HPS282S - HISTORY OF TECHNOLOGY AND ENGINEERING
Spring 1998
The Beginnings of Scientific Engineering
22 & 27 January 1998
I. Galileo's First Science
A. The technological and technical accomplishments of the Renaissance
B. Mathematical Practitioners
C. Galileo's Life and Work (1564-1642)
D. The Two New Sciences
1. Kinematics
2. Strength of Materials
E. Galileo's contributions to Engineering
1. Scaleup
2. Conflation and Analysis of the Artificial and Natural World
II. Baconianism and the Academic Movement
A. Francis Bacon (1561-1626) and the Advancement of Learning
B. The Royal Academies of Science
1. Royal Society of London 1660
2. Académie Royale des Sciences 1666
III. Bernard Forest de Bélidor (1699?-1761)
A. Bélidor the Artillerist
B. La Science des Ingénieurs
1. Contents
2. A Disciple of Galileo
3. Handbooks and Formulas
4. Ahead of one's time
IV. John Smeaton (1724-1792)
A. Antoine Parent and his theoretical work on efficiency of waterwheels (1704)
B. Smeaton's Parameter Variation in his waterwheel experiments
V. Charles-Augustin Coulomb (1736-1806)
A. Engineer, Academician, and Physicist
1. Sur l'Application des règles des Maximis et Minimis à quelques Problèmes de Statique, relatifs à l'Architecture. Par M. Coulomb, Ingénieur du Roi. in Mémoires de Mathématiques et de Physique, présentés à l'Académie Royale des Sciences par divers Savans, et lus dans ses Assemblées, Vol. 7, 1773, pp. 343-82, Paris, 1776. "On the Application of the rules of maxima and minima to some statical problems, relevant to architecture".
2. Measurement of magnetic and electrostatic force in 1789
3. Again, "ahead of his time".
VI. Gaspard Riche de Prony (1755-1839)
A. Prony's ideas on Engineering
1. Experience
- "Experience has shown that the engineers could not be replaced by men who were only architects, or mathematicians, or physicists; that it was necessary that this engineer had a special education, a system of theoretical and practical knowledge absolutely appropriate to the profession that he had chosen. This system embraces almost all the arts and all the sciences and the branches of which it [the system] is made up, form, either by their assemblage or their application a new and special science."
- ORIGINAL:"L'expérience, (...), a fait sentir que l'ingénieur ne pouvait être supplée par des hommes qui ne seraient qu'architectes, ou géomètres, ou physiciens; qu'il fallait que cet ingénieur eñt une éducation particulière, un système de connaissances théoriques et pratiques, absolument propres à l'état qu'il choisissait. Ce système embrasse presque tous les arts et toutes les sciences et les branches qui le composent, quoique appartenant à des tiges connues, forment, soit par leur assemblage, soit par leur application une science particulière et nouvelle". [Unpublished Discours préliminaire for the Encylopédie méthodique]"
B. Prony as a transitional figure and a professor at the Ecole Polytechnique.
