Some Thoughts On The History Of Engineering

It has been pretty well agreed that the words 'ingenuity' and 'engineering' in English and 'ingéniosité' and 'ingénierie' in French are linked to the same Latin word-root and that the verb 'to engineer' means 'to be ingenious.' So the kinds of things engineers have done have been generally ingenious. And the word 'engine' means 'an ingenious and useful device.'

In prehistoric times, men and women had to be ingenious in order to survive hunger, enemies, climate and, later, the tyrrany of distance. So there have always been 'engineers' around, many of whom were involved in activities we would not associate with engineering today but, rather, with hunting, farming, fishing, fighting, implement- and tool-making, transportation and many other things.

From around 3000 BC, the pace of development quickened. After simple tools came the development of wedges, wheels and levers, the use of animals to carry and draw loads and of fire to work metals, the digging of irrigation canals, and open-pit mining. Geographically, these and many other developments took place in and around the Mediterranean, in the Middle East and in Asia Minor. Pyramids were erected in the Nile Valley.

The Greeks - the inventors - made significant contributions in the 1000 years that straddled the BC-AD divide. They produced the screw, the ratchet, the water wheel and the aeolipile, better known as Hero's turbine. The Romans - the improvers and adapters - did likewise, building fortifications, roads, aqueducts, water distribution systems and public buildings across the territories and cities they controlled. At the other end of the world, the Chinese have been credited with the development of the wheelbarrow, the rotary fan, the sternpost rudder that guided their bamboo rafts and, later, their junks. They also began making paper from vegetable fibres - and gunpowder.

The so-called 'Dark Ages' (roughly, 500 to 1500 AD) that followed still produced some things that were ingenious. For example, there was the development of the mechanical clock and the art of printing. There was the technique of heavy iron casting that could be applied to products for war, religion and industry - for guns, church bells and machinery. These 'Dark Ages' were followed by the Renaissance of the 16th century, which the engineer/inventor/artist Leonardo Da Vinci dominated. But this whole period came under the influence of the architect/engineer, who built cathedrals and other large buildings, and the military engineer who built castles and other fortifications.

During the century between 1750 to 1850, the Industrial Revolution in Western Europe dominated the evolution of engineering. It was significantly influenced by Savery, Newcomen, Watt and Trevithick and their steam engines; by Whitworth and the development of screw-cutting and other machine tools, machinery for the mass production of industrial goods; and in the new system of transportation - the railways - by Stephenson, Brunel and others. It also saw the beginnings of formal engineering education - notably in France - and the development of a new profession, that of civil engineering, in which 'civil' essentially means 'non-military.' The following 50-60 years saw the beginnings of travel by air and the experiments that led, much later, to nuclear power.

The development of engineering in Canada followed similar steps. The aboriginal peoples dealt with the problems of survival and food production in a mostly hostile climate and with an early form of water-borne transportation - the canoe. When the Europeans came in the early 17th century, they adopted much of the indigenous technology, as well as applying - especially in the 18th century - techniques borrowed from military engineering in Europe. During the latter part of that century, the influence of British military engineers increased significantly, and this continued into the early 19th century. The advent of the civil engineer - and of the mechanical engineering tradesman - was a mid-to-late 19th century phomenon. This was also the period during which the most significant engineering activities in Canada were canal and railway construction. And it gave rise to the beginnings of engineering education in this country, and to the organization - in 1887 - of the first professional engineering society. Canada has been a major participant in the development of many other fields of engineering - for example, aviation, hydro and nuclear power, electronics and long distance communications, mining and forestry, and especially in regard to living in a harsh environment.

Indeed, it is quite possible to say that, without engineers and their ingenious engines, there would have been no Canada as we know it.

Contributed by the Engineering Institute of Canada's
History and Archives Committee

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