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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Records of a Family of Engineers by Robert Louis Stevenson: student finds everywhere in front of him the footprints of the
pioneers. In the eighteenth century the field was largely
unexplored; the engineer must read with his own eyes the face
of nature; he arose a volunteer, from the workshop or the
mill, to undertake works which were at once inventions and
adventures. It was not a science then - it was a living art;
and it visibly grew under the eyes and between the hands of
its practitioners.
The charm of such an occupation was strongly felt by
stepfather and stepson. It chanced that Thomas Smith was a
reformer; the superiority of his proposed lamp and reflectors
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