Origins Of Mechanical Engineering

[EddyC]

Does anyone know a good book or other resource that describes the emergence of the mechanical engineering discipline?

 

[drawoh]

EddyC,

I like to cruise through old book stores looking for old textbooks. My best ones so far are...

Treatise on Mechanics
by Captain Hanry Kater and Dr. Dionysius Larner
1844

Mechanic's Calculator (2nd Edition)
by William Grier (Civil Engineer)
1835

I don't need to wonder what engineers knew back then. I can look it up. In my 1835 edition of the Mechanic's Calculator, there is some dispute about the power of a horse. We have...

Smeaton 22916 ft.lb/min
Desaguliers 27500 ft.lb/min
Watt 33000 ft.lb/min

The author goes on to speculate that the true value is even higher than Watt's estimate, perhaps 44000ft.lb/min.

JHG

 

[cclassen]

History of mechanics - to explore.
I have a hint to offer:

Mike Cooley (My contact to Mike was 1989 when he was Director of Technology at the Greater London Enterprise Board) refers to another source in his own book: Architect or Bee?. I got this other book: The Story of the Engineers 1800 - 1945 written by James B. Jefferys and published by Lawrence & Wishart Ltd for the Amalgated Engineering Union on the 25th Anniversary in 1945.

The book tells in chapter 1 about the biblical refernce to the foreman Tubal Cain, "an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron. It continues the millwrights in a copied text from Sir William Fairbairn 1861.

Very best regards
Carl Christian Lassen
Denmark

 

[arto]

how about "The Various and Ingenious Machines of Agostino Ramelli" from the 1500's

 

[PBroad]

Leonardo da Vinci may not have had machined gears but his interlocking pinnions were effective. Another good book of the period first published 1556 is De Re Metallica by Georgius Agricol. He desribes in great detail the devices used to extract ore from mines, pumps hoists and even the refining furnaces. If you can't read latin buy the Herbert Hoover Translation, with original graphics. A 1950 reprint of the 1912 text was printed by Dover Std book no. 486-60006-8 or library of Congress card # A51-8994

 

[brad]

"History of Strength of Materials"
Stephen Timoshenko

Wonderful book on mechanical/structural engineering history and the major players. Although written by Timoshenko, it is written as a history (hence can be appreciated by an engineering underclassman--unlike Timoshenko's theoretical offerings).

A great book which is in my personal library.

Brad

 

[IRstuff]

Interestingly, the ASME website lists Archimedes in their Mechanical Engineering Biography section, so presumbly, they consider him as one of the first ME's.



TTFN

 

[PBroad]

One of the differences between Civil and Mechanical engineering is that mechanical engineering was born of Military engineering. Just look at the seige engines used by Rome ans Alexander the Great who is reported to have divided engineers between civil and military.

 

[martindup]

It can also then be said that mechanical engineering originated from argiculture - Egiptians build roped buckets to get water from the nile long before the Romans and Greek people moved out of the caves.

The diffrence between civil and mechanical engineers? Mechanical engineers design and build mostly weapons, civil engineers do targets.

 

[brad]

PBroad--
Your observation reminds me of a favorite tongue-in-cheek quote of mine (being a mechanical with several civil colleagues):
"ME's make weapons; Civil Engineers make targets"


Brad

 

[PBroad]

Brad, Obviously you recall that the original "click and point" device was powered by gunpowder!!

 

[unclesyd]

PBoard,
You got it backwards it's "point and click".

 

[PBroad]

That's what comes of being a Metallurgist. Never sure if you are making gun barrels or shields! Some don't even consider us engineers.

 

[brad]

Clarification--it's not my original quote (though I have forgotten whose quote it was).

Unclesyd--maybe PBroad was thinking of a warning shot before the REAL aim...

Brad

 

[GregLocock]

While we are doing quotes, who wrote this:

"Scientists investigate what exists, engineers invent what has never been"?

I love that one.

For some reason scientists get a bit uppity there, I just say, "Wright brothers".

or Froude

or Brunel

or Watt

Cheers

Greg Locock

 

[zeitghost]

Having watched about 10 hours of programmes about people trying and mostly failing to replicate the Wright 1903 flyer, I find it quite remarkable that those two men achieved what they did.

What struck me most was the difference in controllability between the 1902 Glider and the 1903 Flyer.

I really felt sorry for the people at Kitty Hawk on the 17th December.

Just goes to prove how much the conditions at the time mattered in the final result. (26mph headwind good, 10mph headwind not so good).


Zeit.

 

[IRstuff]

Don't know if you watched the PBS special on the Wright Brothers and a recent attempt to build a copy of the original gliders and planes.

The Wright Brothers were unique in their meticulousness and engineering discipline. They built the first wind tunnel for testing their designs and for providing a controlled test environment. They took copious notes and made thousands of measurements. They developed special instruments to accurately measure and compare wing lift capabilities. When problems occurred, they investigated and analyzed until they understood and corrected the problems

In short, they were true professional engineers, while most of their counterparts were amateurs.

TTFN

 

[ietech]

I did watch the Wright Brothers special and thoroughly enjoyed it. They were vey proficient at many disciplines. They used scientific method as we know it today regarding testing and verifying through repeatability. They were thorough in their engineering calculations, chose the best materials available for the time, and were meticulous mechanics with superior hands on skills. Certainly these are traits that any good engineer should have even today.

ietech

 

[EnglishMuffin]

There's no question that the Wright brothers were fantastic engineers, and cannot be dismissed as the simple "bicycle mechanics" that so many old accounts claimed them to be. But what I often find myself wondering is - if one could go back in a time machine and kill them at birth, would the history of flight be any different? (I often wonder the same thing about other giants of science and engineering from the past). Another thing I often reflect on is that they probably understood flight in greater depth than the theory of the bicycle, which by all accounts does not seem to have been fully understood until the nineteen seventies, even though people had been making them successfully for generations.

 

[EnglishMuffin]

By the way, Post 2 mentions Dr Dionysius Lardner, who seems to have been one of those "scientists" who was always saying something could not be done. In particular, he was a great enemy of Brunel, whom GregLocock mentions in Post 15, and was always mathematically "proving" such things as "people will not be able to breathe when travelling in trains at high speed", and "you cannot cross the Atlantic in a steam powered ship because it won't be able to carry enough coal" etc. Brunel, who did not carry the "Dr" moniker in front of his name, proved time and again that he was the real master of the relevant scientific disciplines.