por The engineering history It goes back to very remote times, from the invention of tools such as the lever or the wheel, which made it easier to carry out other jobs through basic mechanical principles.
The word engineer has its roots in Latin. Ingenium It literally translates as the innate qualities of a person, but militarily it was used to call war machines, built by humans.
Those who could operate said creations were known as ingeniairus and engineer. From there the word must have been transferred to French engineer and then to english Engineer (machinist).
The first manifestations of engineering occurred in the Ancient Age, with large constructions such as the pyramids, both Egyptian and pre-Columbian. The great constructions, palaces, houses and primitive urbanisms also originated, such as those that occurred in the ancient Mesopotamian cities (Babylon, Ur, Nineveh, Acadia). Likewise, there are the great works of the Greeks and Romans, the latter being the ones who built bridges and aqueducts that are still used today.
In medieval times, advances in civil engineering gave way to Gothic architecture in Europe, while major advances were made in Asia in the areas of metallurgy and hydrography.
During the Modern Age, the steam engine inaugurated the Industrial Revolution. It was then that engineering began to be a formal science. It should be taken into account that current engineering is a set of knowledge and techniques applied to problem solving.
From then on, the areas of specialization began to separate, such as military, mechanical, and civil engineering, and new names were added to that list.
Electrical engineering arose with Volta in the 19th century. Later, the electronics came off of it. The 19th century also gave way to chemical engineering, which went hand in hand with mechanics, trying to meet the needs of the latter.
Later, aeronautics was added, necessary during the First and Second World Wars. One of the most recent became popular in the 1980s and is computer engineering.
Old age
The first recorded engineer was named Imhotep, and was a builder of the stepped pyramid located in Saqqara, Egypt. It was built for Pharaoh Djoser of the Third Dynasty. Imhotep is believed to have been the first to use columns for architecture. His works date from approximately 2550 BC.
There is a theory that the great projects of Antiquity could have taken over the work of this Egyptian using empirical methods, while making use of other sciences such as geometry, physics and arithmetic.
There are many examples of the architecture of Antiquity that can be named. Among the most outstanding works are the Lighthouse of Alexandria, the Temple of Solomon, the Roman Colosseum and, of course, the aqueducts.
Also the Greek Acropolis and Parthenon, the Mesopotamian ziggurats and the structures of the Native Americans, such as the Mayans, Incas or Aztecs.
In addition, one of the greatest works of humanity is located in Asia, such as the Great Wall of China.
As for the architecture of the Romans, its principles were established in the architecture book, written by Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, where he recounted his experience and what he knew about the theory of Greek architectural works, which were the basis of this discipline for the Romans.
machines
However, the Greeks were one of the first to use the machines for different purposes. First, there was the military use in creating weapons. There is also a record of the first mechanical computer, known as the Antikythera Mechanism, dating from the 2nd or 3rd century BC.
Middle Ages
High Middle Ages
Despite the fact that many consider that engineering did not have great advances in the High Middle Ages, the opposite can be said, since at that time, and thanks to the development of Christianity throughout Western civilization, the work done by slaves was not well seen.
So, the Catholic religion was what led to the development of techniques that allowed large jobs to be carried out with fewer personnel. However, there was a period in which the quality and quantity of buildings declined.
At this time in Europe the style that dominated architecture was pre-Romanesque. Through this current, the builders copied the design of the structures created by the Romans.
Middle Ages
In the Late Middle Ages the great Gothic cathedrals were built. In addition, due to the constant clashes between Islamic and Catholic, the construction of castles and fortresses became necessary.
The Asians, for their part, specialized in metallurgy. They were responsible for the creation of tracing paper and gunpowder, which changed the course of history when brought to Europe.
In Turkey, different advances were made in terms of mechanical engineering, since more than 50 mechanical devices were developed for different purposes, including pumping water to supply the city of Damascus (under Ottoman rule at the time), especially for the mosques and hospitals.
Mechanical controls, clocks, and some very basic automata were also devised.
In the 13th century, the engineer and architect Villard de Honnecourt (1200-1266) created the sketch book. In this, his knowledge is established, applied to construction, in areas such as mathematics, geometry, natural sciences, physics and drawing talents.
Despite that, during that time knowledge was transferred from master to apprentice and was not standardized.
Renaissance
In 1445 Johannes Gutenberg (c. 1400-1468) built a machine that changed human history: the printing press. Until then the books were copied by hand in an artisan way and few had access to them.
The arrival of Gutenberg’s printing press revolutionized the way of transmitting knowledge, by allowing texts to be reproduced quickly and in large volume, thanks to a mechanical process, at a much lower cost.
That process consisted of applying ink on metal parts and transferring it to paper by pressure.
Thanks to the printing press, which facilitated the dissemination of information to a greater number of people, engineering could begin to be part of a separate task.
This means that knowledge was no longer transmitted from teacher to apprentice or from father to son, but rather there were people dedicated to the study of certain aspects of science. That was what allowed the separation between engineering and architecture or mechanics and military science.
During the Renaissance, the construction of large domes became popular, especially in religious buildings. This structure existed since antiquity, but its design evolved and, during the Renaissance, a solution to the problem of complicated scaffolding arose.
The way that was found during the Renaissance was to build two domes that were supported one on the other, one on the outside and the other on the inside, with a strong structural union between them. The greatest exponent of this structure was the Basilica of San Pedro.
Industrial Revolution
A couple of centuries later came the invention that generated a revolution in all aspects of human life, as it was known until then: the steam engine.
From there, a theory that broke schemes began to explode, which indicated that heat could be used as energy.
The economy of many countries took off thanks to the application of this device, which transformed the thermal energy of water into mechanical energy thanks to an engine.
This is how the Industrial Revolution began, since thanks to this machine and its successors, the mass production of products and other devices that could take advantage of that energy were allowed.
Among the inventions that broke the established paradigms, was the automated manufacturing of textiles, which radically changed the behavior of the market and the labor system that existed until then.
From that same period came another of humanity’s great mechanical developments: the locomotive. This was how animal and human labor, almost artisanal, was dispensed with to give rise to mass production and a new type of society.
Modernity
After the Industrial Revolution, other processes also influenced the history of engineering. For example, experimentation intensified after 1816 with the communication system known as the telegraph, which eventually achieved its most stable prototypes after the contributions of Samuel Morse in 1838.
This is how the doors were opened to the electromagnetic studies that took place during the 19th century. This was one of the most important impulses to separate the study of electrical engineering from the future engineering in telecommunications, which would come later, given the multiple advances in the area.
Also, as a need to supply what the growing manufacturing and mechanical industry demanded, everything related to chemistry entered a much more careful exploration process.
Then, it was intended to obtain other sources of energy for the operation of the engines, and to supply the industry with materials and products.
Contemporary
During the First and Second World War, the use of more sophisticated weapons was the only way to be able to outdo the opponent and at the same time demonstrate the power, not only military, but also technical and scientific, of the victorious nations.
This gave impetus to various fields of engineering, including aeronautics, with the creation of aircraft for military use, and also in the naval sphere, thanks to the most advanced vessels or submarines.
On the other hand, these conflicts contributed to the development of mechanical engineering, especially in the war tank and in weapons, which with the passing of time became more automated.
This is how military engineering finally got rid of mere machinery and sought, rather, to find a specialized path in certain tasks related to resource management, although without totally neglecting its mechanical and civil roots.
Nuclear engineering was another of the branches that was largely supported by the war, although they tried to find use as a source of energy in the radiation that these elements gave off when carrying out certain processes, thinking that it would be a source of clean energy.
Information for everyone
Other of the great advances that the last decades have brought to engineering studies are in the area of technology: computing, electronics and software development.
These are elements that progressively evolve, allowing an ever greater democratization of access to information. This process began to increase with the spread of computers in the mid-1980s, when…