"celebrities" in engineering? 6

[MechanicalAnimal]

I wasn't sure where to post this question, this section ended up as the logical choice...

I'm sure we often encounter TV shows, interviews in the newspapers etc where "famous people" and "celebrities" are asked for their opinions on such and such, general things...
Very often, subjects of this media attention are musicians, writers, all kinds of artists, some just very rich people, sometimes famous scientists, physicians, psychologists, CEOs of big companies, other (famous) reporters... but very, very rarely - engineers? Even when doing a report on offshore pipe laying or automotive, they'll typically "expose" the management and the "common worker", not the engineers...

Also, in general public, nearly everyone will be familiar with names of various artists, scientists, etc. but mention an engineer's name? Maybe Diesel and Tesla will ring a Bell, ( ), but mention "Otto" (or even "Otto's engine")and very rare people will know who he was and what kind of an engine it really is.

I'd like your opinion on this? Are people generally not interested in engineers, is there simply not enough engineers to "go around" as "famous"? Were there any "famous" engineers, and what are their names? I'd love to read up on their biographies etc, and learn something about them...

 

[JAE]

Just a side note: Don't use the phrase "DaVinci". His name was Leonardo. He was FROM a town called Vinci....thus the reference Leonardo da (from) Vinci.

 

[bridgebuster]

"Civil engineers are engineers not trained by the military".

Does that mean that they cannot build the same things? I believe semantics are at play here.

"if you say Edison wasn't an engineer because he had no degree, then why did you list DaVinci?"

Da Vinci had formal schooling in engineering. Why not consider Edison a scientist; he was?

 

[jmw]

So far as the general; public is concerned they probably could name a few famous "engineers" and we would probably find they are mostly from the Victorian/Edwardian eras; Brunel (they may not know enough to recognise that "Brunel" could refer to father or son), Bazalgette, Watt, Stephens (again, they think there is only one), Edison and.... and.....Well OK, Barnes Wallis (for the film "The Dambusters"), Sir Frank Whittle, R J Mitchel....
Let's face it, the problem is that engineers are anonymous and very very few will have any kind of celebrity status.
It might be nice to change this but such a change could only come about if the status of engineers in society should change.


JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[geekEE]

bridgebuster, I was confused because you said "...I didn't mean any disrepect to Edison. He had no degree in engineering; similar to DaVinci."

I would disagree that Edison was a scientist because he was actually designing products rather than doing pure research. But I suppose it all depends on your definitions of these terms.

By the way, I say "DaVinci" so that no one will think that I'm talking about Leonardo from Caprio.

 

[bridgebuster]

In my fourth grade history class, we learned that Edison was "An Inventor". I've never thought of him as an engineer or scientist.

I have two colleagues who graduated West Point; they call themselves civil engineer.

 

[bridgebuster]

while we're beating a dead horse, should Dan Brown change the name of his book to "The Leonardo Code"?

 

[IRstuff]

Engineers are not anonymous because they have low status, it's because what they contribute is too often transparent and behind the scenes. While the VCR and PC had huge impacts on society, even their inventors are unknown to the general public.

The cited examples of Brunel, who designed public structures, and Watt, who invented the steam engine, were only known the context of their works. Watt and Brunel are essentially anonynous to the general public now; Watt is only a unit of power, or worse, a unit of energy, to the general public. If pressed, they might remember learning about Watt's steam engine in history, but, given that a sizable portion of the US populace thought that New Mexico was foreign country, it's unlikely.

TTFN

FAQ731-376

 

[UcfSE]

I don't think I can come up with any engineers who would be generally well known for engineering. Perhaps there are some well known for reasons other than engineering, and they just happened to also be engineers. We're talking about a public (US) though who can name obscure sports players but hasn't a clue of who made it possible or how they are able to watch a game in a safe house, with a nice flat screen drinking a cold beer.

 

[CJCPE]

The best known engineers seem to me to be the ones known for their inventions. These are the ones that seem to me to be the best known by the general public because they are taught about in elementary school. They may not all be formally educated as engineers, but most would be considered to have performed substantial engineering work.

Alexander Graham Bell
George Eastman
Thomas Edison
Henry Ford
Charles Goodyear
Cyrus McCormick
Samuel F. B. Morse
James Watt
George Westinghouse
Eli Whitney
Wright brothers

 

[JAE]

bridgebuster - The Leonardo Code would be much more correct....however, two things: It wouldn't sell books as well and it just showed how sophmoric Dan Brown was in using it...along with lots of other things.

 

[IRstuff]

That's all a bit pedantic, since there's no one else that's also "da Vinci" in the intervening 500 yrs that could confused with Leonardo. The average person equates Da Vinci with Leonardo, so there's little chance of confusion. If anything, using Leonardo is MORE confusing, since you do have do filter it for the DiCaprio guy.

As in the case of the verb "to xerox," Xerox Corp fought a losing battle to protect their trademark. People make "xerox" copies on Canons, Ricohs, etc. You just have to get over it.

TTFN

FAQ731-376

 

[JAE]

You just have to get over it.

It's not that I'm not "over it". Just pointing out that it's a wrong usage of the term. Anyone speaking Itailian would see it similar to us seeing them use the term:

Of London

for someone like Tony Blair.

Da Vinci was NOT his last name.

 

[IRstuff]

Wrong usage for whom? I'm not Italian, nor intend to be.

Americans are renowned for butchering other nationalities' languages and names, why stop now?

TTFN

FAQ731-376

 

[bridgebuster]

Being of Italian heritage, I suppose I'm allowed to butcher Leonardo's last name.

JAE - I agree with your comments on Dan Brown.

 

[rmw]

The military academies teach their cadets/midshipmen just enough engineering so that their graduates can function in their military careers with the technical systems that they encounter. For example back in the mid to late '60's Naval Academy Midshipmen who graduated with a "mechanical engineering" specialty would have had Thermodynamics in their latter years. They learned just enough Thermo to be able to understand and manage the propulsion systems on the steam driven vessels of the time. A Mechanical Engineering major at a civilian school at the same time would have taken Thermo in his sophomore year (of a 5 year program) and it was a prerequisite fir lots of ME courses that followed. A Middie got nowhere near the technical courses a civilian ME got, nor did a ME at a civilian school take naval science, weather, navigation, weapons systems, etc.

They do function well in technical fields but when they refer to themselves as (pick your discipline) engineers, I smirk and take that with a grain of salt having done both.

rmw

 

[msquared48]

The military will take graduate Civil engineers from major Universities, not the service academies, and put them in the field as Combat engineers. Been there, seen that, done that. Typical of how the Army uses it's talent. That's why I got out. Professionally, I was wasting my time.

Mike McCann
McCann Engineering

 

[PSE]

Goddard and Von Braun come to mind but again, their "celebrity" has likely faded with the passage of time.

Regards,

 

[drawoh]

rmw,

I was refering to the mid-nineteenth century, when engineering was a significant part of training at a military acedemy. If you were an engineer, and you were not trained at a military academy, you were a civil engineer. This distinction is anachronistic, now.

How about Dr. Ferdinand Porsche? I understand his doctorate degree was honorary -- no formal, official university training.

JHG

 

[KENAT]

Why can't people get into their minds that what may be considered an Engineer has probably changed a lot with time and place.

They seem to choose to try and apply what they consider their current definition of Engineer and apply it to people living score if not hundreds of years ago.

I doubt if many of the engineers I listed in my first post had a Bachelors of Engineering (or equivalent) and were Chartered (PE). In my opinion they still get to be engineers.

A lot of members, especially in civil & structural, don't believe that someone is an engineer unless they have a BS/BEng in accredited engineering program and are CEng/PE. This by definition will eliminate most candidates from more than a few decades ago.

As ewh says this horse has long since been flogged off this mortal coil.

KENAT, probably the least qualified checker you'll ever meet...

 

[DrillerNic]

Picking up on Kenat's last post, the lack of 'celebrity engineers' could come down to the change in the nature of engineering and the engineering process. In the Victorian era, a single person culd still be largly responsible for the enigneering of a structure: IK Brunel, Eiffel etc.

Nowadays engineering is much more collaborative and it's harder to point to a single person who was responsible for the channel tunnel, say, or Concorde. There are a few exceptions like Dyson (but then we go back to the "is he an engineer or a designer or an inventor" question), but I think they proove the rule! A similar thing has occured in Science: most celebrity scientists nowadays aren't really famous for their science, but for an different reason such as major disability (Hawkins) or being strindently anti religion (Dawkins).

Incidentally, IK Brunel is pretty well known in the UK due to lots of TV programmes about him and the fact that many of his strucures are still in everyday use: a pal named his son Brunel, and everyone who hears his son's anme for the first time says "oh, after the engineer?"