Mohandes Magazine Fall-Winter Edition 2018

Past, Present, and Future of Engineering
By Afshin Khodabandeh, P.Eng.
Ancient History
The word engineer comes from the ancient Latin
word “ingenium” which means “quality of mental
power”. The word “Engineer” was invented
and first used during the early renaissance period
to describe those who made extraordinary,
mind blowing contraptions mainly to amuse European
monarchs and members of aristocratic
families.
This knowledge or craft was also used as leverage
against enemies of the Monarchy. During
war, engineers such as Leonardo Da Vinci
were supposed to make better catapults, more
effective winch systems for heavy lifting, and armoured
carts to penetrate into the heart of hostile
enemy forces.
In the Middle East, the word “mohandes” comes
from the Arabic word “hendeseh” which is a
transformation of the Persian word “andazeh”
meaning measurement, and during at least the
past two millennia was used to describe those
who understood geometry and basic arithmetic.
This description was rather close to the work of
architects. So it would be only fair if we assume
architecture as another parent of engineering.
In the ancient empires, namely Egypt, Rome,
Iran, and China, architects performed the jobs
we now associate with engineering. The first
documented architect was Imhotep who lived in
Egypt around 2600 BC.
At the end of the renaissance era, around the
eighteenth century, there were two distinct
branches of engineering: the “Genie Militaire”
that worked for the army, and the “Genie Civil”,
as they were called during the reign of Napoleon
Bonaparte dealt with the more general needs of
society.
Sometime around mid-nineteenth century Mechanical
engineering emerged from civil engineering
and in the first half of the twentieth
century Electrical and Chemical engineers were
recognized as independent engineering disciplines.
Modern Engineering
Nowadays some engineers work on machines
as tiny as a few microns that have components
of merely a few molecules thick. Others, meanwhile,
build habitats as big as football fields outside
the Earth’s atmosphere.
In the beginning, engineers used to rely mainly
on trial and error (experience) but engineering
gradually worked its way towards pure science
and mathematics. As a result, learning the practice
of engineering principals changed from apprenticeships
to university education.
Right now, there are more than a dozen recognized
major engineering disciplines that vary in
nature from pure physics (e.g. semiconductors)
to biology (e.g. biomechanical engineering) and
result in technology ranging from flying drones
to nanomachines, most of which did not exist
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