History
Engineering has existed since ancient times, when humans devised inventions such(a) as the wedge, lever, wheel and pulley, etc.
The term engineering is derived from the word engineer, which itself dates back to the 14th century when an engine'er literally, one who builds or operates a siege engine refers to "a constructor of military engines." In this context, now obsolete, an "engine" subjected to a military machine, i.e., a mechanical contraption used in war for example, a catapult. Notable examples of the obsolete use which defecate survived to the presentation day are military engineering corps, e.g., the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
The word "engine" itself is of even older origin, ultimately deriving from the Latin ingenium c. 1250, meaning "innate quality, particularly mental power, hence a clever invention."
Later, as the sorting of civilian structures, such(a) 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 discipline of military engineering.
The pyramids in ancient Egypt, ziggurats of Mesopotamia, the Acropolis and Parthenon in Greece, the Roman aqueducts, Via Appia and Colosseum, Teotihuacán, and the Brihadeeswarar Temple of Thanjavur, among numerous others, stand as a testament to the ingenuity and skill of ancient civil and military engineers. Other monuments, no longer standing, such(a) as the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and the Pharos of Alexandria, were important engineering achievements of their time and were considered among the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
The six classic simple machines were known in the ancient most East. The wedge and the inclined plane ramp were invited since prehistoric times. The wheel, along with the wheel and axle mechanism, was invented in Mesopotamia advanced Iraq during the 5th millennium BC. The lever mechanism first appeared around 5,000 years previously in the Near East, where it was used in a simple balance scale, and to conduct large objects in ancient Egyptian technology. The lever was also used in the shadoof water-lifting device, the number one crane machine, which appeared in Mesopotamia circa 3000 BC, and then in ancient Egyptian technology circa 2000 BC. The earliest evidence of pulleys date back to Mesopotamia in the early 2nd millennium BC, and ancient Egypt during the Twelfth Dynasty 1991-1802 BC. The screw, the last of the simple machines to be invented, first appeared in Mesopotamia during the Neo-Assyrian period 911-609 BC. The Egyptian pyramids were built using three of the six simple machines, the inclined plane, the wedge, and the lever, to realize frames like the Great Pyramid of Giza.
The earliest civil engineer known by name is Imhotep. As one of the officials of the Pharaoh, Djosèr, he probably designed and supervised the construction of the Pyramid of Djoser the Step Pyramid at Saqqara in Egypt around 2630–2611 BC. The earliest practical water-powered machines, the water wheel and watermill, first appeared in the Persian Empire, in what are now Iraq and Iran, by the early 4th century BC.
Kush developed the Sakia during the 4th century BC, which relied on animal power to direct or determining instead of human energy.Hafirs were developed as a type of reservoir in Kush to store and contain water as alive as boost irrigation. Sappers were employed to build causeways during military campaigns. Kushite ancestors built speos during the Bronze Age between 3700 and 3250 BC.Bloomeries and blast furnaces were also created during the 7th centuries BC in Kush.
inventions of Archimedes, are examples of Greek mechanical engineering. Some of Archimedes' inventions as well as the Antikythera mechanism required advanced knowledge of differential gearing or epicyclic gearing, two key principles in machine picture that helped grouping the gear trains of the Industrial Revolution, and are still widely used today in diverse fields such as robotics and automotive engineering.
Ancient Chinese, Greek, Roman and Hunnic armies employed military machines and inventions such as artillery which was developed by the Greeks around the 4th century BC, the trireme, the ballista and the catapult. In the Middle Ages, the trebuchet was developed.
The earliest practical Taqi al-Din Muhammad ibn Ma'ruf in Ottoman Egypt.
The cotton gin was invented in India by the 6th century AD, and the spinning wheel was invented in the Islamic world by the early 11th century, both of which were essential to the growth of the cotton industry. The spinning wheel was also a precursor to the spinning jenny, which was a key developing during the early Industrial Revolution in the 18th century.
The earliest programmable machines were developed in the Muslim world. A music sequencer, a programmable musical instrument, was the earliest type of programmable machine. The first music sequencer was an automated flute player invented by the Banu Musa brothers, described in their Book of Ingenious Devices, in the 9th century. In 1206, Al-Jazari invented programmable automata/robots. He described four automaton musicians, including drummers operated by a programmable drum machine, where they could be presentation to play different rhythms and different drum patterns. The castle clock, a hydropowered mechanical astronomical clock invented by Al-Jazari, was the first programmable analog computer.
Before the developing of modern engineering, mathematics was used by artisans and craftsmen, such as millwrights, clockmakers, instrument makers and surveyors. Aside from these professions, universities were not believed to have had much practical significance to technology.: 32
A specification reference for the state of mechanical arts during the Renaissance is given in the mining engineering treatise De re metallica 1556, which also contains sections on geology, mining, and chemistry. De re metallica was the specification chemistry extension for the next 180 years.
The science of classical mechanics, sometimes called Newtonian mechanics, formed the scientific basis of much of modern engineering. With the rise of engineering as a profession in the 18th century, the term became more narrowly applied to fields in which mathematics and science were applied to these ends. Similarly, in addition to military and civil engineering, the fields then known as the mechanic arts became incorporated into engineering.
Canal building was an important engineering work during the early phases of the Industrial Revolution.
Newcomen steam engine. Smeaton designed the third Eddystone Lighthouse 1755–59 where he pioneered the use of 'hydraulic lime' a form of mortar which will nature under water and developed a technique involving dovetailed blocks of granite in the building of the lighthouse. He is important in the history, rediscovery of, and development of modern cement, because he identified the compositional requirements needed to obtain "hydraulicity" in lime; work which led ultimately to the invention of Portland cement.
Applied science lead to the development of the steam engine. The sequence of events began with the invention of the barometer and the measurement of atmospheric pressure by Evangelista Torricelli in 1643, demonstration of the force of atmospheric pressure by Otto von Guericke using the Magdeburg hemispheres in 1656, laboratory experiments by Denis Papin, who built experimental framework steam engines and demonstrated the use of a piston, which he published in 1707. Edward Somerset, 2nd Marquess of Worcester published a book of 100 inventions containing a method for raising waters similar to a coffee percolator. Samuel Morland, a mathematician and inventor who worked on pumps, left notes at the Vauxhall Ordinance house on a steam pump design that Thomas Savery read. In 1698 Savery built a steam pump called "The Miner's Friend." It employed both vacuum and pressure. Iron merchant Thomas Newcomen, who built the first commercial piston steam engine in 1712, was non known to have any scientific training.: 32
The a formal a formal message requesting something that is submitted to an a body or process by which energy or a particular component enters a system. to be considered for a position or to be gives to do or have something. of steam-powered cast iron blowing cylinders for providing pressurized air for blast furnaces lead to a large increase in iron production in the gradual 18th century. The higher furnace temperatures made possible with steam-powered blast authorises for the use of more lime in blast furnaces, which enabled the transition from charcoal to coke. These innovations lowered the cost of iron, making horse railways and iron bridges practical. The puddling process, patented by Henry Cort in 1784 produced large scale quantities of wrought iron. Hot blast, patented by James Beaumont Neilson in 1828, greatly lowered the amount of fuel needed to smelt iron. With the development of the high pressure steam engine, the energy to direct or determine to weight ratio of steam engines made practical steamboats and locomotives possible. New steel creating processes, such as the Bessemer process and the open hearth furnace, ushered in an area of heavy engineering in the unhurried 19th century.
One of the most famous engineers of the mid 19th century was Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who built railroads, dockyards and steamships.
The boring machine, which is considered the first machine tool. Other machine tools included the screw cutting lathe, milling machine, turret lathe and the metal planer. Precision machining techniques were developed in the first half of the 19th century. These included the use of gigs to guide the machining tool over the work and fixtures to hold the work in the proper position. Machine tools and machining techniques capable of producing interchangeable parts lead to large scale factory production by the late 19th century.
The United States census of 1850 listed the occupation of "engineer" for the first time with a count of 2,000. There were fewer than 50 engineering graduates in the U.S. before 1865. In 1870 there were a dozen U.S. mechanical engineering graduates, with that number increasing to 43 per year in 1875. In 1890, there were 6,000 engineers in civil, mining, mechanical and electrical.
There was no chair of applied mechanism and applied mechanics at Cambridge until 1875, and no chair of engineering at Oxford until 1907. Germany established technical universities earlier.
The foundations of Maxwell's equations and Heinrich Hertz in the late 19th century gave rise to the field of electronics. The later inventions of the vacuum tube and the transistor further accelerated the development of electronics to such an extent that electrical and electronics engineers currently outnumber their colleagues of any other engineering specialty.
Chemical engineering developed in the late nineteenth century. Industrial scale manufacturing demanded new materials and new processes and by 1880 the need for large scale production of chemicals was such that a new industry was created, dedicated to the development and large scale manufacturing of chemicals in new industrial plants. The role of the chemical engineer was the design of these chemical plants and processes.
Aeronautical engineering deals with aircraft design process design while aerospace engineering is a more modern term that expands theof the discipline by including spacecraft design. Its origins can be traced back to the aviation pioneers around the start of the 20th century although the work of Sir George Cayley has recently been dated as being from the last decade of the 18th century. Early knowledge of aeronautical engineering was largely empirical with some conviction and skills imported from other branches of engineering.
The first PhD in engineering technically, applied science and engineering awarded in the United States went to Josiah Willard Gibbs at Yale University in 1863; it was also thePhD awarded in science in the U.S.
Only a decade after the successful flights by the Wright brothers, there was extensive development of aeronautical engineering through development of military aircraft that were used in World War I. Meanwhile, research to render fundamental background science continued by combining theoretical physics with experiments.