“I asked: ‘How do you proportion your radiators?’ With a puzzled look on his face, he replied: ‘Ah — you are in a hurry to learn this business.’ I said no more at that time, but a while later we visited the basement to see about the boilers and the engineer said: ‘Well, for this building we want two boilers about 4 feet in diameter, and, well, about 12 feet long.’
“I asked: ‘By what rule did you find your boilers, assuming you have established your radiators by some method that is fairly correct?’ His reply again was: ‘Ah — you are in a great hurry to learn this business.’ At that time I supposed that the engineer had some data, or some method that approximated a scientific one, but a few months later the engineer declared that the whole thing was guessed at; that there was no method, and that he knew of none, except that under about similar circumstances he had used similar radiators.”