HPS282S - HISTORY OF TECHNOLOGY AND ENGINEERING
Spring 1998
Engineers: Gentlemen or Mechanics?
10 February 1998
I. Attitudes to Engineers
A. Early Prejudices against "Mechanics" and the "Mechanical Arts"
B. Counter-examples of Engineering prestige
1. The Idea of genius in the Renaissance
2. The link with the profession of arms
II. Engineers in England during the Industrial Revolution
A. The Smeatonians 1793
1. Preceded by the Society of Civil Engineers
2. The Concept of "Civil" Engineer
3. Well-heeled gentleman
4. Network of professional contacts
5. No regulatory or administrative sanctions
6. Model of professionalism: the liberal professions
7. Exclusivist on the basis of social class and income as much as technical competence
8. After a period of inactivity it is resurrected and known as the Smeatonians (1793) with a more formal organization.
B. The Institution of Civil Engineers 1818
1. Thomas Telford as President. Sign of the expansion and democratization of the profession. Founded by a number of younger engineers, less well connected who were not welcome at the Smeatonians.
2. Aspects of the learned society
3. Means of providing instruction and credentials for engineers
C. The Institution of Mechanical Engineers 1846
1. George Stephenson as the first president a sign of further democratization
2. Indication of specialization of functions
3. More open to people who were more "mechanical" in both senses of the word: involved with mechanics and machines and people from a humbler background.
D. Prestige of engineering rises.
E. The Image and the Persona of the Victorian Civil Engineer
1. Samuel Smiles and the Lives of the Engineers
2. Rudyard Kipling [TEXT: SONS OF MARTHA]
III. Were engineers victims of social prejudice before the twentieth century?
IV. Engineers in the United States
A. Growth of a profession
1. Numbers: Before construction of the Erie canal, about 30 engineers in the whole of US. Many are foreigners, including French military engineers recruited for the army.
2. Growth in US: 2000 (1850); 7000 (1880); and 136,000 (1890). [Layton]
3. Growth in Canada: 35 (1851); 129 (1861); 451 (1871); and 719 (1881). [Millard]
B. The Fusion of Two Models of Engineering
1. The more aristocratic and military kind of engineering
a) Great respect for formal scientific instruction and application of science in their work
b) Build for the ages: solid, often expensive and economically unattractive but the best possible work
c) Formal education
2. Civilian inspired and controlled engineering
a) Economic considerations paramount
b) Shoddier work, as long as its serviceable
c) Little concern for credentials, more with reputation and experience
d) Practical approach to work and less concern for science
C. Civil Engineers and the ASCE (1852)
1. Civil engineers have a become a solid and established profession by mid-century. They found their own organization modeled on examples in England ICE (1818) and the IME (1846)
2. See themselves as cosmopolitan, tamers of nature, rugged individualists (phrase coined by Herbert Hoover), and in the vanguard of both technical, material, and cultural progress.
D. Shop culture vs. school culture
V. Professionalism in the United States
A. American Engineering Professional Societies and their features
1. Chronology of Foundation of Major Societies
2. Diverse Aims of the Professional societies
a) Learned Society
b) Club of people with common technical and business interests
c) Defence of economic status
d) Defence of Social Status
e) Regulation of technical activity and ethics
B. The context of engineering professionalism at the beginning of the 20th century
1. Progressivism
2. Proletarianization of Engineers
3. Growth of Corporate Power
