ABSTRACT

A History of Engineering and Technology offers a highly readable account of the development of engineering and technology from prehistory to the present. The author uses the broad sweep of history as a backdrop for expositions of important benchmarks in engineered works and products.
The book presents early hydraulic engineering in the context of modern ideas relating technology to the complex social structures that arose in Sumeria and Egypt. It also provides a comprehensive and objective review of the greatest engineering civilization of antiquity-Greco-Roman-and discusses the western world's attempts to recover its achievements after the Middle Ages. The flowering of French and British engineered technology is portrayed through the men and machines that led to today's industrial society.
Other topics discussed in A History of Engineering and Technology include the evolution of the modern ship, engineering in modern war and medicine, the advent of the computer, and the Space Age. Over 100 illustrations and the book's in-depth presentation of key theoretical developments make this volume essential as a college textbook for students, as well as an important reference resource for libraries, engineers, and scientists.

chapter 1|14 pages

The Earliest Builders

chapter 3|15 pages

Classical Antiquity I: The Greeks

chapter 5|14 pages

Ancient Power and Metallurgy

chapter 7|15 pages

The Middle Ages — Masters of Stone

chapter 8|14 pages

The Renaissance

chapter 9|20 pages

17th and 18th Centuries

chapter 11|19 pages

Sanitary and Hydraulic Engineering

chapter 12|35 pages

20th Century Engineering — Part I

chapter 13|46 pages

20th Century Engineering — Part 2

chapter 14|24 pages

New Technology and the Future