Lewis Hallock Nash earned his Mechanical Engineering Degree from Stevens Institute of Technology in 1877, graduating at the top of his class. In his valedictory speech, he said that the task of the Engineer is “to lighten common drudgery, to carry the comforts of life to the masses of people, to give a man time for sociability and self-culture and to enable him to rise to contemplation of grander problems than the struggle for earthly subsistence.”
Today, most of us have plenty of free time which we spend doing leisurely things such as watching tv, “hanging out” and other forms of entertainment, rather than “the struggle for earthly subsistence”.
How lucky we are compared to our parents parents parents parents!