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2
Evolution of American Engineering
This discussion of the historical background of the engineering
profession in America represents an attempt to seek out the
profession's roots in society. The intention is not to provide
history for its own sake, but to determine within the context of
historical events and periods whether the engineering "supply"
system has been functional or dysfunctional, elastic or rigid in
responding to societal demands.1
Focus will be on development of the major branches of engineering
and their supporting educational and professional structures. We
will examine selected cases of social interaction and institutional
development within these disciplines through the end of World War
II and then draw some preliminary conclusions based on that
analysis.
Development of the Structure
Birth of the Technological Society:
1790–1850
The introduction of technology2
to America roughly coincided with its break away from British
political control (Pursell, 1981). This coin-
1 Works listed
in the bibliography at the end of the report offer a more extensive
and detailed treatment of the history of engineering in America.
The appendix to this report provides additional historical
information and analysis as well.
2
"Technology" here refers to the mathematically oriented,
machine-based technology that we think of today in connection with
that term—as distinct from the handicrafts and making of
implements that characterized the technology of Colonial settlers
and native Americans.
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cidence of two revolutions was caused partly by the rapid growth
of technical knowledge and applications taking place in Europe at
that time. For several decades after attaining independence, the
young nation relied heavily on European engineers and European
ideas to conduct its internal improvements projects and to
stimulate its fledgling industries. As late as 1816 there were on
average only two American engineers in each state (and even these
were nearly all self-designated as such) (Noble, 1977).
During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries there
were two types of engineering activity conducted in the United
States. The most prominent was civil engineering, which encompassed
such public works as the building of canals, roads, and forts, and
the installation of water supply systems for cities. The second
type was what would eventually come to be known as mechanical
engineering, but which was at this early stage more accurately
described as skilled-mechanic work; typically, a machine-shop owner
functioned as producer/entrepreneur for a certain line of metal
goods, introducing new techniques as his patrons' needs and his own
inventiveness prompted. Of the two types, the civil engineer was
significantly more professional in the modern sense, as technical
and mathematical training figured more prominently in his
background and daily work (Noble, 1977). In addition, the civil
engineer during this period had a much broader range of
professional involvements. An American engineer such as the
British-born and German-educated Benjamin Latrobe, for example,
might not only build canals and municipal waterworks, but also
design public buildings, dig navigational channels in rivers, and
design or direct a variety of industrial establishments (Pursell,
1981). Both types of engineering activity were often prompted by
military needs. The drive for continental expansion was inseparable
from military aims, and weapons were often a machine shop's largest
product line.
Civil engineers also had the first engineering school curriculum
offered in America. When Thomas Jefferson established the U.S.
Military Academy at West Point in 1802, he encouraged its graduates
to devote themselves to public works—to form a corps of civil
engineers. For many years this corps was the backbone of American
engineering: most railroad engineers, for example, were graduates
of West Point (again illustrating the close relation between
expansion and the military). However, the increasing scale of civil
engineering projects and industrial development throughout the
early nineteenth century dictated a need for a larger and more
versatile engineering education system (Pursell, 1981). A second
school offering the engineering degree did not appear until 1824,
when the Rensselaer School (later RPI) was
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opened; this institute offered manufacturing-oriented training
to mechanics and machinists, as well as civil engineering courses.
However, there was at the time considerable entrenched opposition
on the part of academics to the introduction of experimental
science—let alone the "useful arts," or applied
science—within the classical curriculum. Consequently, despite
an evident need, no additional institutes or technical courses of
any real consequence emerged until 1845, when pressure from
industry and individual industrialists became strong.
One of the most significant American contributions to
technological development came early in this period. Out of the
machine-shop culture grew the "American System" of manufacturing
based on the production of uniform, interchangeable parts, which
was enthusiastically promoted by Eli Whitney and others from 1799
on (Pursell, 1981). As this approach to manufacturing took hold, it
made more modern products available at lower cost to more
Americans, thus speeding up economic growth and simultaneously
enhancing the role of the mechanic/engineer. After the successful
completion of the Erie Canal in 1825 there was a rapid increase in
economic expansion activities: more canal building, more railroads
and machinery industries. Both of these developments increased the
demand for engineers and engineering products. The linking of
regional railroads (culminating, in the 1850s, in a continental
rail network) opened up mass markets and a need for mass production
of goods. The Industrial Revolution in America now began in
earnest.
As the nation expanded, the mobility of the population
increased, especially in a westward direction. The size and number
of farms in newly opened areas strained the ability of the thinly
distributed population to manage the production of crops.
Meanwhile, urban populations were increasing five times faster than
the rural population (Pursell, 1981), and the demand for food to be
sent to cities over the new transportation networks increased
accordingly. These trends led to a severe labor shortage in
agriculture—particularly during the harvest, when demand for
labor peaked. To meet this need Silas McCormick in 1831 developed
the horse-drawn "automated" reaper. Similarly, Samuel Morse pursued
a solution to the problem of transmitting messages between cities
and across the long distances being opened up by railroads; in 1844
his efforts resulted in the telegraph (the first large-scale and
commercially important use of electricity and the forerunner of
modern communications).
The development of technology in this early period thus
proceeded through the application of available (usually imported)
technical knowledge to gradually emerging societal needs.
Innovation was a hap-
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hazard process. Development was pushed forward largely through
the entrepreneurial efforts of individuals, particularly in the
manufacturing area, and societal support for the enterprise of
engineering as such was ad hoc and sporadic. It was not until the
middle of the nineteenth century that engineering as a profession
began to take shape.
Emergence of the Professional
Engineer: 1840–1890
The rapid advance of an indigenous technology began by the
mid-1800s to produce an identifiable American style, characterized
by elegant simplicity of design, efficiency in operation, and ease
of production. In 1853, after a London exhibition of many American
machine-made products, the British government sent two fact-finding
teams to investigate American manufacturing practices (Pursell,
1981). The direction of technology transfer had begun to
reverse.
Until this time, science and "technology" had been separate,
primarily because of divisions enforced by the colleges, which
disdained engineering altogether. By mid-century they had begun to
interact. The primary impetus for this change was the growth of
larger and more sophisticated manufacturing companies (Noble,
1977). A greater association between science and business led
naturally to an increased emphasis on engineering in the industrial
context. At the same time, market competition (as well as
professional competition for status) was leading to greater
specialization among engineers—both the civil and machine-shop
variety. The need for a more formalized instructional system than
apprenticeship was also becoming apparent. These trends led to
increased pressure for schools to provide technical training; at
the same time, they began the process of differentiation of
engineering activities into formalized disciplines.
The Engineering Education System.
As technical education began to emerge in the late 1840s, it
took two forms. On the one hand, established "classical" colleges
and universities introduced applied science and engineering studies
into their curricula: Union College (1845), Yale (1846), Brown
(1847), Harvard (1847), Dartmouth (1851), Michigan (1852), and
Cornell (1868). A second development was the evolution of the
"institute" schools devoted to technical instruction: MIT (1862),
Worcester Polytechnic Institute (1865), and Stevens Institute of
Technology (1867) were among the first (Noble, 1977).
At about the same time, government recognition of the importance
of technical education to development was increasing. Public
pressure
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for low-cost practical and scientific instruction was also
growing, as expressed in popular campaigns such as the ''Mechanics'
Institute Movement'' and the later "People's College Movement" for
publicly supported technical universities (Pursell, 1981). These
pressures helped to produce the Morrill Act of 1863, which provided
for a federally subsidized, nationwide system of agricultural and
mechanical (A&M), or "land-grant" colleges. The federal action
gave great impetus to technical education. State legislatures and
established schools alike eagerly accepted federal grants of land
and money, creating schools and departments of engineering. Between
1862 and 1872, the number of engineering schools in the United
States rose from 6 to 70. By 1880, there were 85 such schools; and
the total of schools and graduates continued to grow steadily for
the next 40 years, as engineering partook of a general boom in
higher education (Noble, 1977).
Despite these great inroads, engineering retained its "outsider"
status in academe. While science (as the experimentally directed
outgrowth of "natural philosophy") was gaining slow acceptance as a
bona fide element of classical studies, engineering remained more
distinctly separate. (It is significant that engineers and other
"special school" students were excluded from membership in Phi Beta
Kappa by the late 19th century; engineers formed their own honorary
society, Tau Beta Pi, in 1885.) Engineering professors experienced
this disdain most directly, and it was partly through their desire
for greater academic respectability that, after 1870, engineering
curricula became progressively more scientific in content (Noble,
1977). At the same time, developments in engineering began to
demand the incorporation of scientific knowledge. The focus thus
shifted away from the study of mechanical principles, with an
emphasis on exercises in shop and field, to mathematical theory and
principles of design. To facilitate the increased emphasis on
science and mathematics, engineering schools began to build
laboratories. This trend was most pronounced in the newly emerging
electrical and chemical engineering fields, and had a strong impact
on the characteristics of those disciplines as compared to the
older branches.
A parallel development arising from concerns about the status of
engineers and engineering was the debate over the role of the
humanities in engineering curricula. The first institute schools
offered nothing but technical courses and were adamant about that
fact. Later, schools such as MIT and Cornell initiated concurrent
classical studies programs for engineers, and eventually most
engineering schools followed suit. In addition, the Morrill Act
clearly specified that the "liberal and practical education" of
students should include classical studies.
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Of course, this admixture was not universally accepted. Many
engineering educators (and industry employers) objected to the
distraction of students from their technical studies, and to the
abstraction and "refinement" imparted by the study of philosophy,
religion, and literature—qualities deemed worthless if not
dangerous in the future employee (Noble, 1977). However, by the end
of the century this view was altering somewhat: the social sciences
were gaining general acceptance as additions to the engineering
curriculum. This "humanistic-social stem" (economics, political
science, sociology, and psychology) was seen as having practical
value as more and more engineers became corporate managers. It
accommodated a new and broader conception of the professional
engineer within an organizational framework.
Diversification of the Engineering
Disciplines.
Largely because professional civil engineering education (at
West Point and RPI) predated any significant comparable training
for other technical occupational groups by many years, civil
engineers were the first to acquire formal professional status. By
any practical yardstick, civil engineering was a profession in
America by the time the great canal and rail projects got under way
(around 1820). But perhaps the least ambiguous way to assign dates
to the emergence of the disciplines as formalized branches is
according to the establishment of professional societies. The
American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) was formed in 1852.
Nearly 20 years later (1871), the mining elements of the profession
broke away from the ASCE to form the American Institute of Mining
and Metallurgical Engineers, the first of many fragmentations of
the profession.
It was not until the last quarter of the century that mechanical
engineering emerged as a full profession, gradually evolving away
from the role of mechanic in the machine shop. When the American
Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) was formed in 1880, it was
dominated by prominent, established entrepreneurs with powerful
business connections. As younger school-trained
members—employees of the large companies—entered, what
emerged at first was a two-track professionalism featuring a
certain amount of tension between these two disparate orientations
(Noble, 1977). Gradually, with industrial diversification and
greater specialization of mechanical work, the newer, employee
aspect of work in this field came to predominate.
In the 1870s, the intensification of business activity and the
associated pressure for information dissemination combined with
increasing technical advancement to bring about a series of
important advances in communications. These included the typewriter
(1873), the rotary press (1870s), and the telephone (1876). In
addition to the telephone,
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Alexander Graham Bell invented in this period the photophone (a
system for transmitting sound via light waves), tetrahedral
construction techniques, a version of the aileron, and a hydrofoil
boat. Similarly, Thomas Alva Edison developed his electric light
and power system (featuring the carbon filament lamp) in 1879; by
1885 he had acquired more than 500 patents. George Westinghouse
accumulated more than 400 patents during the same period, including
his air brake in 1869 (Armytage, 1961). This burst of individual
inventiveness, built on the diffusion of the American System of
manufacturing throughout industry, brought to a climax the era of
the "heroic" engineer/entrepreneur of popular mythology. Devices
such as these, and such as the reaper and the telegraph, were very
often the product of a single man's inspiration and effort. From
the 1880s on, for many engineers invention and development
increasingly took on a corporate and collective character.
Entrepreneurship continued to be an important force (as it is
today), but the proportion of engineers engaged in this type of
activity became much smaller.
The first engineering discipline to experience this change was
mechanical engineering. As described earlier, there was a lengthy
transitional period in which the
inventor/entrepreneur/industrialist dominated the profession. Even
by the turn of the century, the shop-culture ethos in ASME was
still in conflict with the newer science-based,
specialization-oriented trends. However, the new engineering
environment was given clear expression through the emergence of
electrical engineering as a new field. In 1884, engineers employed
in the new industries generating and using electrical power broke
away from ASME to form the American Institute of Electrical
Engineers. This new field had been thoroughly based in science and
formal technical training from the start and thus did not have
older professional traditions to accommodate. Like the chemical
engineering profession that emerged somewhat later (professional
society formed in 1908), electrical engineering evolved from
science toward technology, rather than the reverse, and was closely
identified with the role of the corporate employee. This set the
pattern for the future role and professional image of the
engineer.
Corporate Technology and the Corporate
Engineer: 1880 and After
By 1900, the engineering profession in the United States was
second only to teachers in size, with 45,000 members. With the
annual output of engineering schools increasing rapidly (up from
100 to 4,500 per year between 1870 and 1916), the growth of the
profession substantially
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outpaced that of the industrial work force and the working
population as a whole. Between 1870 and 1916, the relative
proportion of engineers in the overall population increased by a
factor of 15 (Noble, 1977).
This geometric rise in the engineering work force reflected the
great boom in industry as American technology advanced and
successive waves of immigrants supplied a labor force and consumer
base simultaneously. After 1875, the United States was leading the
world in invention and industry. By 1890, it led the world in
patents awarded and in the production of iron and steel, coal, and
oil. A good index of the acceleration of engineering is the
increase in patents given: Between 1790 and 1860, some 36,000
patents were assigned; in the 30 years between 1860 and 1890, there
were more than 440,000 (a more than twelvefold increase in less
than half the time) (Armytage, 1961). Another index: Between 1850
and 1900, the total consumption of energy in the United States
increased fivefold (Pursell, 1981).
In the last two decades of the century, much of this increase in
energy, inventiveness, and productivity was harnessed by large
corporations. Founded in most cases by inventive entrepreneurs such
as Edison, Westinghouse, and Bell, companies like General Electric,
Western Union, and AT&T took on a life of their own, absorbing
engineering talent and producing engineering products in great
numbers for a ready market. Products of the haphazard progress of
technology over the previous half-century, such companies now began
to make technological progress itself one of their foremost
products.
The electrical industry was a major force by 1900, only 20 years
after its founding. Just as electrical engineers were setting the
pattern for modern professional engineering, their parent industry
was establishing new standards for industrial production and
management in its development of power generation, lighting,
transportation, and communication systems. This industry (1)
introduced systematic patent procedures, (2) organized the first
industrial in-house research laboratories, and (3) began to provide
extensive in-house technical training for engineer employees
(Noble, 1977). It was also a participant in the great movement
toward product standards from about 1900 on.
Perhaps the most critical innovation was the research lab. At
first these emerged ad hoc, in response to some intractable
development problem; or they were outgrowths of the company
founder's original workshop/lab, such as Edison's Menlo Park
establishment in which a team of researchers and technicians worked
on development of his electrical lighting system. Later they became
indigenous departments of the company, and ongoing R&D became
standard for the modern, science-based company. In the process, the
research lab (particularly in
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the electrical and chemical industries) began to blur the
distinction between scientists and engineers.
The introduction of in-house training for engineers was also an
important new development. With the rapid pace of innovation, by
1900 schools often lagged behind the technical needs of
industry—in both course content and school laboratory
equipment (still a common problem today). An unofficial cooperative
arrangement between academia and industry came into being, in which
the prospective employee would receive the more theoretical
scientific/technical education in college and, after graduation,
would receive company-specific technical training in "corporation
schools," which were a transitional step on the way to professional
employment. For the first two decades of the twentieth century this
practice remained most common in the electrical industry. In the
mechanical manufacturing industries, the experience-trained older
engineers continued to mistrust science-based training, and
pressured colleges to add "shop training" to their curricula
(Noble, 1977). Engineering education in the United States was
becoming a major focus of corporate interest and attention.
Another noteworthy innovation of this period was the development
of product standards. Pressure for standards began to grow in the
early nineteenth century in connection with the American System of
manufacturing, as a requirement for mass production. The first
standards actually emerged in mid-century (e.g., screw-thread
standards were proposed in 1864). But systematic standards did not
come into widespread use until the turn of the century, when the
American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) and the National
Bureau of Standards (NBS) became active in this field (in 1898 and
1901, respectively).
Great impetus was given to the standards movement by the
railroad industry, which required a standard track gauge along with
standard equipment of many kinds, such as safety couplings and air
brakes. But recognition of the benefits of standardization quickly
spread to every industry, so much so that even standards-setting
soon became unstandardized as dozens of corporations, trade
associations, and professional societies formed standards for their
industries. This situation led the professional societies of the
civil, electrical, mechanical, and mining engineers to join with
ASTM in 1916 in forming the American Engineering Standards
Committee (forerunner of today's American National Standards
Institute). Throughout the first third of this century, voluntary
standards, developed in large part by engineers, enormously
facilitated the manufacture and sale of products, stimulated
industries, and spurred the growth of engineering-based companies
(Florman, 1981).
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By late nineteenth century the growing bond between engineering
schools and industry, and the increasing identification of the
engineer with his company, posed some problems for the engineering
profession. The professional societies were a natural forum for
debate on these questions. (Even the ASCE, founded in 1852, had
immediately begun to wrestle with "ethics" issues.) Pressure from
within and without the professions to standardize the quality of
the engineering-education "product" for business needs was one of
the principal reasons for the establishment of a Society for the
Promotion of Engineering Education in 1894 (Noble, 1977). The
central problem was one of conflicting professional identities. Was
a professional engineer to be primarily (a) a businessman, (b) an
employee, organized along the lines of production workers, or (c) a
repository of arcane scientific knowledge?
For many practicing engineers, professional identity centered on
the businessman concept. But the interpretation of this role varied
among the different branches: In civil, mining, and mechanical
engineering it tended to include the consultant and entrepreneurial
role; whereas for the electrical and chemical engineering branches
(and many mechanical engineers) the focus was on management within
the corporate framework. The practicing engineer now found himself
in a dilemma analogous to that encountered by early engineering
educators, struggling to maintain professional respect and
self-respect in an environment not wholly conducive to it. Unlike
other professional groups (physicians and lawyers, for example),
engineers had become largely coopted by the organizations that
their special knowledge, technology, had helped to breed (Layton,
1971). Professional standing, for an engineer, was now very closely
aligned with corporate standing. This condition inhered in the
nature of the technology development process and was thus
inevitable, but it is nevertheless one that continues to be debated
even today.
Global Depression, Global War
By 1930, the primary change in engineering was the great scale
on which engineering activities were conducted. Industrial research
had fueled much of this expansion: From the first industrial
research laboratory in 1901 (the General Electric Company's), the
number of such labs had grown to 375 in 1917, and to over 600 by
1930 (Pursell, 1981). The rapid growth in the use of electricity
and electrical products in the home, combined with the growth and
spread of population, created a vast economy dependent on
technological goods and services—the
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"technological society." In addition, new branches of
engineering (e.g., chemical and aeronautical) had emerged in
strength after World War I.
The most significant new engineering discipline in terms of
impact on the economy was production engineering, which was
concerned with improving the efficiency of the manufacturing
process. An important element was the concept of "scientific
management," championed by Frederick W. Taylor and others. These
new techniques had their most notable application in the burgeoning
automobile industry, where Henry Ford's moving assembly line became
the catalyst for revolutionary changes in American life and
industry. The effects of the automobile on all the
engineering-based industries were profound. The car required tires,
radios, engine improvements, synthetic materials, roads, bridges,
and fuel. Residential and commercial construction spread far from
the city centers. By 1937, U.S. per capita consumption of oil was
10 times that of any other nation (Armytage, 1961).
Across the country, the building of the modern metropolis had
enormous implications for engineering. Spearheaded by planners such
as Robert Moses, urban development arrived. Skyscrapers, rapid
transit systems, and public utilities operating on a vast scale
brought a boom in civil engineering in particular. The needs of
business for communications and an array of other services were
mixed with the requirements of large, densely clustered residential
populations. The modern city was becoming a new organism,
sustaining a fast-paced, affluent style of living through the
provision of a coordinated network of technological goods and
services.
Nationwide, the speed of development meant that little was done
to coordinate different lines of development, or even to examine
their present and future impacts on society and the economy.
President Hoover was interested in conservation of resources (land,
lumber, and water), and in 1929 commissioned studies that did draw
attention to the "unsynchronized" developments in technology. These
were clearly matters requiring government attention, but there was
as yet little precedent for governmental intervention in economic
development on a large scale. The Panama Canal was one partial
exception; and the building of large dams for water management in
the Mississippi Valley and the western states early in the century
was another step in this direction. Certainly the federal
mobilization of scientific and engineering effort during World War
I (for example, in the chemical industry) had had an economic
impact, if not intent. However, it remained for the Great
Depression to provide the opportunity and the rationale for broad,
coordinated federal programs bearing on technology.
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The Tennessee Valley Authority.
The great experiment in social engineering of the 1930s was the
Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) program. The Tennessee River
basin, encompassing an area of some 40,000 square miles, had been
subject to recurrent flooding; the river itself, an important link
to the Mississippi, was difficult to navigate. In 1933 President
Roosevelt established the TVA to solve these and many other
problems of the region through a coordinated program based on the
construction of a system of hydroelectric dams. Sixteen major dams
were built, and five older dams were modified. A 9-foot channel was
dredged in the river. TVA provided flood control, power generation,
soil conservation, fertilizers, improved public health, and
reforestation. This was the largest single construction program
ever undertaken in the United States up to that time (Armytage,
1961). It supplied 15 percent of the nation's hydroelectric
capacity and 5 percent of the electrical power generated from any
source for public use. It reversed the severe erosion in the
region, and restored some three million acres to conservation or
productive use. Civil and electrical engineers by the hundreds
worked on the project, and thousands of other workers were also
provided employment. As an example of government mobilization of
technological know-how in the service of civilian social and
economic needs, the TVA may be unparalleled even up to the present
day.
The Rural Electrification
Administration.
An important outgrowth of TVA and the larger government role it
portended was the establishment of the Rural Electrification
Administration (REA) in 1935. The electrification of the farm had a
revolutionary impact on agricultural production, as it provided
farmers with low-cost power to light and heat their homes, pump
water, milk the cows, and otherwise increase the output that human
labor could produce. In addition, it brought urban-style
communication to great numbers of Americans and thus broadened the
demand for manufactured goods that electrified homes were now
equipped to use.
World War II.
Throughout history, technology has had a decisive effect on
warfare. World War II was no exception. Even before the United
States entered the conflict, it was apparent to the federal
government that science and technology should be mobilized to
contribute to a prospective war effort. Perhaps the most
significant move was the formation of the Office of Scientific
Research and Development (OSRD) in 1941, with engineer Vannevar
Bush as its director (Pursell, 1981). Research carried out by this
agency created the basis for today's "electronic warfare." The war
produced such new technologies as
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radar, controlled nuclear fission, nuclear weapons, the
computer, systems theory, jet propulsion, long-range rockets and
missiles, synthetic rubber, penicillin, and DDT. It was also a
revolution in terms of the scale of technology employed: As a case
in point, during the war the Allies used 14 times as much gasoline
on an average day as had been used by the Allies during all of
World War I. The expansion of research in industry as a result of
the war effort was also striking. By 1950 there were 2,700 industry
R&D labs in the United States, employing some 175,000 people
(Armytage, 1961).
The expansion of industrial research after the war partly
reflects the new links forged during the war between scientists and
engineers as they contributed jointly to the war effort. One result
of those linkages was a greater postwar emphasis on science and
mathematics in engineering education. Similarly, the war
facilitated the forging of various institutional links among
academe, industry, and government, which became permanent after the
war ended (the National Science Foundation is one such link, in
this case between government and universities. Another key theme of
the war was that engineering was recognized as being of critical
strategic importance. It was now clear that national security
depended on the federal government's maintaining the health of the
profession. The work of this panel and its parent committee is
evidence of that continuing concern.
The end of the war found the United States in a dominant
position globally, with the world's largest and most efficient
industrial plant and a strong economy, while those of most other
industrialized nations were in ruins. It also found millions of
servicemen eager to return home and attend college under the GI
Bill. The technological society was about to be inaugurated in
earnest.
Early Structural Characteristics of
Engineering
Based on the foregoing examination of the engineering profession
as it evolved in America from the late eighteenth century through
World War II, the panel made certain general observations about the
external and internal forces that helped determine the course of
that evolution. The panel recognizes that those early, formative
processes may not have direct relevance to present-day events.
However, they gave the profession much of its contemporary
structure, established inherent strengths and weaknesses, and set
patterns for its societal role, status, and function. Thus, a
discussion of these factors in the historical context may serve to
establish themes useful in evaluating the profession at the present
time and projecting its possible future course.
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Forces Affecting Development
Societal Demand for Goods and
Services.
On a large scale this "demand-pull" appears to have been the
primary driver of technology development, and particularly of
growth in established technologies. Demand by towns and cities for
municipal water supply systems in the post-Colonial period, for
example, was based on the general recognition that such systems
were available. Civil engineering expanded through the demand for
this and other public improvements; and technology advanced as
engineers adapted and improved the associated hydraulic pumps and
turbines. Similarly, the need of railroads for a means of message
transmission led to the telegraph, which was then adopted as a more
general medium of communication. The Civil War intensified the
demand for improved transportation and communications systems,
leading to a burst of inventiveness that then stimulated business
and thus the entire technology development process; electrical and
mechanical engineering were specific beneficiaries. High demand for
automobiles in the period after World War I is another example of
societal demand driving the direction and rate of engineering
development. Each particular demand translates into a demand-pull
on manpower as well, resulting in the establishment of an
educational system or new components suitable for imparting the
needed skills and knowledge. But societal demand based on available
technology and clearly defined wants should be distinguished from
potential, as-yet-unrecognized demand.
Undeveloped Societal Demands.
Often the demand for a product or a service is latent; that is,
were a suitable technology available and recognized, demand would
appear. In modern times, perceiving these unexpressed needs is
often the function of marketing analysts. During earlier periods it
was the inventor/entrepreneur himself who identified the latent
demand and developed the technological means to fulfill it. Thomas
Edison, for example, after an early experience of failure in
marketing a device he had invented, always thereafter identified a
market before pursuing an idea (Pursell, 1981). The success of the
"automated" reaper was likewise due to McCormick's accurate
assessment of a need for greater harvesting capacity in the face of
a farm labor shortage. Charles Kettering, the legendary director of
General Motors' Research Laboratory, owed his phenomenal success to
an ability to anticipate the product that "people never knew they
wanted until it was made available to them" (see appendix). Once
identified and addressed, such hidden needs rapidly translate into
demand that further stimulates development.
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Technology Transfer.
The availability of new technologies through transfer into a
society or from one sector of a society to another is another force
that sparks demand. In the early history of the United States, such
transfer of technology took place in the form of importation of
trained engineers and technical knowledge from Europe—chiefly
from England. The flow of technology transfer had largely reversed
its direction by the mid-nineteenth century, but remained land
remains today) important as a factor in U.S. technology development
in certain key areas such as optics, precision instrumentation, and
electronics. This factor stimulates demand not only for goods and
services, but also for development of an indigenous capability for
providing those goods and services.
Indigenous Advances in
Technology.
Autonomous technology development, whether through purposive
effort or accidental discovery, can create demand if the new
technology answers existing societal needs. This ''supply-push''
factor became especially important in the electrical and chemical
industries, where large-scale research was more likely to produce
unexpected breakthroughs in science and technology. The panel
observes that the potential for such advances to affect the
engineering profession is greatest if they are linked to
organizational mechanisms by which (a) potential uses of the
technology are identified, (b) a potential market can be
identified, and (c) demand can be stimulated.
Infrastructure Development.
Extremely important factors in the development of the
engineering profession are the components of the institutional
infrastructure that supports engineers and engineering. These
elements are: (a) educational institutions, (b) competitive
corporations, (c) research facilities, and (d) the system of
technical communication. As we have seen, engineering education
emerged gradually and in the face of resistance from the
established academic community. The development of engineering
schools was unable to keep pace with technology development and the
growing societal need for engineers until pressure from industry
and trade groups led eventually to substantial federal intervention
and support. Research facilities emerged at the turn of the century
as a powerful force for change within the engineering profession.
Allied with the expanding influence of science-based industrial
companies, they were the greatest stimulant to those engineering
disciplines most closely associated with those companies:
electrical and chemical. Technical communication, weak and informal
in the United States until the Civil War period, did not emerge in
any systematic way until engineering schools became established and
the
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professional societies had begun to be active. The dissemination
of information on an organized and consistent basis was an
essential factor in the burst of inventiveness seen during the
1870s, as well as in the move toward organized research by
industry.
Support By Key Individuals.
At a time when there was no coordinated planning or direction of
technology development on a societywide basis, the support of
influential individuals was critical in the development of
engineering as a profession. The efforts of Thomas Jefferson,
Stephen Van Rensselaer, Ezra Cornell, and others were instrumental
in the initiation of engineering education in America. In the
opinion of the panel, it is usually individuals, not institutions,
who bring about change in traditional practices and entrenched
points of view. When those interested individuals are also in a
position to bring governmental and political influence to bear
(e.g., Jefferson, Hoover, and Franklin D. Roosevelt), their
advocacy is of great importance.
Government Support.
The scale of actions needed to foster increased development in
the engineering professions is often too large to be undertaken by
individual companies or groups of individuals. Thus, passage of the
Morrill Act of 1863 was a pivotal event in the professionalization
of engineering, opening up the opportunity for technical training
to large numbers of people. It is clear that government support for
large public works-style projects such as the Eric Canal,
railroads, the Panama Canal, and flood control was crucial in early
periods of engineering. Similarly, government action during the
Depression and, again, during World War II was in large part
responsible for the nation's success in overcoming both of those
threats to national well-being by means that were partly
technological. At the same time, these actions gave tremendous
impetus to engineering in all its forms, providing large-scale
engineering employment and fostering the development of high-cost,
R&D-intensive new fields such as aerospace and computers. In a
technological society, government support of and intervention in
the technology development process is crucial.
Supportive Societal Environment.
The existence of a social climate conducive to technology
development and engineering activity is also essential. The panel
believes that there are three main conditions that contribute to
such an environment:
• Societal approval of technological advancement (i.e. is
such advancement seen as beneficial?)
• Acceptance by the existing establishment [i.e., do the
political,
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educational, and economic institutions view engineering activity
as a threat to their interests or values?)
• Existence of a market structure that will facilitate the
spread of engineering products and the demand for them (i.e., is
there a market—whether civilian or government—and a way
to reach it?)
Adaptability and Responsiveness
In a market environment, adaptability to changing conditions and
responsiveness to social and market needs are healthy
characteristics, in general. However, there are certain senses in
which these characteristics have negative implications for a
profession. It should therefore be useful to examine the extent to
which the engineering profession has been adaptable and responsive
during its development, and to determine whether these
characteristics have functioned as strengths or weaknesses.
One characteristic of the profession, evident in early times as
well as today, is that it tends to follow the market for goods and
services it provides. It is highly responsive to perceived and
expressed societal demand. "Supply-push" is also a significant
factor, but this is usually serendipitous and rarely permits
engineering to structure and direct demand autonomously. Moreover,
once a market is established, a technology is devised, and
production is going forward, the system tends to manage output so
as to maximize profit. Where there is little new technology
development involved, output is often maximized as long as demand
continues. (The production of automobiles is a case in point.) This
process is stopped only by the drying up of demand, either through
saturation or through the obsolescence of the technology. Because
demand depends on such factors as competition and economic cycles,
it is not always possible to predict accurately what demand will
be. Consequently, there is little in the way of an internal "brake"
keyed to anticipated changes in demand.
Given these conditions, engineering is forced to follow trends
closely—this is true on both a microscopic (the practitioner)
and a macroscopic level (engineering disciplines). It means that
the educational system has difficulty keeping pace with current
trends in demand and technology, and that the "output" (students)
therefore always lags external conditions somewhat in skills and
orientation. This was a noticeable problem for engineering schools
even in the nineteenth century, and today it is part of the basis
for a contemporary argument that engineering education should
stress basics rather than the trend of the moment.
A strong adaptability to business requirements is a necessary
corol-
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lary of the close tie to market conditions. Because by the
beginning of the twentieth century most engineers were employees of
corporations, the fate of engineers and engineering was strongly
identified with the fates of companies and industries. This meant
that by that time there was relatively little professional
self-determination for individual engineers, and that the
professional societies were largely subordinated to the interests
and requirements of the industries their members served (see, for
example, Layton, 1971).
Thus, the panel finds that adaptability is a strong point in
engineering insofar as it contributes to the security and economic
survival of the professions. But it is a weak point in that
professional engineers are dependent on forces largely out of their
control.
Diversity
Much of the discussion thus far has tended to treat engineering
as a monolithic, homogeneous enterprise. Yet by the end of World
War II, the engineering profession consisted of many distinct
disciplines (civil, metallurgical and mining, mechanical,
electrical, radio, chemical, aeronautical, automotive, industrial,
petroleum, marine, agricultural, and production, or manufacturing,
engineering). Each of these branches tended to acquire its own
characteristics and its own distinctive orientation toward the
practice of engineering, springing from the particular
circumstances in which it operated. The existence of separate
professional societies for each discipline is one factor. Another
is the compartmentalization of engineering schools. The close
association of different branches with different industries
strongly reinforced this tendency. Thus, the fragmentation of
engineering permitted natural differences in personalities,
interests, and outlook to become more firmly entrenched.
In the view of the panel, the danger in this great diversity is
that it may promote a tendency toward narrow specialization in
engineering institutions and among the engineering disciplines. The
diversification followed the natural diversification of
technologies and product lines, but it meant that a somewhat narrow
focus inevitably prevailed throughout an engineer's career. This
may have reduced the cohesiveness of the engineering profession, so
that there is less of the sense of shared commitments and values
that is seen among the clergy, for example, or the military, or the
medical and legal professions. However, from a structural point of
view diversity is only a problem if it interferes with the
profession's adaptability as it develops. One of the purposes of
the next chapter is to see whether that has been the case.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
engineering schools