18 ) HISTORY OF ENGINEERING

BEFORE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION

The forerunners of engineers, practical artists and craftsmen, proceeded mainly by trial and error. Yet tinkering combined with imagination produced many marvelous devices. Many ancient monuments cannot fail to incite admiration. The admiration is embodied in the name “engineer” itself. It originated in the eleventh century from the Latin ingeniator, meaning one with ingenium, the ingenious one. The name, used for builders of ingenious fortifications or makers of ingenious devices, was closely related to the notion of ingenuity, which was captured in the old meaning of “engine” until the word was taken over by steam engines and its like. Leonardo da Vinci bore the official title of Ingegnere Generale. His notebooks reveal that some Renaissance engineers began to ask systematically what works and why.

DURING INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

The first phase of modern engineering emerged in the Scientific Revolution. Galileo’s Two New Sciences, which seeks systematic explanations and adopts a scientific approach to practical problems, is a landmark regarded by many engineer historians as the beginning of structural analysis, the mathematical representation and design of building structures. This phase of engineering lasted through the First Industrial Revolution, when machines, increasingly powered by steam engines, started to replace muscles in most production. While pulling off the revolution, traditional artisans transformed themselves to modern professionals. The French, more rationalistic oriented, spearheaded civil engineering with emphasis on mathematics and developed university engineering education under the sponsorship of their government. The British, more empirically oriented, pioneered mechanical engineering and autonomous professional societies under the laissez-faire attitude of their government. Gradually, practical thinking became scientific in addition to intuitive, as engineers developed mathematical analysis and controlled experiments. Technical training shifted from apprenticeship to university education. Information flowed more quickly in organized meetings and journal publications as professional societies emerged.

2ND INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

The second industrial revolution, symbolized by the advent of electricity and mass production, was driven by many branches of engineering. Chemical and electrical engineering developed in close collaboration with chemistry and physics and played vital roles in the rise of chemical, electrical, and telecommunication industries. Marine engineers tamed the peril of ocean exploration. Aeronautic engineers turned the ancient dream of flight into a travel convenience for ordinary people. Control engineers accelerated the pace of automation. Industrial engineers designed and managed mass production and distribution systems.



ENGINEERING IN INFORMATION AGE

Research and development boomed in all fields of science and technology after World War II, partly because of the Cold War and the Sputnik effect. The explosion of engineering research, which used to lagged behind natural science, was especially impressive, as can be seen from the relative expansion of graduate education. Engineering was also stimulated by new technologies, notably aerospace, microelectronics, computers, novel means of telecommunications from the Internet to cell phones. Turbojet and rocket engines propelled aeronautic engineering into unprecedented height and spawned astronautic engineering. Utilization of atomic and nuclear power brought nuclear engineering. Advanced materials with performance hitherto undreamed of poured out from the laboratories of materials science and engineering. Above all, microelectronics, telecommunications, and computer engineering joined force to precipitate the information revolution in which intellectual chores are increasingly alleviated by machines.

The American Engineers' Council for Professional Development (ECPD, the predecessor of ABET) has defined engineering as follows:

“[T]he creative application of scientific principles to design or develop structures, machines, apparatus, or manufacturing processes, or works utilizing them singly or in combination; or to construct or operate the same with full cognizance of their design; or to forecast their behavior under specific operating conditions; all as respects an intended function, economics of operation and safety to life and property"

To lead the progress of these sophisticated technologies, engineers have remade themselves by reforming educational programs and expanding research efforts. Intensive engineering research produced not only new technologies but also bodies of powerful systematic knowledge: the engineering sciences and systems theories in information, computer, control, and communications. Engineering developed extensive theories of its own and firmly established itself as a science of creating, explaining, and utilizing manmade systems. This period also saw the maturation of graduate engineering education and the rise of large-scale research and development organized on the national level.

Later, as the design of civilian structures such as bridges and buildings matured as a technical discipline, the term civil engineering entered the lexicon as a way to distinguish between those specializing in the construction of such non-military projects and those involved in the older discipline of military engineering (the original meaning of the word “engineering,” now largely obsolete, with notable exceptions that have survived to the present day such as military engineering corps, e.g., the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers). Since that time engineering was a relevant use of knowlege, the knowledge than reflected on the user. which was examined by Adem A(Which was an chemistry student which went to Scotts when he was a child.

The concept of engineering has existed since ancient times as humans devised fundamental inventions such as the pulley, lever, and wheel. Each of these inventions is consistent with the modern definition of engineering, exploiting basic mechanical principles to develop useful tools and objects.

So far the physical sciences – physics and chemistry – have contributed most to technology. They will continue to contribute, for instance in the emerging nanotechnology that will take over the torch of the microelectronics revolution. Increasingly, they are joined by biology, which has been transformed by the spectacular success of molecular and genetic biology. Biotechnology is a multidisciplinary field, drawing knowledge from biology, biochemistry, physics, information processing and various engineering expertise. The cooperation and convergence of traditional intellectual disciplines in the development of new technology is the trend of the future.