Engineering is the creative application of science, mathematical methods, and empirical evidence to the innovation, design, construction, and maintenance of structures, machines, materials, devices, systems, processes, and organizations. The discipline of engineering encompasses a broad range of more specialized fields of engineering, each with a more specific emphasis on particular areas of applied mathematics, applied science, and types of application.

The term engineering is derived from the Latin ingenium, meaning “cleverness” and ingeniare, meaning “to contrive, devise”.

Definition

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

The 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.^[

History

Main article; History of Engineering.

History

Main article: History of engineering

Relief map of the Citadel of Lille, designed in 1668 by Vauban, the foremost military engineer of his age.

Engineering has existed since ancient times, when humans devised inventions such as the wedge, lever, wheel and pulley.

The term engineering is derived from the word engineer, which itself dates back to 1390 when an engine’er (literally, one who operates an engine) referred to “a constructor of military engines.” In this context, now obsolete, an “engine” referred to a military machine, i.e., a mechanical contraption used in war (for example, a catapult). Notable examples of the obsolete usage which have survived to the present 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, especially mental power, hence a clever invention.”

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 discipline of military engineering.

History of Engineering; The First Engineer

The first engineer known by name and achievement is Imhotep, builder of the Step Pyramid at Ṣaqqārah, Egypt, probably about 2550 BCE. Imhotep’s successors—Egyptian, Persian, Greek, and Roman—carried civil engineering to remarkable heights on the basis of empirical methods aided by arithmetic, geometry, and a smattering of physical science. The Pharos (lighthouse) of Alexandria, Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem, the Colosseum in Rome, the Persian and Roman road systems, the Pont du Gard aqueduct in France, and many other large structures, some of which endure to this day, testify to their skill, imagination, and daring. Of many treatises written by them, one in particular survives to provide a picture of engineering education and practice in classical times: Vitruvius’s De architectura, published in Rome in the 1st century CE, a 10-volume work covering building materials, construction methods, hydraulics, measurement, and town planning.

In construction, medieval European engineers carried technique, in the form of the Gothic arch and flying buttress, to a height unknown to the Romans. The sketchbook of the 13th-century French engineer Villard de Honnecourt reveals a wide knowledge of mathematics, geometry, natural and physical science, and draftsmanship.

In Asia, engineering had a separate but very similar development, with more and more sophisticated techniques of construction, hydraulics, and metallurgy helping to create advanced civilizations such as the Mongol empire, whose large, beautiful cities impressed Marco Polo in the 13th century.

In construction, medieval European engineers carried technique, in the form of the Gothic arch and flying buttress, to a height unknown to the Romans. The sketchbook of the 13th-century French engineer Villard de Honnecourt reveals a wide knowledge of mathematics, geometry, natural and physical science, and draftsmanship.

In Asia, engineering had a separate but very similar development, with more and more sophisticated techniques of construction, hydraulics, and metallurgy helping to create advanced civilizations such as the Mongol empire, whose large, beautiful cities impressed Marco Polo in the 13th century.

Civil engineering emerged as a separate discipline in the 18th century, when the first professional societies and schools of engineering were founded. Civil engineers of the 19th century built structures of all kinds, designed water-supply and sanitation systems, laid out railroad and highway networks, and planned cities. England and Scotland were the birthplace of mechanical engineering, as a derivation of the inventions of the Scottish engineer James Watt and the textile machinists of the Industrial Revolution. The development of the British machine-tool industry gave tremendous impetus to the study of mechanical engineering both in Britain and abroad.

The growth of knowledge of electricity—from Alessandro Volta’s original electric cell of 1800 through the experiments of Michael Faraday and others, culminating in 1872 in the Gramme dynamo and electric motor (named after the Belgian Zénobe-Théophile Gramme)—led to the development of electrical and electronics engineering. The electronics aspect became prominent through the work of such scientists as James Clerk Maxwell of Britain and Heinrich Hertz of Germany in the late 19th century. Major advances came with the development of the vacuum tube by Lee de Forest of the United States in the early 20th century and the invention of the transistor in the mid-20th century. In the late 20th century electrical and electronics engineers outnumbered all others in the world.

Chemical engineering grew out of the 19th-century proliferation of industrial processes involving chemical reactions in metallurgy, food, textiles, and many other areas. By 1880 the use of chemicals in manufacturing had created an industry whose function was the mass production of chemicals. The design and operation of the plants of this industry became a function of the chemical engineer.

In the late 20th and early 21st centuries the field of environmental engineering expanded to address global warming and sustainability. The development and deployment of renewable energy, such as solar and wind power, the creation of new technologies for carbon sequestration and pollution control, and the design of green architecture and environmentally friendly urban planning are all recent developments.

Concept of Engineering.

Engineering is the use of scientific principles to design and build machines, structures, and other items, including bridges, tunnels, roads, vehicles, and buildings. … The term engineering is derived from the Latin ingenium, meaning “cleverness” and ingeniare, meaning “to contrive, devise”.

Types of Engineering

There are many different types of engineering. The most significant ones are civil engineering, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, and chemical engineering.

Civil engineering is probably the first one that comes to mind when people think about engineering. These are the roads, bridges, dams, buildings, and canals that make up our human communities and infrastructure. All of those structures are designed and built under the supervision of civil engineers.Suspension bridges are designed and built by civil engineers.

Mechanical engineering is what puts the ‘engine’ into engineering. This is often where the problem-solving cleverness of engineers is most on display. Mechanical engineers can turn one type of energy into another one, or one type of motion into another, to solve problems. They’re responsible for cogs and levers, joints and belts, cams and wheels, and shafts and pulleys. These basic structures, when taken to a highly complex level, lead to things like steam engines and the internal combustion engine of cars. Mechanical engineering, therefore, encompasses everything from car mechanics, to air-conditioning systems, to military aircrafts and robotics.Steam engines are an important, historical example of mechanical engineering.

Electrical engineering might be less acknowledged than other types of engineering, but it’s probably the most central to the modern world in which we live. It’s hard to imagine a world without electricity and electronics. From computers to televisions, to digital cameras to cell phones, each of these technologies is a product of electrical engineering. It began with simple electrical systems like the telegraph, telephone, and light bulb, and advanced more and more from there.All electronics are thanks to electrical engineers.

Chemical engineering is perhaps the least well known, but it’s a no less important part of the field. It involves producing chemicals, such as man-made and space-age materials, and fuels for human use. The gas you put in your car exists thanks to chemical engineering. So do polyester clothes, plastic toys and bottles, and even treatments for diseases, which often involve chemical engineering processes.Distillation plants and refineries are designed by chemical engineers.

When you put all of these pieces together, you see that the modern world we live in would be completely impossible without engineering; and even into the future, the problem-solving skills of engineers have the potential to solve many problems.