...(that) any general system of conveying passengers would ... go at a velocity exceeding ten miles an hour, or thereabouts, is extremely improbable.

Engineering is the art of directing the great sources of power in nature for the use and convenience of man.

The most important object of Civil Engineering is to improve the means of production and of traffic in states, both for external and internal trade. It is applied in the construction and management of roads, bridges, railroads, aqueducts, canals, river navigation, docks and storehouses, for the convenience of internal intercourse and exchange; and in the construction of ports, harbours, moles, breakwaters and lighthouses; and in the navigation by artificial power for the purposes of commerce. It is applied to the protection of property where natural powers are the sources of injury, as by embankments forthe defence of tracts of country from the encroachments of the sea, or the overflowing of rivers; it also directs the means of applying streams and rivers to use, either as powers to work machines, or as supplies for the use of cities and towns, or for irrigation; as well asthe means of removing noxious accumulations, as by the drainage of towns and districts to ... secure the public health.