Engineer
also a tag
Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the limitations imposed by practicality, regulation, safety and cost.[1][2] The word engineer (Latin ingeniator[3]) is derived from the Latin words ingeniare ("to contrive, devise") and ingenium ("cleverness").[4][5] The foundational qualifications of a licensed professional engineer typically include a four-year bachelor's degree in an engineering discipline, or in some jurisdictions, a master's degree in an engineering discipline plus four to six years of peer-reviewed professional practice (culminating in a project report or thesis) and passage of engineering board examinations.
The work of engineers forms the link between scientific discoveries and their subsequent applications to human and business needs and quality of life.[1]
Definition
In 1961, the Conference of Engineering Societies of Western Europe and the United States of America defined "professional engineer" as follows:[6]
A professional engineer is competent by virtue of his/her fundamental education and training to apply the scientific method and outlook to the analysis and solution of engineering problems. He/she is able to assume personal responsibility for the development and application of engineering science and knowledge, notably in research, design, construction, manufacturing, superintending, managing, and in the education of the engineer. His/her work is predominantly intellectual and varied and not of a routine mental or physical character. It requires the exercise of original thought and judgment and the ability to supervise the technical and administrative work of others. His/her education will have been such as to make him/her capable of closely and continuously following progress in his/her branch of engineering science by consulting newly published works on a worldwide basis, assimilating such information, and applying it independently. He/she is thus placed in a position to make contributions to the development of engineering science or its applications. His/her education and training will have been such that he/she will have acquired a broad and general appreciation of the engineering sciences as well as thorough insight into the special features of his/her own branch. In due time he/she will be able to give authoritative technical advice and assume responsibility for the direction of important tasks in his/her branch.
Roles and expertise
Design
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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Leonardo_da_vinci,_Drawing_of_a_flying_machine.jpg)
A design for a flying machine (c. 1488), first presented in the Codex on the Flight of Birds
An aerial screw (c. 1489), suggestive of a helicopter, from the Codex Atlanticus
Engineers develop new technological solutions. During the engineering design process, the responsibilities of the engineer may include defining problems, conducting and narrowing research, analyzing criteria, finding and analyzing solutions, and making decisions. Much of an engineer's time is spent on researching, locating, applying, and transferring information.[7] Indeed, research suggests engineers spend 56% of their time engaged in various information behaviours, including 14% actively searching for information.[8]
Engineers must weigh different design choices on their merits and choose the solution that best matches the requirements and needs. Their crucial and unique task is to identify, understand, and interpret the constraints on a design in order to produce a successful result.
Analysis
Engineers apply techniques of engineering analysis in testing, production, or maintenance. Analytical engineers may supervise production in factories and elsewhere, determine the causes of a process failure, and test output to maintain quality. They also estimate the time and cost required to complete projects. Supervisory engineers are responsible for major components or entire projects. Engineering analysis involves the application of scientific analytic principles and processes to reveal the properties and state of the system, device or mechanism under study. Engineering analysis proceeds by separating the engineering design into the mechanisms of operation or failure, analyzing or estimating each component of the operation or failure mechanism in isolation, and recombining the components. They may analyze risk.[9][10][11][12]
Many engineers use computers to produce and analyze designs, to simulate and test how a machine, structure, or system operates, to generate specifications for parts, to monitor the quality of products, and to control the efficiency of processes.
Specialization and management
NASA Launch Control Center Firing Room 2 as it appeared in the Apollo era.
Most engineers specialize in one or more engineering disciplines.[1] Numerous specialties are recognized by professional societies, and each of the major branches of engineering has numerous subdivisions. Civil engineering, for example, includes structural engineering, along with transportation engineering, geotechnical engineering, and materials engineering, including ceramic, metallurgical, and polymer engineering. Mechanical engineering cuts across most disciplines since its core essence is applied physics. Engineers also may specialize in one industry, such as motor vehicles, or in one type of technology, such as turbines or semiconductor materials.[1]...
History:
The concept of engineering has existed since ancient times as humans devised fundamental inventions such as the pulley, lever, and wheel. Each of these inventions is consistent with the modern definition of engineering, exploiting basic mechanical principles to develop useful tools and objects.
The term engineering itself has a much more recent etymology, deriving from the word engineer, which itself dates back to 1325, when an engine’er (literally, one who operates an engine) originally referred to "a constructor of military engines."[1] In this context, now obsolete, an "engine" referred to a military machine, i. e., a mechanical contraption used in war (for example, a catapult). 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."[2]
Later, as the design of civilian structures such as bridges and buildings matured as a technical discipline, the term civil engineering[3] entered the lexicon as a way to distinguish between those specializing in the construction of such non-military projects and those involved in the older discipline of military engineering (the original meaning of the word "engineering," now largely obsolete, with notable exceptions that have survived to the present day such as military engineering corps, e. g., the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers).
Ancient era
The ziggurats of Mesopotamia, the pyramids and Pharos of Alexandria in ancient Egypt, cities of the Indus Valley civilization, the Acropolis and Parthenon in ancient Greece, the aqueducts, Via Appia and Colosseum in the Roman Empire, Teotihuacán, the cities and pyramids of the Mayan, Inca and Aztec Empires, and the Great Wall of China, among many others, stand as a testament to the ingenuity and skill of the ancient civil and military engineers.
The six classic simple machines were known in the ancient Near East. The wedge and the inclined plane (ramp) were known since prehistoric times.[4] The wheel, along with the wheel and axle mechanism, was invented in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) during the 5th millennium BC.[5]
The lever mechanism first appeared around 5,000 years ago in the Near East, where it was used in a simple balance scale,[6] and to move large objects in ancient Egyptian technology.[7] The lever was also used in the shadoof water-lifting device, the first crane machine, which appeared in Mesopotamia circa 3000 BC,[6] and then in ancient Egyptian technology circa 2000 BC.[8]
The earliest evidence of pulleys date back to Mesopotamia in the early 2nd millennium BC,[9] and ancient Egypt during the Twelfth Dynasty (1991-1802 BC).[10] The screw, the last of the simple machines to be invented,[11] first appeared in Mesopotamia during the Neo-Assyrian period (911-609) BC.[9] The Egyptian pyramids were built using three of the six simple machines, the inclined plane, the wedge, and the lever, to create structures like the Great Pyramid of Giza.[12]
The earliest architect known by name is Imhotep.[3] As one of the officials of the Pharaoh, Djosèr, he probably designed and supervised the construction of the Pyramid of Djoser (a Step Pyramid) at Saqqara in Egypt around 2630-2611 BC.[13] He may also have been responsible for the first known use of columns in architecture.[14]
Kush developed the Sakia during the 4th century BC, which relied on animal power instead of human energy.[15] Reservoirs in the form of Hafirs were developed in Kush to boost irrigation.[16] Sappers were employed to build causeways during military campaigns.[17] Kushite ancestors built speos between 3700 and 3250 BC.[18] Bloomeries and blast furnaces were also created during the Meroitic period.[19][20][21][22]
The earliest practical water-powered machines, the water wheel and watermill, first appeared in the Persian Empire, in what are now Iraq and Iran, by the early 4th century BC.[23]
Ancient Greece developed machines both in the civilian and military domains. The Antikythera mechanism, an early known model of a mechanical analog computer, and the mechanical inventions of Archimedes, are examples of Greek mechanical engineering. Some of Archimedes' inventions, as well as the Antikythera mechanism, required sophisticated knowledge of differential gearing or epicyclic gearing, two key principles in machine theory that helped design the gear trains of the Industrial revolution and are still widely used today in diverse fields such as robotics and automotive engineering.[24]
Chinese and Roman armies employed complex military machines including the Ballista and catapult. In the Middle Ages, the Trebuchet was developed. In 132, polymath Zhang Heng invented the seismoscope for detecting earthquakes, which was not invented anywhere else in the world until 1,100 years later.[25]
Huan Tan's Xinlun is the earliest text to describe the trip hammer device powered by hydraulics (i.e., a waterwheel), which was used to pound and decorticate grain.[26]
Middle Ages
The earliest practical wind-powered machines, the windmill and wind pump, first appeared in the Muslim world during the Islamic Golden Age, in what are now Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, by the 9th century AD.[27][28][29][30] The earliest practical steam-powered machine was a steam jack steam turbine, described in 1551 by Taqi al-Din Muhammad ibn Ma'ruf in Ottoman Egypt.[31][32]
The cotton gin was invented in India by the 6th century AD,[33] and the spinning wheel was invented in the Islamic world by the early 11th century,[34] both of which were fundamental to the growth of the cotton industry. The spinning wheel was also a precursor to the spinning jenny, which was a key development during the early Industrial Revolution in the 18th century.[35]
The earliest programmable machines were developed in the Muslim world. A music sequencer, a programmable musical instrument, was the earliest type of programmable machine. The first music sequencer was an automated flute player invented by the Banu Musa brothers, described in their Book of Ingenious Devices, in the 9th century.[36][37]
In 1206, Al-Jazari invented programmable automata/robots. He described four automaton musicians, including drummers operated by a programmable drum machine, where they could be made to play different rhythms and different drum patterns.[38] The castle clock, a hydropowered mechanical astronomical clock invented by Al-Jazari, was the first programmable analog computer.[39][40][41]
Al-Jazari built five machines to pump water for the kings of the Turkish Artuqid dynasty and their palaces. Besides over 50 ingenious mechanical devices, Al-Jazari also developed and made innovations to segmental gears, mechanical controls, escapement mechanisms, clocks, robotics, and protocols for designing and manufacturing methods.
European Renaissance
The first fully-functioning steam engine was built in 1716 by blacksmith Thomas Newcomen.[42] The development of this device gave rise to the industrial revolution in the coming decades, allowing for the beginnings of mass production.
With the rise of engineering as a profession in the 18th century, the term became more narrowly applied to fields in which mathematics and science were applied to these ends. Similarly, in addition to military and civil engineering, the fields then known as the mechanic arts became incorporated into engineering.
The following images are samples from a deck of cards illustrating engineering instruments in England in 1702. They illustrate a range of engineering specializations, that would eventually become known as civil engineering, mechanical engineering, geodesy and geomatics, and so on...