Mrs D has a post here, where she talks a little about uncovering little hidden or not-well-known pieces of artwork- or maybe even good craftsmanship.

That notion headed me off in my own direction, thinking about engineering and art.

See, was a time when engineering and art were not disparate- in fact, they seemed to intertwine in ways we’d never imagine today.

When someone today talks about the design of a coffeepot, or a blender, or whatever, it just makes me giggle. Because I’ve seen this.
corliss.jpg
This is a corliss steam engine. It’s not even a pretty one- but the detail, if you look for it, is incredible.

This mass of iron and steel is manufactured with the loving care of people who were building- not just machines, but magical machines. The magic wasn’t in the nuts and bolts (but what nuts and bolts!!!) but in the fact that the horrible, backbreaking labor was being removed from the mass of the American populace and placed on the shoulders of capable machines. So the machines were made and tended with care, as they created something Americans had never had: Leisure. People who worked in factories run by steam were able to make a decent living and do more than just work, sleep, and eat.

The man who built this engine is a unique individual- George Corliss. This engine was built, at great expense, delivered, set up, and put into operation, for free.

George built such an efficient engine, that he was able to build them on spec, and he only collected the new owner’s savings in coal for a fixed period. he always came out ahead.

His crowning acheivement may well have been this engine
corliss-centenial.jpg
This was shown at the Centennial exhibition, and then moved to illinois where it powered the Pullman works for many years.

There isn’t a straight line on this big beast, and it’s because of the regard people had for machinery. All the graceful lines, the polished steel, the sheer majesty of the engine- it cost more to make pretty, and it cost more to turn and polish the steel, but people were proud of their work and every detail demonstrated this fact, over and over again.

Not too horrible many years later, steam engines like this one were common as dirt, and the magic was gone. The parts were forged and machined the minimum amount necesary. Efficiency of manufacture was more important than appearance and it showed. Still, there were a lot of little touches that told you people were still taking pride in their work, they were just harder to see.

These days, the artists in the engineering field are still there, but not on the surface. Open the cabinet on a machine too, or look at the inside of a lathe spinde, and you see those sublime little bits of art, that nobody else gets to see. Engineers/machine designers put those little things there like little easter eggs, for the next guy down the road to discover, and smile about. And it happens in every discipline- the elegance of a simple section of assembler code, the jewelling on the water table of a fine shotgun, the elegance of the casting on a cylinder head.

it’s a secret language that Engineers speak to one another. And in the natural world, after a while, you can see that God speaks that same language, in the clues he left in his own work.