As a human endeavor, engineering has existed since ancient times, starting with the six classicsimple machines. Examples of large-scale engineering projects from antiquity include impressive structures like thepyramids, elegant temples such as theParthenon, and water conveyances likehulled watercraft,canals, and theRoman aqueduct. Early machines were powered by humans and animals, then later by wind. Machines of war were invented forsiegecraft. In Europe, thescientific andindustrial revolutions advanced engineering into a scientific profession and resulted in continuing technological improvements. Thesteam engine provided much greater power than animals, leading to mechanical propulsion for ships and railways. Further scientific advances resulted in the application of engineering to electrical, chemical, andaerospace requirements, plus the use of new materials for greater efficiencies.
The wordengineering is derived from theLatiningenium. Engineers typically follow a code of ethics that favors honesty and integrity, while being dedicated to publicsafety andwelfare. Engineering tasks involve findingoptimal solutions based on constraints, with testing andsimulations being used prior to production. When a deployed product fails,forensic engineering is used to determine what went wrong in order to find a fix. Much of thisproduct lifecycle management is now assisted with computersoftware, fromdesign totesting andmanufacturing. At larger scales, this process normally funded by a company, multiple investors, or the government, so a knowledge of economics and business practices is needed. (Full article...)
Anengineer is a practitioner ofengineering. The wordengineer (Latiningeniator, the origin of the Ir. in the title of engineer in countries like Belgium, The Netherlands, and Indonesia) is derived from the Latin wordsingeniare ("to contrive, devise") andingenium ("cleverness"). The foundational qualifications of a licensed professional engineer typically include a four-yearbachelor's degree in an engineering discipline, or in some jurisdictions, amaster'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. (Full article...)
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Map of the Vicksburg area, De Soto Point, and the canal. The positions to the north of Vicksburg are related to theBattle of Chickasaw Bayou
Grant's Canal (also known asWilliams's Canal) was an incomplete military effort to construct a canal throughDe Soto Point inLouisiana, across theMississippi River fromVicksburg, Mississippi. During theAmerican Civil War, theUnion Navy attempted to capture theConfederate-held city of Vicksburg in 1862, but were unable to do so with army support. UnionBrigadier-GeneralThomas Williams was sent to De Soto Point with 3,200 men to dig a canal capable of bypassing the strong defenses around Vicksburg. Despite being assisted by locallyenslaved people, Williams was unable to finish constructing the canal due to disease and falling river levels, and the project was abandoned until January 1863, when UnionMajor-GeneralUlysses S. Grant took an interest in the project.
Grant attempted to resolve some of the issues inherent to the concept by moving the upstream entrance to a spot with a stronger current, but the heavy rains and flooding that broke a dam prevented the project from succeeding. Work was abandoned in March, and Grant eventually used other methods to capture Vicksburg, whose Confederate garrison surrendered on July 4, 1863. In 1876, the Mississippi River changed course to cut across De Soto Point, eventually isolating Vicksburg from the river, but the completion of theYazoo Diversion Canal in 1903 restored Vicksburg's river access. Most of the canal site has since been destroyed by agriculture, but a small section survives. This section was donated by local landowners to theNational Park Service and became part ofVicksburg National Military Park in 1990. A 1974 article inThe Military Engineer speculated that the canal would likely have been successful if the dam at the downstream end of the canal had been opened. (Full article...)
... that during hearings fora new TV station in the state of Washington, an engineer collapsed on the witness stand, a radio station owner suffered food poisoning, and his rival's wife was hospitalized?
Computer-aided design (CAD) is the use ofcomputer systems to aid in the creation, modification, analysis, or optimization of adesign. CAD software is used to increase the productivity of the designer, improve the quality of design, improve communications through documentation, and to create a database for manufacturing. CAD output is often in the form of electronic files for print, machining, or other manufacturing operations. The termCADD (forComputer Aided Design and Drafting) is also used.Its use in designing electronic systems is known aselectronic design automation, orEDA. In mechanical design it is known as mechanical design automation (MDA) orcomputer-aided drafting (CAD), which includes the process of creating atechnical drawing with the use ofcomputer software.
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Replica of the original Fat Man bomb
"Fat Man" (also known asMark III) was the design of thenuclear weapon the United States used for seven of the first eight nuclear weapons ever detonated in history. It is also the most powerful design to ever be used in warfare.
Introduced in 2003, HDMI largely replaced olderanalog video standards such ascomposite video,S-Video, andVGA inconsumer electronics. It was developed based on theCEA-861 standard, which was also used with the earlierDigital Visual Interface (DVI). HDMI is electrically compatible with DVI video signals, andadapters allow interoperability between the two without signal conversion or loss of quality. Adapters and active converters are also available for connecting HDMI to other video interfaces, including the older analog formats, as well as digital formats such asDisplayPort. (Full article...)
The tubes were constructed using theshield method and are each 6,550 feet (2,000 m) long and 15.5 feet (4.7 m) wide. The interiors are lined with cast-iron "rings" formed with concrete. The tubes descend 91 to 95 feet (28 to 29 m) below themean high water level of the East River, with a maximum gradient of 3.1 percent. During the tunnel's construction, a house at58 Joralemon Street in Brooklyn was converted into a ventilation building and emergency exit. (Full article...)
Avoltage doubler is an electronic circuit which charges capacitors from the input voltage and switches these charges in such a way that, in the ideal case, exactly twice the voltage is produced at the output as at its input.
The simplest of these circuits is a form ofrectifier which takes an AC voltage as input and outputs a doubled DC voltage. The switching elements are simple diodes and they are driven to switch state merely by the alternating voltage of the input. DC-to-DC voltage doublers cannot switch in this way and require a driving circuit to control the switching. They frequently also require a switching element that can be controlled directly, such as atransistor, rather than relying on the voltage across the switch as in the simple AC-to-DC case. (Full article...)
Bell was an energetic and skilful entrepreneur as well as an innovativemetallurgist. He was involved in multiple partnerships with his brothers to make iron andalkali chemicals, and with other pioneers includingRobert Stirling Newall to make steel cables. He pioneered the large-scale manufacture of aluminium at his Washington works, conducting experiments in its production, and in the production of other chemicals such as the newly discovered elementthallium. He was a director of major companies including theNorth Eastern Railway and theForth Bridge company, then the largest bridge project in the world. (Full article...)
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Three Musketeers -Chrysler Engineers Carl Breer (right), Fred Zeder (center), and Owen Skelton (left) in 1933.
1869 Birdsill Holly fire-hydrant Birdsill Holly Jr. (November 8, 1820 – April 27, 1894) was an American mechanical engineer and inventor of waterhydraulics devices. He is known for inventing mechanical devices that improved city water systems and patented an improved fire hydrant that is similar to those used currently for firefighting. Holly was a co-inventor of the Silsbysteam fire engine. He founded the Holly Manufacturing Company that developed into the larger Holly Steam Combination Company that distributed heat from a central station and developed commercialdistrict heating for cities in the United States and Canada. (Full article...)
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A hypothetical depiction of a Dyson swarm surrounding a star
ADyson sphere is a hypotheticalmegastructure that encompasses astar and captures a large percentage of itspower output. The concept is athought experiment that attempts to imagine how aspacefaring civilization would meet its energy requirements once those requirements exceed what can be generated from the homeplanet's resources alone. Because only a tiny fraction of a star's energy emissions reaches the surface of any orbiting planet, building structures encircling a star would enable a civilization to harvest far more energy.
The earliest modern imagining of such a structure was byOlaf Stapledon in his science fiction novelStar Maker (1937). The same concept was later used by physicistFreeman Dyson in his 1960 satirical paper "Search for Artificial Stellar Sources ofInfrared Radiation". Dyson speculated that such structures would be the logical consequence of the escalating energy needs of a technological civilization and would be a necessity for its long-term survival. A signature of such spheres detected in astronomical searches would be an indicator ofextraterrestrial intelligence. (Full article...)
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Raymix during a 2024 concert
Edmundo Gómez Moreno (born 17 February 1991), known professionally asRaymix, is a Mexican musician andaerospace engineer. NicknamedEl Rey de la Electrocumbia ("The King of Electrocumbia"), he started his music career in the early 2010s as part of the trance project Light & Wave, alongside two other Mexican musicians. Their song "Feeling the City" was featured onA State of Trance, a radio showArmin van Buuren hosts. In 2013, Raymix participated in an educational internship atNASA, where he contributed to the development of a satellite.
Baron Pavel Lvovitch Schilling (April 16 [O.S. April 5] 1786 – August 6 [O.S. July 25] 1837), also known asPaul Schilling, was a Russian inventor, military officer anddiplomat ofBaltic German origin. The majority of his career was spent working for the imperial RussianMinistry of Foreign Affairs as a language officer at the Russian embassy inMunich. As a military officer, he took part in theWar of the Sixth Coalition againstNapoleon. In his later career, he was transferred to the Asian department of the ministry and undertook a tour ofMongolia to collect ancient manuscripts.
Buro Happold Limited (previouslyBuroHappold Engineering) is a British professional services firm that providesengineering consultancy,design, planning, project management, and consulting services for buildings, infrastructure, and the environment. It was founded inBath, Somerset, in 1976 by SirEdmund Happold when he took up a post at theUniversity of Bath as Professor ofArchitecture and Engineering Design.
Originally working mainly on projects in theMiddle East, the firm now operates worldwide and in almost all areas of engineering for thebuilt environment, working in 24 locations around the world. (Full article...)
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Genetic engineering, also calledgenetic modification orgenetic manipulation, is the modification and manipulation of an organism'sgenes usingtechnology. It is a set oftechnologies used to change the genetic makeup of cells, including the transfer of genes within and across species boundaries to produce improved or novelorganisms. NewDNA is obtained by either isolating and copying the genetic material of interest usingrecombinant DNA methods or byartificially synthesising the DNA. Aconstruct is usually created and used to insert this DNA into the host organism. The first recombinant DNA molecule was designed byPaul Berg in 1972 by combining DNA from the monkey virusSV40 with thelambda virus. As well as insertinggenes, the process can be used to remove, or "knock out", genes. The new DNA can either be inserted randomly ortargeted to a specific part of thegenome.
An organism that is generated through genetic engineering is considered to be genetically modified (GM), and the resulting entity is agenetically modified organism (GMO). The first GMO was abacterium generated byHerbert Boyer andStanley Cohen in 1973.Rudolf Jaenisch created the first GM animal when he inserted foreign DNA into amouse in 1974. The first company to focus on genetic engineering,Genentech, was founded in 1976 and began the production of human proteins. Genetically engineered humaninsulin was produced in 1978, and insulin-producing bacteria were commercialised in 1982.Genetically modified food has been sold since 1994, with the release of theFlavr Savr tomato. The Flavr Savr was engineered to have a longer shelf life, but most current GM crops are modified to increase resistance to insects and herbicides.GloFish, the first GMO designed as a pet, was sold in theUnited States in December 2003. In 2016,salmon modified with a growth hormone were sold. (Full article...)
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TheSinclair C5 is a small one-personbattery electricrecumbenttricycle, technically an "electrically assisted pedal cycle". It was the culmination of SirClive Sinclair's long-running interest in electric vehicles. Although widely described as an "electric car", Sinclair characterised it as a "vehicle, not a car".
Sinclair had become one of the UK's best-known millionaires, and earned aknighthood, on the back of the highly successfulSinclair Research range of home computers in the early 1980s. He hoped to repeat his success in the electric vehicle market, which he saw as ripe for a new approach. The C5 emerged from an earlier project to produce a small electric car called the C1. After a change in the law, prompted by lobbying from bicycle manufacturers, Sinclair developed the C5 as an electrically powered tricycle with apolypropylene body and a chassis designed byLotus Cars. It was intended to be the first in a series of increasingly ambitious electric vehicles, but the development of the follow-up C10 and C15 models never progressed further than the drawing board, mostly due to the poor public response to the C5. (Full article...)
Nichols remained with the Manhattan Project after the war until it was taken over by theAtomic Energy Commission in 1947. He was the military liaison officer with the Atomic Energy Commission from 1946 to 1947. After briefly teaching at theUnited States Military Academy at West Point, he was promoted to major general and became chief of theArmed Forces Special Weapons Project, responsible for the military aspects of atomic weapons, including logistics, handling and training. He was deputy director for the Atomic Energy Matters, Plans and Operations Division of the Army's general staff, and was the senior Army member of the military liaison committee that worked with the Atomic Energy Commission. (Full article...)
Image 10Archimedes is regarded as one of the leading scientists inclassical antiquity whose ideas have underpinned much of the practice of engineering. (fromEngineer)
Image 13The application of the steam engine allowed coke to be substituted for charcoal iniron making, lowering the cost of iron, which provided engineers with a new material for building bridges. This bridge was made ofcast iron, which was soon displaced by less brittlewrought iron as a structural material. (fromEngineering)
Image 14Design of aturbine requires collaboration of engineers from many fields, as the system involves mechanical, electro-magnetic and chemical processes. Theblades,rotor and stator as well as thesteam cycle all need to be carefully designed and optimized. (fromEngineering)
Image 23A drawing for asteam locomotive. Engineering is applied todesign, with emphasis on function and the utilization of mathematics and science. (fromEngineering)
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