Letter 3 A Brief History of How Engineers Built Civilization
Dear Nick and Natasha,
I hope everything is going according to plan for you personally and professionally. Lately, I’ve been thinking about how easily we engineers get bogged down with our studies, teaching, or research at the university or with our work in industry or the government. And rightly so, since we do have a responsibility to ourselves and society to get the details right in our designing, building, inspecting, repairing, and disposing. But, I think we sometimes miss the big picture of what we are doing and why it’s important. Although not as celebrated as political figures, military leaders, or entertainers, it’s obvious to anyone that engineers have always played a critical role in society.
Just take a look at history and our modern lives. Almost every aspect of society is impacted in some way by the marvels of technology. So, although I don’t pretend to be a professional historian, I’ll do my best to tell you the story of how engineers built civilization. And then I’ll try to highlight some key themes that I personally think have always been vital to the onward march of technological progress. If you want to find out more, I recommend the 1960 classic book by L. Sprague de Camp called The Ancient Engineers, which I consulted for much of the information below from ancient times to the Renaissance. Now, our story begins thousands of years ago after the invention of farming (see Figure 3.1).
Figure 3.1 Engineering throughout history.
The Agricultural Revolution (c.8000 BC)
The invention of farming and the first domestication of livestock happened in Mesopotamia (roughly today’s Iraq) and was critical to the rise of engineering. It allowed previously nomadic people (i.e., hunters and gatherers) to settle down in an area, grow surplus crops and animal products, and sell their goods to others. This allowed these other folks to shift away from farming and raising livestock themselves, which permitted them to organize society into population centers like villages and cities. Some of these village and city dwellers became craftsmen and tradesmen as they designed and made new implements for household, farming, public, and military use. Thus, technological innovation was born, and these craftsmen and tradesmen became the first engineers.
The Ancient Mesopotamians (c.3000 BC–c.500 BC)
The Mesopotamians of the distant past lived in a large flat hot desert-like plain. They built houses that were laid out in a square pattern with an inner court where the owner sat in the shade; there were no “outside windows,” thus, blocking the sun’s heat. This house design also gave some protection and privacy against burglars and meddlesome government agents. Also, water canals were built for crop irrigation, and levees controlled river flow. Some villages grew into larger towns and cities with unplanned haphazard layouts creating problems of congestion, sewage, transport, and law enforcement. Ziggurats were step-like pyramid temples built for religious purposes, like the most famous one dedicated to the god Marduk, which may be the Tower of Babel mentioned in the Bible.
The Ancient Egyptians (c.3000 BC–c.300 BC)
The Egyptians of antiquity made technological advances often through the leadership of their Pharaohs, since they had time, resources, wealth, and power. They built public works, military equipment, monuments, temples, and pyramids using clay, mud, straw, and stone. To build the pyramids, new technologies had to be invented, like water-swelled wooden wedges that made fracture lines to quarry huge stones, large barges for transporting stones down the Nile river, and large numbers of men conscripted into forced labor to haul stone blocks on milk-lubricated wooden sled-like devices across the ground. Imhotep, the first engineer and architect known in history by name, was one of those skilled men employed by his Pharaoh to build a pyramid. Although much of this was intended for the dubious purpose of boosting the egos of the Pharaohs, the new knowledge was useful to later generations.
The Ancient Greeks (c.700 BC–c.30 BC)
The Greeks of olden times made huge contributions to science and technology, but I’ll just list a few here. Blacksmiths made sturdier soldiers’ armor that was covered and reinforced with bronze, iron, or steel. Kings employed artists and architects to incorporate the first use of metal structural members in buildings, shrines, and statues. Archytas of Taras, who was a friend of the famous philosopher Plato, invented the screw. Aristotle advanced science and technology by founding the scientific method that combined theorizing with gathering experimental data. Also, Aristotle and/or Straton of Lampsakos wrote Mechanika (i.e., Mechanics), the world’s first engineering textbook on gears, levers, pulleys, rollers, slings, wedges, and beam balance for weight measurement.
Archimedes of Syracuse is considered the greatest engineer of the ancient world. He made major contributions to mathematics (e.g., calculating Pi more accurately), general engineering (e.g., principles of the lever, pulley, screw, and wedge), and military engineering (e.g., cranes that dropped heavy stones onto attackers scaling the city wall). King Alexander the Great commissioned the architect and engineer Deinokrates to build the city of Alexandria, which was home to the great Library of Alexandria (which had up to 750,000 scrolls) and the Museum of Alexandria (which had laboratories and lecture halls and was the base for many scholars, so it was essentially the first university in the ancient world). Ktesibios of Alexandria invented metal springs made of iron or bronze, musical pipe organs based on hydraulic and pneumatic action, water clocks for telling time, and water pumps for raising water to a height.
The Near and Far Eastern Civilizations (c.500 BC–c.1100 AD)
In India, the rise of Buddhism after 500 BC saw the construction of many temples and monasteries. The emergence of a Hindu empire in 300 AD resulted in cave temples carved out of mountainsides and large detached stone temples. And there were craftsmen skilled at ironwork for making chain bridges, dowels, ingots, and pillars.
In China, King Tsin ruthlessly united all the warring Chinese states for the first time in history into one empire in about 220 BC. He then embarked on an ambitious construction campaign that included many 60-ton statues of himself dotting the empire and the 2250-mile long Great Wall of China to keep raiding bands of Mongols at bay. Over the centuries, the Chinese also made contributions to communication (e.g., book printing), time keeping (e.g., clockworks), navigation (e.g., magnetic needles and/or compasses), and war (e.g., gunpowder and primitive rockets).
In the united Arabic empire and its later successor states (632 AD – c.1100 AD), Christian and Jewish scholars were sometimes employed to translate ancient scientific texts into Arabic. Then, the Arab scholars took these ideas and made further contributions to science (e.g., astronomy, chemistry, mathematics, medicine), which they utilized to develop new technology. The Arabs also made innovations in architecture (e.g., mosques and minarets) and the military fortification of city walls (e.g., trap door structures that could be opened to shoot arrows, drop rocks, and pour boiling oil onto the heads of the enemy). They also built canals, dykes, gears, moats, roads, and water clocks.
The Ancient Romans (c.400 BC–476 AD)
During the rise and fall of their vast empire, the Romans mainly designed and built things that were of practical use to civil society. This includes things like apartment buildings, arenas, aqueducts, bridges, circuses, forums, fountains, harbors, military equipment, naval headquarters, public bath houses, roads, sewers, temples, theaters, town halls, and water storage tanks. These construction projects were often spurred on by times of peace, the availability of cheap labor, and the hunger for personal glory by Roman emperors. But, they gave little attention to pure science research.
Also, there was not as much attention paid to creating new mechanical devices for household or public use, since this did not bring much public recognition to a Roman emperor’s achievements. Ironically, the layout of the city of Rome itself, like most ancient cities, grew in a rather unplanned organic way, resulting in a hodgepodge of various types of buildings next to each other, winding alleys and roads, and congestion of street traffic. When it came to private homes, upper class people were able to obtain central heating, glass windows, and even piping to bring in water from water storage tanks that were kept filled by a network of aqueducts.
Several important technical writings appeared at this time. Marcus Vitruvius was a Roman architect and artillery engineer who wrote a 10-volume work called De Architectura about acoustics, architecture, building materials (brick, concrete, masonry), construction methods, interior decoration (paint, plaster, mosaics), measurement methods, military equipment, town planning, and water supply. And Heron of Alexandria (then part of the Roman empire) wrote several important treatises on measurements, mechanics, military weapons, optics, pneumatics, surveying, water clocks, etc.
The Medieval Byzantines (476 AD–1453 AD)
The Byzantines inherited the eastern half of the old Roman empire, whose western half collapsed in the year 476 AD because of barbarian invasions. The relative peace, prosperity, and political stability of Byzantium allowed science and technology to advance.
The Byzantine emperor Justinian (ruled 525–567 AD) was a great builder who met the needs of the faithful by constructing churches, which also functioned like town halls where judges heard court cases, workers guilds could meet, and city officials would conduct business. He also built fortifications like towers and walls for the cities of the empire, roads through mountainous areas, aqueducts to carry water into the capital city, and overflow channels to protect the capital city from flooding.
But, by far Justinian’s greatest engineering achievement was the construction of the Church of Saint Sophia in the capital city of Constantinople, whose central dome rose 160 feet high and was so lavishly decorated inside with mosaics and colored marble that it was instrumental in converting King Vladimir of Russia to Orthodox Christianity in the year 987 AD.
Some churchmen promoted science and technology, but most clergy preferred theological matters. Craftsmen made mechanical devices, yet did not develop them further into practical machines of any significance. One important writing on military technology was by Heron of Byzantium (also known as Heron the Mechanic) titled Book of Machines of War. It provided technical details on the bore, catapult, flying bridge, mantlet, pneumatic scaling ladder, ram, and sambuca.
The Western Europeans (c.900 AD–c.1600 AD)
The newly-independent people and nations of western Europe inherited the western half of the old Roman empire, which collapsed in the year 476 AD. They finally emerged from the political chaos, mass migrations, and scientific and technological ignorance of the so-called Dark Ages for several reasons.
They imported Greek scholarly manuscripts from the eastern half of the Roman empire that was still intact (i.e., Byzantium) and scholarly manuscripts from the Arabic empire. These documents were then translated into Latin by Christian monks and Jewish scholars.
Scholars wrote works on science and technology that brought together previous knowledge or promoted original ideas, such as the many writings of the Christian monk Roger Bacon (1214–1292 AD). Not surprisingly, new or improved inventions emerged, like arches and trusses for architecture, canals, cast iron, castles, cathedrals, eyeglasses, oil lamps, paved roads, plows, personal armor for soldiers, printing presses, sewers, ship building, stone bridges, water mills, wind mills, etc.
The Renaissance (1400s and 1500s AD)—which means rebirth or revival—saw the rise of a number of key events. There was a renewed interest in classical Greek and Roman knowledge. The first formal patent law was established in 1474 AD in Venice. The first research institutes and industrial expositions emerged. And there was an upsurge of professional architects, engineers, and scientists. One of these important figures was Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519 AD). His notebooks were filled with original drawings and blueprints for axles, gears, levers, pulleys, ratchets, and springs, as well as bridges, canal diggers, city layout plans, fortresses, hoists, human anatomy, human-powered flying machines, mirror grinders, needle grinders, odometers, screw jacks, siphons, water wheels, etc.
The Knowledge “Revolutions” (16th–19th centuries)
A series of intellectual upheavals occurred from the 16th to 19th centuries AD that greatly accelerated the march of science and technology to eventually create our modern world. The Scientific Revolution (1543–1687) really got going with the publication of Nicolaus Copernicus’s On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres, which proposed that the planets revolved around the Sun, not the Earth. This important period came to a close with the publication of Sir Isaac Newton’s Principia, which introduced and mathematically explained the laws of gravitation and motion. And it saw the establishment in 1662 of the world’s oldest surviving scientific organization, the Royal Society.
The Industrial Revolution (1769–1829) was launched in 1769 by James Watt who perfected the steam engine, which replaced muscle-power with steam-power. This radically transformed many industries in Britain, like cotton spinning, cloth weaving, flour milling, and paper milling, as well as improving marine transportation. By the end of this critical period in 1829, the British engineer George Stephenson designed the first practical steam-powered train called “The Rocket.” The railway constructed the following year to connect the cities of Liverpool and Manchester signaled the start of rapid mass transit. In the aftermath, some of the world’s oldest formal engineering societies that still exist were created in Britain, such as civil (1828), mechanical (1847), and electrical (1871).
The Technological “Ages” (20th–21st centuries)
In more recent times, a quick succession of technological breakthroughs were spurred on by the doubling of human knowledge every 18 months or so. The nuclear age saw nuclear power plants that supplied massive amounts of cheap energy to cities and industries, but it also brought with it the specter of nuclear weapons, war, and annihilation. The space age saw humans orbiting the Earth, landing on the moon, living on the International Space Station, and planning to colonize Mars, yet it also led to powerful nations racing to dominate and weaponize space. The computer age saw the almost ubiquitous use of helpful new technologies like laptops, tablets, and smartphones, but it was also fraught with concerns about Artificial Intelligence machines and robots eventually becoming sentient and then turning on their human creators in a Frankenstein’s monster scenario. The internet age saw the rise of global information sharing, communication, and connectedness on an unprecedented scale, yet it also allowed malevolent actors to spread their dubious and dangerous content across the planet through the World Wide Web. And that’s just a tiny sample of the rapid pace of change from the past century.
What Lessons Can We Learn From Engineering History?
I’d like to suggest several lessons from the past that I think are particularly important to apply today, but there may be different ones you could also tease out that I may have missed.
First off, I’d emphasize that engineering is founded on science. By this I mean that the laws of physics, chemistry, and biology that regulate the universe dictate what engineers can achieve practically. So, let’s make sure we are extremely familiar with, and even take part in discovering, the basic scientific principles that govern the devices, structures, techniques, or processes with which we work.
Next, engineering is fueled by practical necessity. By this I mean that the daily needs and occasional crises of society are opportunities for engineers to come up with innovative solutions. So, let’s always be mindful of all the many possibilities that exist for us engineers to use our skills to improve society.
Also, engineering is not revolutionary, but evolutionary. By this I mean that most, but not all, new technological developments are small improvements on existing older technology, yet these can still grow over time to make a big impact on society. So, let’s not minimize the work we do, no matter how seemingly ordinary or unimportant it may seem to us at the moment.
Let me now suggest, whether we like it or not, that engineering wheels are greased by money. By this I mean that the successful development of new technology always requires a source of funding, whether from the top or the grassroots. So, let’s always be aware of financial needs and opportunities that can bring our innovative ideas into reality.
Finally, I think engineers must be true to their personal and professional values. By this I mean that we engineers need to be careful in deciding what projects we are and are not willing to accept because of the potential negative consequences to society; just because we can do something, doesn’t mean we should. So, let’s be certain to make use of our own personal ethics and professional standards as guidelines in pursuing our work.
So, What’s the “Take Home” Message of This Letter?
I hope this note gives you a strong sense of being part of a long unbroken line of engineers that stretches deep into the misty past as civilization was just getting started, but that also reaches far into the bright future of what civilization could be. Even so, I can’t help asking some questions: What does the future hold for engineers and engineering itself? What will be the new fundamental scientific discoveries in biology, chemistry, mathematics, and physics that engineers can then turn into practical applications? What kinds of novel materials, fabrication techniques, and energy sources will we need to develop? Will unforeseen societal problems, natural catastrophes, and manmade disasters compel engineers to quickly find solutions before it is too late? What new uncharted frontiers will beckon to us for communication, exploration, and travel, but which will require advanced technologies that we haven’t even thought of yet? And, perhaps most importantly, will we have the moral courage to engage these challenges and opportunities while staying true to our values? Alas, only time will tell.
All the best,
R.Z.