volume alluded to. Its analogue indeed was extant in some other languages, and fifty years ago was published in Latin among the Theses of the graduating class of Harvard College. But its revival for the use of English readers had to be justi fied by the assertion that it might be found in some of the older dictionaries.
Such, less than forty years ago, was the doubtful tenure in English literature of a word which now gives name in this city to a vigorous and popular institution, a large endow ment, a magnificent edifice, and at the same time a great and commanding department of' scientific study in every quarter of the civilized world.
It has happened in regard to technology that in the present century and almost under our own eyes, it has advanced with greater strides than any other agent of civilization, and has done more than {my science to enlarge the boundaries of profitable knowledge, to extend the dominion of mankind over nature, to economize and utilize both labor and time.
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