Engineering History
When did engineering begin?
Who were the first engineers?
What were the first engineering
designs?
The Beginnings of Engineering:
6000 - 3000 B.C.
Probably occurred in Asia Minor or Africa 8000
years ago
Change from nomadic life (hunter - gatherers)
The Agrarian Society (agriculture)
forms the basis of civilization
cultivate plants - increased food production
domesticate animals - food and work
build permanent houses in community groups

The Beginnings of Engineering:
6000 - 3000 B.C.
Increased food production - time to engage in
other activities
Rulers - stabilize community life, leads to
land ownership
- organize work force
- beginnings of a class society
supervisors
foremen
workers - artisans
 Artisans considered to be the first engineers

The Beginnings of Engineering:
6000 - 3000 B.C.
Early Achievements in this Era

Produce fire at will

Melting certain rocklike materials to produce
copper and bronze tools

Developed system of symbols for written
communication
The Beginning of Engineering:
6000 - 3000 B.C.
Major Engineering Projects
or Inventions
Irrigation systems to promote crop
growth
Animal-, water-, and wind-driven
gristmills
Wheel and axle
 Plow
 Yoke

The Beginning of Engineering:
6000 - 3000 B.C.
Mesopotamia “cradle of civilization”

Clay tile material used for permanent documentation

Unearthed clay tablets showing
maps of caravan routes, including mountains, cities
and water
city plans
irrigation systems
water supply systems
road maps (networks)
The Beginning of Engineering:
6000 - 3000 B.C.

Outstanding contributions of mathematics
 Sexagesimal system
 divided circle into 360 degrees
 hour into 60 minutes
 minute into 60 seconds
Engineering in Early
Civilizations:3000 -600 B.C.

Babylonian engineers:
Basic arithmetic and algebra, computing areas and
volumes of land excavations
Number system based on 60 instead of 10
Buildings constructed using basic engineering principles
Primitive arches used in hydraulic works
Bridges built with stone piers carrying wooden stringers
Roads surfaced with naturally occurring asphalt, a
construction system not used again until 19th century

Engineering in Early
Civilizations:3000 -600 B.C.

Egyptian Engineers
Pyramid Age – begins 2900
B.C and lasts 1000 years
2,300,000 building stones
(2.5 tons each) used to
build the Great Pyramid of
Cheops
Irrigation systems

Science of the Greeks and
Romans: 600 B.C. - 400 A.D.

Engineering in Greece:
Origin in Egypt
 Intensive development of borrowed ideas, not
creativity and invention
 Famous for outstanding philosophers

Socrates, Plato, Aristotle (physical scientist) and
Archimedes (mathematics)

Science of the Greeks and
Romans: 600 B.C. - 400 A.D.

Engineering in Greece:
Use of ideas retarded due to belief that
verification and experimentation, which required
manual labor, were only fit for slaves.
 Archimedes water screw
 Crossbow
 Catapult

Science of the Greeks and
Romans: 600 B.C. - 400 A.D.

Roman Engineering
Liberally borrowed scientific and engineering
knowledge from conquered countries for use in
warfare and public works
 Superior application of ideas and techniques
 Hero’s Inventions:
Gear driven chariot odometer
Steam turbine
Hydraulic clock
Fire engine

Science of the Greeks and
Romans: 600 B.C. - 400 A.D.

Roman Engineering
Roman road systemssubbase, compact base,
topcoat (180,000 miles)
Aqueducts for water
supply
Sanitary systems
Engineering principles
applies to military tactics

Engineering in the Middle
Ages: 1st to 16th Centuries
Dark Ages…or not?
 The word engineer began to appear. Its root lies in the
Latin word ingeniare, “to design or devise”
 Animals and waterwheels began to replace humans as
the power source
Arabs developed paper making, chemistry, and optics
 Sugar refining, soap making, and perfume distilling
became part of the culture
 Chinese developed clocks, astronomical instruments,
the loom and spinning wheel, and gunpowder

Engineering in the Middle
Ages: 1st to 16th Centuries

Johann Gutenburg
with movable type, produced first books
printed on paper


Leonardo da Vinci
acclaimed great artist, also engineer,
inventor and architect


Military and civil engineering feats


catapults, bridges and buildings
Sketches of future engineering devices
Machine Gun, Helicopter, Drawbridge,
Breach-loading Cannon, Roller Bearing,
Universal Joint, Tanks
The Revival of Science:
17th and 18th Centuries



Galileo discovers
 gravitational acceleration, velocity a body achieves while falling, is
independent of weight
 earth moves around the sun
Torricelli and Pascal discover
 hydrostatics and dynamics - develop the barometer
Boyle discovers
 expansion quality of air and correlation between temperature,
volume, and pressure
The Revival of Science:
17th and 18th Centuries
Hooke discovers
material lengthens in proportion to force
exerted (up to the elastic limit)
Material in compression shortens in
similar fashion
 Huygens develops
spiral watch spring and pendulum clock
measures gravitational acceleration
 Newton develops
 differential calculus, essential to
mathematical analysis of most physical
systems

The Revival of Science:
17th and 18th Centuries
The Developing Industrial Age
 James Watt - steam engine for textile mills,
iron furnaces, rolling mills and other
industries
 Hargreaves, Crampton, and Jurgen spinning and weaving machinery
 Pieter van Musschenbroek - device to hold a
static electrical charge
 now called the leyden jar - forerunner to
the capacitor
 Luigi Galvani- principles of electrical
conduction
 Alessandro Volta - principles of the electric
battery

Iron Furnace
Beginnings of Modern
Science: 19th Century

Andre-Marie Ampere confirms flow
of electrical current,

leads to science of
electrodynamics
Michael Faraday develops means
to generate electricity by moving a
conductor through a magnetic field
 Jagadis Chandra Bose
demonstrates transmission of
electric signals through space


Marconi awarded a patent for the
same achievement a year later
Henry Cort develops a method of
refining iron
 James Watt refines and produces
an efficient steam engine
 Methods to produce viable iron for
machines and power plants

20th Century Technology

Henry Ford - Builds and sells automobiles


mass production emerges
Thomas Edison and Lee DeForest develop electrical
equipment and electron tubes

widespread use of power systems and communication networks
Nikola Tesla introduces first practical application of
alternating current, the polyphase induction motor
 Orville & Wilbur Wright develop powered aircraft
 Wallace Carothers leads team of organic chemists and
chemical engineer researchers at duPont

develop NYLON, the first of many “synthetic fibers”. Signals
beginning of polymer research

20th Century Technology
Using Albert Einstein's model “E=mc2, scientists
from Europe and the United States (University of
Chicago) produce the first nuclear pile.
The age of controlled nuclear reaction begins.
 John Brainerd (University of Pennsylvania’s Moore
School of Engineering) develops the first computer
 Called the “ENIAC”, it weighed over 30 tons
and occupied over 1500 square feet.
 John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William
Shockley (Bell Labs) discover current changes in
one part of a diode cause current changes in
another part of a diode
 They create the transistor.

ENIAC
20th Century Technology
Texas Instruments and Fairchild Semiconductor
configure transistor’s silicon crystal as an
individual circuit board
 “transistors - the switch that controls the world”
 Pratt & Whitney develops turbojet engines
 Boeing Airplane Company develops the Boeing
707
 Capable of transporting 180 passengers at
speeds of 600 mph
 Theodore Maiman produces the first working laser
Now used in surgery, to transmit telephone
calls, track storms, for supermarket checkout, to
weld steel, to cut fabric and to produce
holograms

20th Century Technology and
Beyond
Communication Satellites - now handle more than half
of all transoceanic telephone, television and audio
network program distribution

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And the list goes ON AND
ON
AND
ON