engineering
Read a brief summary of this topic
engineering, the application of science to the optimum conversion of the resources of nature to the uses of humankind. The field has been defined by the Engineers Council for Professional Development, in the United States, 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 behaviour under specific operating conditions; all as respects an intended function, economics of operation and safety to life and property.” The term engineering is sometimes more loosely defined, especially in Great Britain, as the manufacture or assembly of engines, machine tools, and machine parts.
The words engine and ingenious are derived from the same Latin root, ingenerare, which means “to create.” The early English verb engine meant “to contrive.” Thus, the engines of war were devices such as catapults, floating bridges, and assault towers; their designer was the “engine-er,” or military engineer. The counterpart of the military engineer was the civil engineer, who applied essentially the same knowledge and skills to designing buildings, streets, water supplies, sewage systems, and other projects.
Associated with engineering is a great body of special knowledge; preparation for professional practice involves extensive training in the application of that knowledge. Standards of engineering practice are maintained through the efforts of professional societies, usually organized on a national or regional basis, with all members acknowledging a responsibility to the public over and above responsibilities to their employers or to other members of their society.
The function of the scientist is to know, while that of the engineer is to do. Scientists add to the store of verified systematized knowledge of the physical world, and engineers bring this knowledge to bear on practical problems. Engineering is based principally on physics, chemistry, and mathematics and their extensions into materials science, solid and fluid mechanics, thermodynamics, transfer and rate processes, and systems analysis.
Unlike scientists, engineers are not free to select the problems that interest them. They must solve problems as they arise, and their solutions must satisfy conflicting requirements. Usually, efficiency costs money, safety adds to complexity, and improved performance increases weight. The engineering solution is the optimum solution, the end result that, taking many factors into account, is most desirable. It may be the most reliable within a given weight limit, the simplest that will satisfy certain safety requirements, or the most efficient for a given cost. In many engineering problems the social and environmental costs are significant.
Engineers employ two types of natural resources—materials and energy. Materials are useful because of their properties: their strength, ease of fabrication, lightness, or durability; their ability to insulate or conduct; their chemical, electrical, or acoustical properties. Important sources of energy include fossil fuels (coal, petroleum, natural gas), wind, sunlight, falling water, and nuclear fission. Since most resources are limited, engineers must concern themselves with the continual development of new resources as well as the efficient utilization of existing ones.
History of engineering
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.
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.
Engineering functions
Problem solving is common to all engineering work. The problem may involve quantitative or qualitative factors; it may be physical or economic; it may require abstract mathematics or common sense. Of great importance is the process of creative synthesis or design, putting ideas together to create a new and optimum solution.
Although engineering problems vary in scope and complexity, the same general approach is applicable. First comes an analysis of the situation and a preliminary decision on a plan of attack. In line with this plan, the problem is reduced to a more categorical question that can be clearly stated. The stated question is then answered by deductive reasoning from known principles or by creative synthesis, as in a new design. The answer or design is always checked for accuracy and adequacy. Finally, the results for the simplified problem are interpreted in terms of the original problem and reported in an appropriate form.
In order of decreasing emphasis on science, the major functions of all engineering branches are the following:
- Research. Using mathematical and scientific concepts, experimental techniques, and inductive reasoning, the research engineer seeks new principles and processes.
- Development. Development engineers apply the results of research to useful purposes. Creative application of new knowledge may result in a working model of a new electrical circuit, a chemical process, or an industrial machine.
- Design. In designing a structure or a product, the engineer selects methods, specifies materials, and determines shapes to satisfy technical requirements and to meet performance specifications.
- Construction. The construction engineer is responsible for preparing the site, determining procedures that will economically and safely yield the desired quality, directing the placement of materials, and organizing the personnel and equipment.
- Production. Plant layout and equipment selection are the responsibility of the production engineer, who chooses processes and tools, integrates the flow of materials and components, and provides for testing and inspection.
- Operation. The operating engineer controls machines, plants, and organizations providing power, transportation, and communication; determines procedures; and supervises personnel to obtain reliable and economic operation of complex equipment.
- Management and other functions. In some countries and industries, engineers analyze customers’ requirements, recommend units to satisfy needs economically, and resolve related problems.
Encyclopedia Britannica
Wei Mengbian
Home
Technology
Engineering
Civil Engineering
Wei Mengbian
Chinese mechanical engineer
Alternate titles: Wei Meng-pien
By The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Edit History
Wei Mengbian, Wade-Giles romanization Wei Meng-pien, (flourished 340 CE), Chinese mechanical engineer. He devised numerous wheeled vehicles, including a type of odometer and a south-pointing carriage. He also built a wagon mill in which rotation of the wheels drove a set of millstones and hammers that automatically processed grain. His mechanisms anticipated those later used by European engineers.
Born: 340
Subjects Of Study: odometer
This article was most recently revised and updated by Robert Curley.
Home
Technology
Engineering
Civil Engineering
mechanical engineering
By Peter McGregor RossSee All Last Updated: Sep 22, 2022 Edit History
Summary
Read a brief summary of this topic
mechanical engineering, the branch of engineering concerned with the design, manufacture, installation, and operation of engines and machines and with manufacturing processes. It is particularly concerned with forces and motion.
Key People: Emanuel Swedenborg Richard Trevithick Isambard Kingdom Brunel Ron Toomer Ursula Burns
Related Topics: engineering
History
The invention of the steam engine in the latter part of the 18th century, providing a key source of power for the Industrial Revolution, gave an enormous impetus to the development of machinery of all types. As a result, a new major classification of engineering dealing with tools and machines developed, receiving formal recognition in 1847 in the founding of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in Birmingham, Eng.
International Space Station
READ MORE ON THIS TOPIC
history of technology: Mechanical contrivances
Though slight, the mechanical achievements of the Greco-Roman centuries were not without significance....
Mechanical engineering has evolved from the practice by the mechanic of an art based largely on trial and error to the application by the professional engineer of the scientific method in research, design, and production. The demand for increased efficiency is continually raising the quality of work expected from a mechanical engineer and requiring a higher degree of education and training.
Mechanical engineering functions
Four functions of the mechanical engineer, common to all branches of mechanical engineering, can be cited. The first is the understanding of and dealing with the bases of mechanical science. These include dynamics, concerning the relation between forces and motion, such as in vibration; automatic control; thermodynamics, dealing with the relations among the various forms of heat, energy, and power; fluid flow; heat transfer; lubrication; and properties of materials.
Second is the sequence of research, design, and development. This function attempts to bring about the changes necessary to meet present and future needs. Such work requires a clear understanding of mechanical science, an ability to analyze a complex system into its basic factors, and the originality to synthesize and invent.
Third is production of products and power, which embraces planning, operation, and maintenance. The goal is to produce the maximum value with the minimum investment and cost while maintaining or enhancing longer term viability and reputation of the enterprise or the institution.
Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content.
Subscribe Now
Fourth is the coordinating function of the mechanical engineer, including management, consulting, and, in some cases, marketing.
In these functions there is a long continuing trend toward the use of scientific instead of traditional or intuitive methods. Operations research, value engineering, and PABLA (problem analysis by logical approach) are typical titles of such rationalized approaches. Creativity, however, cannot be rationalized. The ability to take the important and unexpected step that opens up new solutions remains in mechanical engineering, as elsewhere, largely a personal and spontaneous characteristic.
Branches of mechanical engineering
Development of machines for the production of goods
See how mechatronics help engineers create high-tech products such as industrial robots
See how mechatronics help engineers create high-tech products such as industrial robotsSee all videos for this article
The high standard of living in the developed countries owes much to mechanical engineering. The mechanical engineer invents machines to produce goods and develops machine tools of increasing accuracy and complexity to build the machines.
The principal lines of development of machinery have been an increase in the speed of operation to obtain high rates of production, improvement in accuracy to obtain quality and economy in the product, and minimization of operating costs. These three requirements have led to the evolution of complex control systems.
The most successful production machinery is that in which the mechanical design of the machine is closely integrated with the control system. A modern transfer (conveyor) line for the manufacture of automobile engines is a good example of the mechanization of a complex series of manufacturing processes. Developments are in hand to automate production machinery further, using computers to store and process the vast amount of data required for manufacturing a variety of components with a small number of versatile machine tools.
Development of machines for the production of power
The steam engine provided the first practical means of generating power from heat to augment the old sources of power from muscle, wind, and water. One of the first challenges to the new profession of mechanical engineering was to increase thermal efficiencies and power; this was done principally by the development of the steam turbine and associated large steam boilers. The 20th century has witnessed a continued rapid growth in the power output of turbines for driving electric generators, together with a steady increase in thermal efficiency and reduction in capital cost per kilowatt of large power stations. Finally, mechanical engineers acquired the resource of nuclear energy, whose application has demanded an exceptional standard of reliability and safety involving the solution of entirely new problems (see nuclear engineering).
The mechanical engineer is also responsible for the much smaller internal combustion engines, both reciprocating (gasoline and diesel) and rotary (gas-turbine and Wankel) engines, with their widespread transport applications. In the transportation field generally, in air and space as well as on land and sea, the mechanical engineer has created the equipment and the power plant, collaborating increasingly with the electrical engineer, especially in the development of suitable control systems.
Development of military weapons
The skills applied to war by the mechanical engineer are similar to those required in civilian applications, though the purpose is to enhance destructive power rather than to raise creative efficiency. The demands of war have channeled huge resources into technical fields, however, and led to developments that have profound benefits in peace. Jet aircraft and nuclear reactors are notable examples.
Environmental control
The earliest efforts of mechanical engineers were aimed at controlling the human environment by draining and irrigating land and by ventilating mines. Refrigeration and air conditioning are examples of the use of modern mechanical devices to control the environment.
Many of the products of mechanical engineering, together with technological developments in other fields, give rise to noise, the pollution of water and air, and the dereliction of land and scenery. The rate of production, both of goods and power, is rising so rapidly that regeneration by natural forces can no longer keep pace. A rapidly growing field for mechanical engineers and others is environmental control, comprising the development of machines and processes that will produce fewer pollutants and of new equipment and techniques that can reduce or remove the pollution already generated.
John Fleetwood Baker, Baron Baker
Peter McGregor Ross
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
invention
Home
Health & Medicine
Psychology & Mental Health
invention
technology
By James Burke Edit History
invention, the act of bringing ideas or objects together in a novel way to create something that did not exist before.
incandescent lightbulb
incandescent lightbulb
See all media
Key People: Leonardo da Vinci Thomas Edison Galileo Alexander Graham Bell Carl Friedrich Gauss
Related Topics: patent inventor technology
Building models of what might be
stone tools
stone tools
Ever since the first prehistoric stone tools, humans have lived in a world shaped by invention. Indeed, the brain appears to be a natural inventor. As part of the act of perception, humans assemble, arrange, and manipulate incoming sensory information so as to build a dynamic, constantly updated model of the outside world. The survival value of such a model lies in the fact that it functions as a template against which to match new experiences, so as to rapidly identify anything anomalous that might be life-threatening. Such a model would also make it possible to predict danger. The predictive act would involve the construction of hypothetical models of the way the world might be at some future point. Such models could include elements that might, for whatever reason, be assembled into novel submodels (inventive ideas).
Sumerian cuneiform tablet
Sumerian cuneiform tablet
One of the earliest and most literal examples of this model-building paradigm in action was the ancient Mesopotamian invention of writing. As early as 8000 BCE tiny geometric clay models, used to represent sheep and grain, were kept in clay envelopes, to be used as inventory tallies or else to represent goods during barter. Over time, the tokens were pressed onto the exterior of the wet envelope, which at some point was flattened into a tablet. By about 3100 BCE the impressions had become abstract designs marked on the tablet with a cut reed stalk. These pictograms, known today as cuneiform, were the first writing. And they changed the world.
Johannes Gutenberg in his workshop
Johannes Gutenberg in his workshop
Inventions almost always cause change. Paleolithic stone weapons made hunting possible and thereby triggered the emergence of permanent top-down command structures. The printing press, introduced by Johannes Gutenberg in the 15th century, once and for all curtailed the traditional authority of elders. The typewriter, brought onto the market by Christopher Latham Sholes in the 1870s, was instrumental in freeing women from housework and changing their social status for good (and also increasing the divorce rate).
ball bearing. Disassembled ball bearing. rotational friction Automobile Industry, Engineering, Industry, Machine Part, Metal Industry, Sphere, Steel, Wheel
BRITANNICA QUIZ
Inventors and Inventions
Our earliest human ancestors invented the wheel, but who invented the ball bearing that reduces rotational friction? Let the wheels in your head turn while testing your knowledge of inventors and their inventions in this quiz.
What inventors are
Inventors are often extremely observant. In the 1940s Swiss engineer George de Mestral saw tiny hooks on the burrs clinging to his hunting jacket and invented the hook-and-loop fastener system known as Velcro.
Invention can be serendipitous. In the late 1800s a German medical scientist, Paul Ehrlich, spilled some new dye into a Petri dish containing bacilli, saw that the dye selectively stained and killed some of them, and invented chemotherapy. In the mid-1800s an American businessman, Charles Goodyear, dropped a rubber mixture containing sulfur on his hot stove and invented vulcanization.
Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content.
Subscribe Now
Inventors do it for money. Austrian chemist Auer von Welsbach, in developing the gas mantle in the 1880s, provided 30 extra years of profitability to the shareholders of gaslight companies (which at the time were threatened by the new electric light).
Inventions are often unintended. In the early 1890s Edward Acheson, an American entrepreneur in the field of electric lighting, was seeking to invent artificial diamonds when an electrified mix of coke and clay produced the ultrahard abrasive Carborundum. In an attempt to develop artificial quinine in the mid-1800s, British chemist William Perkin’s investigation of coal tar instead created the first artificial dye, tyrian purple—which later fell into Ehrlich’s Petri dish.
Evangelista Torricelli
Evangelista Torricelli
Inventors solve puzzles. In the course of investigating why suction pumps would lift water only about 9 metres (30 feet), Evangelista Torricelli identified air pressure and invented the barometer.
Thomas Edison
Thomas Edison
Inventors are dogged. The American inventor Thomas Edison, who tested thousands of materials before he chose bamboo to make the carbon filament for his incandescent lightbulb, described his work as "one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.” At his laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey, Edison’s approach was to identify a potential gap in the market and fill it with an invention. His workers were told, “There’s a way to do it better. Find it.”
Serendipity and inspiration
The key to inventive success often requires being in the right place at the right time. Christopher Latham Sholes and Carlos Glidden took their invention to arms manufacturer Remington just when that company’s production lines were running down after the end of the American Civil War. A quick retool turned Remington into the world’s first typewriter manufacturer.
An invention developed for one purpose will sometimes find use in entirely different circumstances. In medieval Afghanistan somebody invented a leather loop to hang on the side of a camel for use as a step when loading the animal. By 1066 the Normans had put the loop on each side of a horse and invented the stirrup. With their feet thus firmly anchored, at the Battle of Hastings that year Norman knights hit opposing English foot soldiers with their lances and the full weight of the horse without being unseated by the shock of the encounter. The Normans won the battle and took over England (and made English the French-Saxon mix it is today).
One invention can inspire another. Gaslight distribution pipes gave Edison the idea for his electricity network. Perforated cards used to control the Jacquard loom led Herman Hollerith to invent punch cards for tabulator use in the 1890 U.S. census.
The quickening pace of invention
carburetor
carburetor
Above all, invention appears primarily to involve a “1 + 1 = 3” process similar to the brain’s model-building activity, in which concepts or techniques are brought together for the first time and the outcome is more than the sum of the parts (e.g., spray + gasoline = carburetor).
The more often ideas come together, the more frequently invention occurs. The rate of invention increased sharply, each time, when the exchange of ideas became easier after the invention of the printing press, telecommunications, the computer, and above all the Internet. Today new fields such as data mining and nanotechnology offer would-be inventors (or semi-intelligent software programs) massive amounts of “1 + 1 = 3” opportunities. As a result, the rate of innovation seems poised to increase dramatically in the coming decades.
It is going to become harder than ever to keep up with the secondary results of invention as the general public gains access to information and technology denied them for millennia and as billions of brains, each with its own natural inventive capabilities, innovate faster than social institutions can adapt. In some cases, as occurred during the global financial crisis of 2007–08, institutions will face severe challenges from the introduction of technologies for which their old-fashioned infrastructures will be ill-prepared. It may be that the only safe way to deal with the potentially disruptive effects of an avalanche of invention, so as to develop the new social processes required to manage a permanent state of change, will be to do what the brain does: invent a comprehensive virtual world in which one can safely test innovative ideas before applying them.
James Burke
A chronology of invention
Notable inventors and their inventions are listed in the table.
Chronology of inventors and inventions
inventor nationality invention year of invention
power and precision grips
Homo habilis stone tools c. 2 million years ago
Imhotep reading a papyrus roll, detail of a sculpture; in the Egyptian Museum, Berlin.
Imhotep Egyptian step pyramid 27th century BCE
Archimedes screw
Archimedes Greek Archimedes screw 3rd century BCE
Ctesibius of Alexandria
Ctesibius of Alexandria Greek float-type clepsydra (water clock) 3rd century BCE
Heron of Alexandria's aeolipile.
Heron of Alexandria Greek aeolipile (steam-powered turbine) 1st century CE
Cai Lun Chinese paper 2nd century CE
Johannes Gutenberg in his workshop
Johannes Gutenberg German printing press c. 1450
William Lee English knitting machine 1589
Lippershey, Hans
Hans Lippershey German-Dutch compound microscope; telescope c. 1590; 1608
Cornelis Drebbel Dutch oar-powered submarine 1620
Torricelli, detail of a portrait by an unknown artist
Evangelista Torricelli Italian mercury barometer 1643
Guericke, engraving by C. Galle, 1649, after a portrait by Anselmus von Hulle
Otto von Guericke Prussian air pump 1650
Huygens, Christiaan
Christiaan Huygens Dutch pendulum clock 1658
Giuseppe Campani Italian lens-grinding lathe 1664
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek Dutch single-lens microscope c. 1670
Papin, detail of an engraving, c. 1689
Denis Papin French-English pressure cooker 1679
Daniel Quare English repeating watch mechanism for sounding the nearest hour and quarter hour 1680
Thomas Savery's steam pump
Thomas Savery English steam-driven vacuum pump 1698
Jethro Tull, detail of an oil painting by an unknown artist; in the collection of the Royal Society for Agriculture, London
Jethro Tull English mechanical seed drill 1701
Abraham Darby English used coke to smelt iron 1709
Newcomen engine.
Thomas Newcomen English atmospheric steam engine 1712
Known as Hadley's Quadrant, this is actually an octant with mirrors which allow it to also be used as a quadrant. Ebony, ivory, brass, and glass, by an unknown maker, c. 1800. In the Adler Planetarium and Astronomy Museum, Chicago. 46.2 × 34.2 × 7.4 cm.
John Hadley English quadrant for determining latitude 1730
Thomas Godfrey American quadrant for determining latitude 1730
air speed indicator
Henri Pitot French pitot tube 1732
John Kay, detail of a lithograph by Madeley
John Kay English flying shuttle 1733
John Harrison, detail of an oil painting by Thomas King; in the Science Museum, London
John Harrison English marine chronometer 1735
Benjamin Franklin American Franklin stove c. 1740
Benjamin Huntsman English crucible steel c. 1740
Figure 152: Sheffield plate teapot, English, late 18th century. In the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Height 16.5 cm.
Thomas Boulsover English Sheffield plate c. 1742
Jacques de Vaucanson French automated loom 1745
Arkwright, detail of an engraving by J. Jenkins after a portrait by Joseph Wright
Sir Richard Arkwright English water frame (spinning machine) 1764
James Watt
James Watt Scottish improved steam engine with separate condenser 1765
1769 Cugnot
Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot French steam-driven gun carriage 1769
Bushnell's submarine torpedo boat, 1776. Drawing of a cutaway view made by Lieutenant Commander F.M. Barber in 1885 from a description left by Bushnell.
David Bushnell American hand-powered submarine c. 1775
Patrick Ferguson Scottish breech-loading flintlock rifle 1776
Samuel Crompton
Samuel Crompton English spinning mule 1779
Jonathan Hornblower English reciprocating compound steam engine 1781
William Murdock, bust by an unknown artist; in the Science Museum, London
William Murdock Scottish Sun-and-planet motion for steam engines c. 1781
Joseph-Michel Montgolfier
Jacques-Étienne Montgolfier
Montgolfier brothers French hot-air balloon 1782
Josiah Wedgwood.
Josiah Wedgwood English pyrometer 1782
Claude-François-Dorothée, marquis de Jouffroy d'Abbans French early paddlewheel steamboat 1783
John Fitch's steamboat
John Fitch American early steamboat 1787
threshing machine
Andrew Meikle Scottish threshing machine 1788
Edmund Cartwright, engraving by James Thomson
Edmund Cartwright English wool-combing machine 1789
Oliver Evans.
Oliver Evans American high-pressure steam engine (U.S.) 1790
William Nicholson English hydrometer 1790
Chappe, Claude
Claude Chappe French semaphore telegraph 1794
Eli Whitney
Eli Whitney American cotton gin 1794
hydraulic press
Joseph Bramah English hydraulic press 1795
Conté, Nicolas-Jacques
Nicolas-Jacques Conté French graphite pencil 1795
Senefelder, detail of a lithograph by S. Freeman, after a portrait by L. Quaglio, 1818
Alois Senefelder German lithography 1798
Henry Maudslay English metal lathe c. 1800
Alessandro Volta
Alessandro Volta Italian electric battery 1800
John Stevens, oil on panel, attributed to John Trumbull; in the collection of the Stevens Institute of Technology
John Stevens American screw-driven steamboat 1802
Richard Trevithick, detail of an oil painting by John Linnell, 1816; in the Science Museum, London.
Richard Trevithick English steam railway locomotive 1803
Jacquard loom
Joseph-Marie Jacquard French Jacquard loom 1804–05
William Congreve English military rocket 1805
Alexander John Forsyth Scottish percussion-lock musket 1805–07
Robert Fulton American commercial steamboat 1807
Heathcoat, detail of an engraving by T.L. Atkinson after a portrait by W. Beetham, mid-19th century
John Heathcoat English lace-making machine 1809
Blenkinsop locomotive
John Blenkinsop English geared steam locomotive 1812–13
McAdam, engraving by Charles Turner
John Loudon McAdam Scottish macadam road surface 1815
Robert Stirling Scottish Stirling external-combustion engine 1816
Sir Marc Isambard Brunel
Marc Isambard Brunel French-English geared steam tunneling shield 1818
René-Théophile-Hyacinthe Laënnec French stethoscope 1819
Thomas Hancock English rubber masticator 1821
Macintosh, Charles
Charles Macintosh Scottish mackintosh waterproof fabric 1823
Louis Braille, portrait bust by an unknown artist.
Louis Braille French Braille writing system 1824
automatic spinning mule cotton manufacture
Richard Roberts Welsh automatic spinning mule 1825
George Stephenson
George Stephenson English passenger train pulled by steam locomotive 1825
Nicéphore Niépce
Nicéphore Niépce French permanent photographic image 1826–27
Nikolaus von Dreyse German needle-firing rifle 1827
Benoît Fourneyron French water turbine 1827
Goldsworthy Gurney English steam carriage 1830
Tom Thumb
Peter Cooper American Tom Thumb steam locomotive 1830
Henri-Gustave Delvigne French cylindrical bullet c. 1830
Cyrus McCormick
Cyrus Hall McCormick American mechanical reaper 1831
Jeanne Villepreux-Power French glass aquarium 1832
Obed Hussey American mechanical reaper 1833
Elementary electric motor.
Thomas Davenport American electric motor 1834
Charles Babbage
Charles Babbage English Analytical Engine mechanical computer c. 1835
Samuel Colt, c. 1855.
Samuel Colt American revolver 1835
Rowland Hill English postage stamp 1835–40
Daniell, John Frederic
John Frederic Daniell English Daniell cell battery 1836
Edward Davy English electromagnetic telegraph repeater c. 1836
Isambard Kingdom Brunel
Isambard Kingdom Brunel English Great Western transatlantic steamer 1837
Pitman, detail of an oil painting by A.S. Cope; in the National Portrait Gallery, London
Isaac Pitman English Pitman shorthand 1837
Charles Wheatstone.
Charles Wheatstone English electric needle telegraph 1837
key-type Morse telegraph transmitter
Samuel F.B. Morse American electric telegraph; Morse code 1837; 1838
John Deere
John Deere American all-steel one-piece plow 1838
Chauncey Jerome clock
Chauncey Jerome American one-day brass clock movement c. 1838
Isaac Babbitt American babbitt metal 1839
Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, lithograph.
Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre French daguerreotype 1839
Goodyear, Charles
Charles Goodyear American vulcanized rubber 1839
Johann Georg Bodmer Swiss gear-making machine 1839–41
William Howe American Howe truss for bridges 1840
Sax, lithograph by Auguste Bry after a portrait by Charles Baugniet, 1844
Antoine-Joseph Sax Belgian-French saxophone 1842
Thomas Jackson Rodman American prismatic gunpowder c. 1845
Howe, Elias
Elias Howe American sewing machine 1846
Hoe, Richard March
Richard March Hoe American rotary printing press 1847
Claude-Étienne Minié French cylindrical Minié bullet 1849
Kelly, William
William Kelly American pneumatic steel-making process c. 1850
Frederick Scott Archer English wet collodion photography process 1851
Hugh Burgess English American soda papermaking process 1851
Isaac Merrit Singer American domestic sewing machine 1851
Elisha Otis
Elisha Graves Otis American safety elevator 1852
George Cayley, detail of an oil painting by Henry Perronet Briggs, 1840; in the National Portrait Gallery, London
George Cayley English first glider to carry a human 1853
Henry Bessemer
Henry Bessemer English Bessemer steelmaking process 1856
Jean-Joseph-Étienne Lenoir's steam engine.
Étienne Lenoir Belgian internal-combustion engine 1858
Planté, Gaston
Gaston Planté French electric storage battery 1859
Christopher M. Spencer American Spencer breech-loading carbine 1860
Sondre Nordheim Norwegian ski bindings 1860
Robert Parker Parrott American Parrott gun (rifled cannon) 1861
Sir William Siemens, engraving after a portrait by Rudolf Lehmann
William Siemens German English open-hearth furnace 1861
De la Rue
Warren De la Rue English astronomical photography c. 1862
Richard Jordan Gatling.
Richard Jordan Gatling American Gatling gun 1862
Louis Pasteur
Louis Pasteur French pasteurization 1863
Linus Yale American Yale cylinder lock 1863
Siegfried Marcus German gasoline-powered automobile 1864–65
Samuel Cunliffe Lister English silk-combing machine 1865
George M. Pullman
George M. Pullman American Pullman sleeping car 1865
Allbutt, detail of a portrait by Sir William Orpen
Thomas Clifford Allbutt English modern clinical thermometer 1866
Georges Leclanché's cell
Georges Leclanché French dry-cell battery c. 1866
Alfred Ely Beach American pneumatic tube 1867
Joseph Monier French reinforced concrete c. 1867
Alfred Bernhard Nobel Swedish dynamite 1867
Christopher Latham Sholes
Christopher Latham Sholes American typewriter 1868
Louis Ducos du Hauron French trichrome process of colour photography 1869
Westinghouse
George Westinghouse American air brake 1869
John Wesley Hyatt American celluloid 1870
Margaret Knight American flat-bottomed paper bag 1871
James Starley: “penny-farthing” bicycle
James Starley English bicycle with centre-pivot steering 1871
Joseph Farwell Glidden American barbed wire 1873
Alexander Graham Bell
Alexander Graham Bell Scottish American telephone 1876
Elisha Gray
Elisha Gray American telephone 1876
Melville Reuben Bissell American carpet sweeper 1876
Nikolaus Otto, c. 1868
Nikolaus August Otto German four-stroke internal-combustion engine 1876
Yablochkov, lithograph by Lemercier, c. 1880
Pavel Nikolayevich Yablochkov Russian Yablochkov candle (arc lamp) 1876
Joseph Rogers Brown American universal grinding machine 1877
Ephraim Shay American geared steam locomotive c. 1877
Thomas Edison
Thomas Alva Edison American phonograph cylinder sound recorder; incandescent lightbulb 1877; c. 1879
Maria Beasley English life raft 1880
Nikola Tesla
Nikola Tesla Serbian American alternating-current electric motor 1880–88
Hilaire Bernigaud de Chardonnet French rayon 1884
Sir Hiram Maxim.
Hiram Maxim American British Maxim machine gun 1884
Linotype machine
Ottmar Mergenthaler German American Linotype typesetting machine 1884
Charles Algernon Parsons English multistage steam turbine 1884
Karl Benz
Karl Friedrich Benz German practical automobile with an internal-combustion engine 1885
Gottlieb Daimler
Gottlieb Daimler German high-speed internal-combustion engine 1885
Josephine Cochrane American mechanical dishwasher 1886
Charles Sumner Tainter American graphophone cylinder sound recorder 1886
Hall, Charles Martin
Charles Martin Hall American electrolytic aluminum smelting 1886
Part of a modern potline based on the electrolytic Hall-Héroult smelting process.
Paul-Louis-Toussaint Héroult French electrolytic aluminum smelting 1886
Berliner, Emil
Emil Berliner German American Gramophone disc sound recorder 1887
John Boyd Dunlop Scottish pneumatic rubber tire 1887
George Eastman, 1926.
George Eastman American Kodak camera 1888
King, Franklin Hiram
Franklin Hiram King American cylindrical grain silo 1889
Herman Hollerith seated at his Census Tabulator, c. 1890.
Herman Hollerith American tabulating machine c. 1890
Ferdinand von Zeppelin German zeppelin airship 1890–1900
James Naismith
James A. Naismith Canadian American basketball 1891
William Seward Burroughs American adding machine 1892
James Dewar.
James Dewar Scottish vacuum flask c. 1892
Diesel, 1883
Rudolf Diesel German diesel engine 1892
Hayward A. Harvey American carburizing (surface hardening of steel plate) c. 1892
Edward Goodrich Acheson American Carborundum 1893
Otto Lilienthal piloting one of his gliders, c. 1895.
Otto Lilienthal German Lilienthal standard glider 1894
Auguste Lumière
Lumière brothers French Cinématographe motion-picture camera and projector 1894
King Camp Gillette American disposable razor 1895
Guglielmo Marconi
Guglielmo Marconi Italian wireless telegraph 1896
John Philip Holland Irish American gasoline-electric submarine 1898
Valdemar Poulsen Danish telegraphone magnetic wire recorder 1900
William Fessenden.
Reginald Aubrey Fessenden Canadian American amplitude modulation (AM) of radio waves 1900
Willis Carrier
Willis Haviland Carrier American air-conditioning 1902
Mary Anderson American windshield wiper 1903
first flight by Orville Wright, December 17, 1903
Wilbur and Orville Wright American powered, sustained, and controlled airplane flight 1903
John Ambrose Fleming.
John Ambrose Fleming English vacuum diode rectifier 1904
Lee De Forest, 1907.
Lee De Forest American Audion vacuum tube amplifier 1906
Ole Evinrude Norwegian American marine outboard motor 1906–09
Melitta Bentz German coffee filters 1908
A Geiger counter is filled with gas, and a source of electricity supplies opposite electric charges to the container and a central tube. If radioactive particles enter and ionize some gas molecules, the electric current is able to bridge the gap between the container and central tube. The counter registers each brief spurt of current.
Hans Geiger German Geiger counter 1908
Leo Baekeland.
Leo Hendrik Baekeland Belgian American Bakelite c. 1909
Ehrlich, Paul
Paul Ehrlich German arsphenamine anti-syphilis drug 1910
Lewis, Isaac Newton
Isaac Newton Lewis American Lewis machine gun 1911
Elmer Ambrose Sperry American gyroscopic compass 1911
Charles F. Kettering American automobile electrical starter 1912
Henry Ford
Henry Ford American automobile assembly line 1913–14
Irving Wightman Colburn American Colburn flat-glass machine 1916
William D. Coolidge American X-ray tube 1916
Browning automatic rifle
John Moses Browning American Browning automatic rifle 1918
Zworykin, Vladimir
Vladimir Kosma Zworykin Russian American Iconoscope and Kinescope electronic television camera and receiver 1923–31
Baird, John Logie
John Logie Baird Scottish electromechanical television 1924
Clarence Birdseye
Clarence Birdseye American rapid-frozen food c. 1924
Robert Goddard
Robert Hutchings Goddard American liquid-fueled rocket engine 1926
Philo Taylor Farnsworth American Image Dissector electronic television camera 1927
schematic diagram of a Van de Graaff high-voltage electrostatic generator
Robert Jemison Van de Graaff American Van de Graaff generator for particle accelerators 1929
In a ballpoint pen, a spring is used to push out and retract the point of the pen.
László József Bíró Hungarian ballpoint pen 1931
Isaac Shoenberg Russian English high-definition electronic television system 1931–35
Armstrong, Edwin H.
Edwin H. Armstrong American frequency modulation (FM) of radio waves 1933
Ernst Ruska German electron microscope 1933
Laurens Hammond American Hammond organ (electronic keyboard) 1934
Ernesto Orlando Lawrence
Ernest Orlando Lawrence American cyclotron particle accelerator 1934
Wallace Hume Carothers
Wallace Hume Carothers American nylon 1935
Robert Alexander Watson-Watt Scottish radar early warning 1935
Frank Whittle
Frank Whittle English jet engine 1937
Katharine Blodgett American nonreflective glass 1938
Carlson, Chester
Chester F. Carlson American xerography 1938
Albert Hofmann
Albert Hofmann Swiss LSD 1938
Paul Müller
Paul Hermann Müller Swiss DDT 1939
Ohain, Hans Joachim Pabst von
Hans Joachim Pabst von Ohain German jet aircraft 1939
Igor Sikorsky
Igor Sikorsky Russian American production helicopter 1939
Hedy Lamarr American spread-spectrum technology 1942
George Antheil American spread-spectrum technology 1942
Jacques Cousteau
Jacques-Yves Cousteau French Aqua-Lung 1943
John W. Mauchly American ENIAC general-purpose electronic computer 1946
Bardeen.
John Bardeen American transistor 1947
Brattain
Walter H. Brattain American transistor 1947
Shockley
William B. Shockley American transistor 1947
R. Buckminster Fuller shown with a geodesic dome constructed as the U.S. pavilion at the American Exchange Exhibit, Moscow, 1959
R. Buckminster Fuller American geodesic dome c. 1947
Edwin Herbert Land American Polaroid instant-print camera 1947
Willard Frank Libby American carbon-14 dating c. 1947
Paul, Les
Les Paul American eight-track tape recorder c. 1947
Leo Fender American electric guitar 1948
Telkes, Mária
Mária Telkes American solar-heated home 1948
Charles Stark Draper American inertial guidance systems for aircraft c. 1949
Ferranti Mark I
Tom Kilburn English Manchester Mark I stored-program digital computer 1949
Grace Hopper
Grace Hopper American compiler 1952
Virginia Apgar.
Virginia Apgar American Apgar Score System 1952
Charles Hard Townes American maser 1953
Uzi submachine gun
Uziel Gal Israeli Uzi submachine gun 1954
Wankel, Felix; Wankel engine
Felix Wankel German Wankel rotary gasoline engine 1954
Jack Kilby American integrated circuit 1958
Robert Noyce American integrated circuit 1958
first laser
Theodore H. Maiman American ruby laser 1960
DeBakey, Michael
Michael DeBakey American coronary artery bypass 1964
CDC 6600
Seymour Cray American supercomputer 1964
Computer interface pioneer Douglas EngelbartEngelbart holding a video conference on the right side of the computer screen while working on a document with a remote collaborator during a 1968 computer conference in San Francisco, California.
Douglas Engelbart American computer mouse 1964
Stephanie Kwolek American Kevlar 1965
Ritchie, Dennis M.
Kenneth L. Thompson American UNIX operating system 1969
Ritchie, Dennis M.
Dennis M. Ritchie American UNIX operating system 1969
Stephanie Kwolek American Kevlar c. 1971
Fig 2: Magnetic resonance spectrometer
Paul Lauterbur American magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) 1973
Fig 2: Magnetic resonance spectrometer
Peter Mansfield English magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) 1973
Vinton Gray Cerf
Vinton Cerf American Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) 1974
Robert Kahn American Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) 1974
Erno Rubik Hungarian Rubik's cube 1974
Frederick Sanger English DNA sequencing 1977
Apple II
Stephen Wozniak American Apple II personal computer 1977
Binnig, Gerd
Gerd Binnig German scanning tunneling microscope 1981
Heinrich Rohrer Swiss scanning tunneling microscope 1981
Patricia Bath American Laserphaco Probe 1981
Tim Berners-Lee
Tim Berners-Lee English World Wide Web 1990–91
Linus Torvalds
Linus Torvalds Finnish Linux open-source operating system 1991
carriage
Home
Technology
Cars & Other Vehicles
carriage
vehicle
By The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Edit History
A 14th-century carriage suspended longitudinally by straps, drawing from Rudolf von Ems's Weltchronik; in the Zentralbibliothek, Zürich.
carriage, four-wheeled, horse-drawn vehicle, the final refinement of the horse-drawn passenger conveyance. Wagons were also used for this purpose, as were chariots. By the 13th century the chariot had evolved into a four-wheeled form, unlike the earlier two-wheeled version most often associated with the Romans. In the 14th century the passenger coach form of vehicle began to evolve. Coaches featured a rear set of wheels much larger than the front set and, therefore, a shaped body. This provided greater passenger comfort despite its lighter construction and made it possible for it to be pulled by a single horse. These vehicles were first made in Hungary and by the 16th century were in use throughout western Europe. They came to be used in place of the heavier chariots for state processionals and as the general transportation of the upper classes.
A horse-drawn carriage in Chicago.
carriage
See all media
Key People: Clement Studebaker
Related Topics: stagecoach chaise buggy landau post chaise
carriage
carriage
Williamsburg: horse and carriage
Williamsburg: horse and carriage
By the 17th century, heavier vehicles had evolved, including the omnibus, to be pulled by teams of horses over long distances. At the same time, lighter vehicles designed for style and speed were also developed, and the suspension of all such vehicles was gradually enhanced by the addition of steel springs and leather braces. Some of these carriages were further improved by being enclosed with wood, glass, and cloth. In the 18th and 19th centuries a wide variety of carriage types were in common use. In the United States the stagecoach became familiar as a means of public transportation. In Europe the cabriolet, a two-wheeled vehicle, was used for this purpose. Much of the construction and form of the carriage could be seen in the automobiles that came into use in the early part of the 20th century.
This article was most recently revised and updated by Amy Tikkanen.
engineering
Home
Technology
Engineering
Civil Engineering
engineering
science
By Ralph J. Smith Edit History
Summary
Read a brief summary of this topic
Understand motion magnification, a technique enabling researchers to monitor tiny vibrations in infrastructure
Understand motion magnification, a technique enabling researchers to monitor tiny vibrations in infrastructureSee all videos for this article
engineering, the application of science to the optimum conversion of the resources of nature to the uses of humankind. The field has been defined by the Engineers Council for Professional Development, in the United States, 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 behaviour under specific operating conditions; all as respects an intended function, economics of operation and safety to life and property.” The term engineering is sometimes more loosely defined, especially in Great Britain, as the manufacture or assembly of engines, machine tools, and machine parts.
Pont du Gard, Nîmes, France
Pont du Gard, Nîmes, France
See all media
Key People: Leonardo da Vinci William Thomson, Baron Kelvin Alfred Nobel R. Buckminster Fuller James B. Eads
Related Topics: aerospace engineering nuclear engineering geoengineering civil engineering military engineering
The words engine and ingenious are derived from the same Latin root, ingenerare, which means “to create.” The early English verb engine meant “to contrive.” Thus, the engines of war were devices such as catapults, floating bridges, and assault towers; their designer was the “engine-er,” or military engineer. The counterpart of the military engineer was the civil engineer, who applied essentially the same knowledge and skills to designing buildings, streets, water supplies, sewage systems, and other projects.
Magnified phytoplankton (pleurosigma angulatum) seen through a microscope, a favorite object for testing the high powers of microscopes. Photomicroscopy. Hompepage blog 2009, history and society, science and technology, explore discovery
BRITANNICA QUIZ
Science: Fact or Fiction?
Do you get fired up about physics? Giddy about geology? Sort out science fact from fiction with these questions.
Associated with engineering is a great body of special knowledge; preparation for professional practice involves extensive training in the application of that knowledge. Standards of engineering practice are maintained through the efforts of professional societies, usually organized on a national or regional basis, with all members acknowledging a responsibility to the public over and above responsibilities to their employers or to other members of their society.
The function of the scientist is to know, while that of the engineer is to do. Scientists add to the store of verified systematized knowledge of the physical world, and engineers bring this knowledge to bear on practical problems. Engineering is based principally on physics, chemistry, and mathematics and their extensions into materials science, solid and fluid mechanics, thermodynamics, transfer and rate processes, and systems analysis.
Unlike scientists, engineers are not free to select the problems that interest them. They must solve problems as they arise, and their solutions must satisfy conflicting requirements. Usually, efficiency costs money, safety adds to complexity, and improved performance increases weight. The engineering solution is the optimum solution, the end result that, taking many factors into account, is most desirable. It may be the most reliable within a given weight limit, the simplest that will satisfy certain safety requirements, or the most efficient for a given cost. In many engineering problems the social and environmental costs are significant.
Engineers employ two types of natural resources—materials and energy. Materials are useful because of their properties: their strength, ease of fabrication, lightness, or durability; their ability to insulate or conduct; their chemical, electrical, or acoustical properties. Important sources of energy include fossil fuels (coal, petroleum, natural gas), wind, sunlight, falling water, and nuclear fission. Since most resources are limited, engineers must concern themselves with the continual development of new resources as well as the efficient utilization of existing ones.
Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content.
Subscribe Now
History of engineering
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.
Brugge-Zeebrugge Canal, Belgium
Brugge-Zeebrugge Canal, Belgium
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.
Alessandro Volta
Alessandro Volta
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.
geothermal energy
geothermal energy
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.
Engineering functions
Problem solving is common to all engineering work. The problem may involve quantitative or qualitative factors; it may be physical or economic; it may require abstract mathematics or common sense. Of great importance is the process of creative synthesis or design, putting ideas together to create a new and optimum solution.
Although engineering problems vary in scope and complexity, the same general approach is applicable. First comes an analysis of the situation and a preliminary decision on a plan of attack. In line with this plan, the problem is reduced to a more categorical question that can be clearly stated. The stated question is then answered by deductive reasoning from known principles or by creative synthesis, as in a new design. The answer or design is always checked for accuracy and adequacy. Finally, the results for the simplified problem are interpreted in terms of the original problem and reported in an appropriate form.
In order of decreasing emphasis on science, the major functions of all engineering branches are the following:
Research. Using mathematical and scientific concepts, experimental techniques, and inductive reasoning, the research engineer seeks new principles and processes.
Development. Development engineers apply the results of research to useful purposes. Creative application of new knowledge may result in a working model of a new electrical circuit, a chemical process, or an industrial machine.
Design. In designing a structure or a product, the engineer selects methods, specifies materials, and determines shapes to satisfy technical requirements and to meet performance specifications.
Construction. The construction engineer is responsible for preparing the site, determining procedures that will economically and safely yield the desired quality, directing the placement of materials, and organizing the personnel and equipment.
Production. Plant layout and equipment selection are the responsibility of the production engineer, who chooses processes and tools, integrates the flow of materials and components, and provides for testing and inspection.
Operation. The operating engineer controls machines, plants, and organizations providing power, transportation, and communication; determines procedures; and supervises personnel to obtain reliable and economic operation of complex equipment.
Management and other functions. In some countries and industries, engineers analyze customers’ requirements, recommend units to satisfy needs economically, and resolve related problems.
Ralph J. Smith
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
History at your fingertips – Sign up here to see what happened On This Day, every day in your inbox!
Enter your email
Enter your email
By signing up for this email, you are agreeing to news, offers, and information from Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Click here to view our Privacy Notice. Easy unsubscribe links are provided in every email.
About Us & Legal Info
Partner Program
Contact Us
Privacy Notice
Terms of Use
©2022 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
UPC
UPC, in full universal product code, a standard machine-readable bar code used to identify products purchased in grocery and other retail stores.
UPCs encode individual products at the stock keeping unit (SKU) level, allowing a manufacturer or retailer to track the number of units sold during a specified time period. This type of tracking can be an important aspect of just-in-time inventory management. The UPC is maintained by the Uniform Code Council (UCC), a nonprofit organization located in Lawrenceville, New Jersey, U.S. Founded in 1972, the UCC administers the UPC for more than 200,000 companies around the world.
Wei Mengbian
Wei Mengbian, Wade-Giles romanization Wei Meng-pien, (flourished 340 CE), Chinese mechanical engineer. He devised numerous wheeled vehicles, including a type of odometer and a south-pointing carriage. He also built a wagon mill in which rotation of the wheels drove a set of millstones and hammers that automatically processed grain. His mechanisms anticipated those later used by European engineers.
- Born:
- 340
