Abstract
THE term engineering is employed with many different shades of meaning. Tredgold's famous definition of civil engineering, which appears in the charter of the Institution of Civil Engineers (London), dating from 1828, commences with the excellent phrase “—the art of directing the great sources of power in nature for the use and convenience of man—.” In Tredgold's time there were only two recognised types of engineering — i.e. civil and military. At the present time, nearly forty different branches of engineering have been itemised in technical literature. For the purposes of this discussion the following broad definition is suggested to cover all types of non-military engineering: “the economic application of the sciences to construction, production or useful accomplishment, especially on a large scale.”
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KENNELLY, A. The Advancement of Engineering in Relation to the Advancement of Science1. Nature 117, 160–162 (1926). https://doi.org/10.1038/117160a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/117160a0