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EVOLUTION OF AMERICAN ENGINEERING 20 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: 1840â1890 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 engineersâboth 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
EVOLUTION OF AMERICAN ENGINEERING 21 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.
