1. Concepts of Engineering and Technology
Introduction to Engineering Fundamentals and Civilization
Part 2 - History
Photo Courtesy of Gary Payne/Denton Record-Chronicle
Photo Courtesy of Steve Van Meter, VideoRay
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2. The History of Engineering
In 1965, Gordon Moore made an important observation about computer chips: every months the capacity of a memory chip doubles.
This observation, known as Moore’s Law, shows that computing power increases exponentially over time.
Is it possible that technology in general evolves in a similar fashion?
Society:
Broad grouping of people with common traditions, institutions, and interests
Culture:
Learned, socially transmitted behaviors that develop due to social interaction
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Wants vs. Needs
Needs are finite, wants are infinite.
Basic needs involve food, water, safety, shelter.
A.H. Maslow adds sleep, love, esteem, and self actualization.
Others add elimination of body waste and the need to communicate to the list.
Skip this slide if you want. However, this is a great way to categorize developments as they occur. What need do they satisfy?
As our standard of living rises, what our wants and needs are change. For example, electricity may have been a want around the turn of the century (1900’s or so), but it certainly was not a need. The same is true for cell phones now: we are rapidly coming to think that they are a need. Do they satisfy one of our basic needs? Have students think of other examples.
As long as wants exist, engineers will have a job, even after all basic needs have been satisfied.
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4. History of Technology Video

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The Stone Age
15,000 to ~3000 BC
It covers the period where humans went from a nomadic life to an agricultural life.
Domestication of animals allowed the substitution of animal power for human power.
Other developments include the grinding stone, and harvesting and production of crops.
We can consider the use of fire as an important technology.
Did pre-historic people engage in engineering? Not in a formal sense, because they developed and built items through trial and error, generally using intuition instead of a formal engineering process. However, they had great skill in craftsmanship and ingenuity, and knowledge and information was carefully passed from generation to generation. In this way, pre-historic civilization inched ahead, often independent of any other culture. Indeed, innovation involving transportation and exploration finally allowed civilizations to share or acquire knowledge and improve more rapidly.
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The Bronze Age
It started about 3000 BC.
Major technological developments include smelting and metalwork.
Smelting involves the extraction of different metal ores to create a combination of metals called an alloy.
Bronze is an alloy of copper and tin, and this new metal was more durable and easier to work to make a variety of tools.
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.
Pyramids were erected in the Nile Valley.
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The Iron Age
About 500 BC until 500 AD
Iron smelting (the extraction of iron from iron ore) involves the removal of impurities (slag).
Requires higher temperature smelting.
Led to the development of steel as an alloy of iron and carbon.
Weapons were the first popular use for iron, followed by tools and implements.
The Greeks - the inventors - produced the screw, the ratchet, the water wheel and the aeolipile, better known as Hero's turbine.
The Romans - the improvers and adapters – were also very prolific, 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 fibers - and developed gunpowder.
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8. Roman Aqueduct, circa 19 BC
Roman Aqueduct, circa 19 BC
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Iron was stronger and less expensive than bronze.
Steel is better able to hold a sharpened edge.
Forming and shaping created a wide variety of tools and implements
involves casting and grinding.
Water became an important energy source
grain milling.
Solid waste disposal became a problem.
cheaper possibly due to a shortage of tin
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The Middle Ages
500 AD to 1500 AD
A period of turmoil following the collapse of the Roman Empire.
Populations became concentrated within cities - plague and famine were common.
Increasingly fouled air and water - untreated human and animal waste.
Also called “The Dark Ages”
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Sailing ships spurred increases in travel and trade.
Horses and oxen use increased for transportation and labor.
Wood remained a primary energy source.
Water use increased as a power source.
Mills and foundries flourished.
Gunpowder is developed.
Technology development slowed, but we also saw a number of lasting developments from this period. The technique of heavy iron casting was perfected, which could be applied to products for war (cannons), religion (church bells) and industry (machinery).
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The Renaissance
1500 AD to about 1750 AD
A time of rebirth of the arts and humanities.
Many important innovations – the printing press, clocks, gunpowder, eyeglasses, and flush toilets.
Innovative manufacturing and processing techniques evolved.
Leonardo Da Vinci
The work of engineer/inventor/artist Leonardo Da Vinci ( ) dominated during this period. Newton was born in 1643 and wrote the Principia in 1687, but Newton’s effect on science was felt mostly after his death in 1727.
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Sir Isaac Newton’s theories began to dominate the scientific view of the physical universe.
Universal gravitation
Three laws of motion
Differential and integral calculus*
Coal replaced wood.
Mining and deforestation increased.
Colonization became a widespread way of developing resources.
Both positive and negative impacts (slavery).
*credit for calculus also goes to Gottfried Leibniz
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14. The Industrial Revolution
From 1750 to about 1900
Industries replaced family units of production.
The steam engine is arguably the most important engineering achievement.
Continuous manufacturing became common.
Transportation and communication systems improved.
Education became more widespread.
Started in Western Europe, but America soon began to dominate.
An industry provides systemic labor for a productive process.
There were many other engineering innovations, including the internal combustion engine, 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.
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The American Constitution and the Bill of Rights
Rule of law led to an increase in the ownership of private property.
Environmental pollution continued to increase
Industrial waste adding to human and animal waste.
The beginnings of formal engineering education
Private property includes buildings and machines. In the middle ages, serfs could have possession of land (tenants in perpetuity), but not ownership.
The first formal engineering professional society, The Institution of Civil Engineers, founded in London in 1818.
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