The term engineering is derived from the Latiningenium, meaning "cleverness". (Full article...)
Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the limitations imposed by practicality, regulation, safety and cost. The word engineer (Latiningeniator, the origin of the Ir. in the title of engineer in countries like Belgium and The Netherlands) is derived from the Latin words ingeniare ("to contrive, devise") and ingenium ("cleverness"). The foundational qualifications of a licensed professional engineer typically include a four-year bachelor's degree in an engineering discipline, or in some jurisdictions, a master's degree in an engineering discipline plus four to six years of peer-reviewed professional practice (culminating in a project report or thesis) and passage of engineering board examinations. (Full article...)
Featured articles are displayed here, which represent some of the best content on English Wikipedia.
Bush in the 1940s
Vannevar Bush (/væˈniːvɑːr/van-NEE-var; March 11, 1890 – June 28, 1974) was an American engineer, inventor and science administrator, who during World War II headed the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD), through which almost all wartime military R&D was carried out, including important developments in radar and the initiation and early administration of the Manhattan Project. He emphasized the importance of scientific research to national security and economic well-being, and was chiefly responsible for the movement that led to the creation of the National Science Foundation.
During his career, Bush patented a string of his own inventions. He is known particularly for his engineering work on analog computers, and for the memex. Starting in 1927, Bush constructed a differential analyzer, a mechanical analog computer with some digital components that could solve differential equations with as many as 18 independent variables. An offshoot of the work at MIT by Bush and others was the beginning of digital circuit design theory. The memex, which he began developing in the 1930s (heavily influenced by Emanuel Goldberg's "Statistical Machine" from 1928) was a hypothetical adjustable microfilm viewer with a structure analogous to that of hypertext. The memex and Bush's 1945 essay "As We May Think" influenced generations of computer scientists, who drew inspiration from his vision of the future. (Full article...)
Grinding is an abrasive machining process that uses a grinding wheel as the cutting tool.
Grinding practice is a large and diverse area of manufacturing and toolmaking. It can produce very fine finishes and very accurate dimensions; yet in mass production contexts it can also rough out large volumes of metal quite rapidly. It is usually better suited to the machining of very hard materials than is "regular" machining (that is, cutting larger chips with cutting tools such as tool bits or milling cutters), and until recent decades it was the only practical way to machine such materials as hardened steels. Compared to "regular" machining, it is usually better suited to taking very shallow cuts, such as reducing a shaft’s diameter by half a thousandth of an inch or 12.7 μm.
Carl Edgar Myers (1842–1925) was an American aeronautical engineer. He was born at March 2, 1842 at Herkimer, New York, to Abram H. and Eliza Ann (Cristman) Myers. At various times in his life, he was employed as carpenter, mechanician, plumber, electrician and chemist, banker, and photographer. After 1978, he focused on aeronautical engineering. He became known as the inventor of new or improved systems for generating gases, and as the constructor of hydrogen balloons and airships, including the aerial velocipede, gas kite, sky-cycle and electrical aerial torpedo. He married Mary Breed Hawley on November 8, 1871.
Myers, after spending two years hiring professional balloonists to test his designs, Myers went up in a balloon himself. (Full article...)
Image 3
Pavel Lvovitch Schilling. Portrait by Karl Bryullov, 1828
Baron Pavel Lvovitch Schilling (1786–1837), also known as Paul Schilling, was a Russian inventor, military officer and diplomat of Baltic German origin. The majority of his career was spent working for the imperial Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs as a language officer at the Russian embassy in Munich. As a military officer, he took part in the War of the Sixth Coalition against Napoleon. In his later career, he was transferred to the Asian department of the ministry and undertook a tour of Mongolia to collect ancient manuscripts.
ODB++ is a proprietary CAD-to-CAM data exchange format used in the design and manufacture of electronic devices. Its purpose is to exchange printed circuit board design information between design and manufacturing and between design tools from different EDA/ECAD vendors. It was originally developed by Valor Computerized Systems, Ltd. (acquired in 2010 by Mentor Graphics which was later acquired by Siemens in 2016) as the job description format for their CAM system.
ODB stands for open database, but its openness is disputed, as discussed below. The '++' suffix, evocative of C++, was added in 1997 with the addition of component descriptions. There are two versions of ODB++: the original (now controlled by Mentor) and an XML version called ODB++(X) that Valor developed and donated to the IPC organization in an attempt to merge GenCAM (IPC-2511) and ODB++ into Offspring (IPC-2581). (Full article...)
Image 6
A Dyson sphere is a hypothetical megastructure that encompasses a star and captures a large percentage of its power output. The concept is a thought experiment that attempts to imagine how a spacefaring civilization would meet its energy requirements once those requirements exceed what can be generated from the home planet's resources alone. Because only a tiny fraction of a star's energy emissions reaches the surface of any orbiting planet, building structures encircling a star would enable a civilization to harvest far more energy.
The first modern imagining of such a structure was by Olaf Stapledon in his science fiction novel Star Maker (1937). The concept was later explored by the physicist Freeman Dyson in his 1960 paper "Search for Artificial Stellar Sources of Infrared Radiation". Dyson speculated that such structures would be the logical consequence of the escalating energy needs of a technological civilization and would be a necessity for its long-term survival. A signature of such spheres detected in astronomical searches would be an indicator of extraterrestrial intelligence. (Full article...)
Meticulous naval inventories show that HMS Beagle carried a total of at least 34 recorded chronometers on its three main survey voyages from 1826 to 1843, and 22 on the second voyage with Darwin on board, when they had a dedicated cabin. Some were Navy property and others were on loan from the manufacturers, as well as six on the second voyage owned by the captain, Robert FitzRoy. Both the two known survivors from the second voyage are owned by the British Museum (the second is registration No. CAI.1743). (Full article...)
Bell was an energetic and skilful entrepreneur as well as an innovative metallurgist. He was involved in multiple partnerships with his brothers to make iron and alkali chemicals, and with other pioneers including Robert Stirling Newall to make steel cables. He pioneered the large-scale manufacture of aluminium at his Washington works, conducting experiments in its production, and in the production of other chemicals such as the newly discovered element thallium. He was a director of major companies including the North Eastern Railway and the Forth Bridge company, then the largest bridge project in the world. (Full article...)
Little Boy was developed by Lieutenant CommanderFrancis Birch's group at the Manhattan Project's Los Alamos Laboratory during World War II, a reworking of their abandoned Thin Man nuclear bomb. Like Thin Man, it was a gun-type fission weapon. It derived its explosive power from the nuclear fission of uranium-235, whereas Thin Man was based on fission of plutonium-239. Fission was accomplished by shooting a hollow cylinder (the "bullet") onto a solid cylinder of the same material (the "target") by means of a charge of nitrocellulose propellant powder. Little Boy contained 64 kilograms (141 lb) of highly enriched uranium, although less than a kilogram underwent nuclear fission. Its components were fabricated at three different plants so that no one would have a copy of the complete design. Unlike the implosion design, which required sophisticated coordination of shaped explosive charges, the gun-type design was considered almost certain to work so it was never tested before its first use at Hiroshima. (Full article...)
Image 12
Overhead View of Tehachapi Energy Storage Project, Tehachapi, CA
The Tehachapi Energy Storage Project (TSP) is a 8MW/32MWhlithium-ion battery-based grid energy storage system at the Monolith Substation of Southern California Edison (SCE) in Tehachapi, California, sufficient to power between 1,600 and 2,400 homes for four hours. At the time of commissioning in 2014, it was the largest lithium-ion battery system operating in North America and one of the largest in the world. TSP is considered to be a modern-day energy storage pioneer with significant accomplishments that have proven the viability of utility-scale energy storage using lithium-ion technology. While originally envisioned as a research and development project, TSP operated as a distribution-level resource for SCE and for calendar year 2020, SCE reported that TSP operated in the wholesale energy market with revenue exceeding operating and maintenance costs. In 2021, SCE began the decommissioning of TSP, which was followed by formal decommissioning by state regulators in 2022. The physical dismantlement of TSP is expected to be completed by the end of 2022. (Full article...)
Image 13
Dent in 1928
Beryl May DentMIEE (10 May 1900 – 9 August 1977) was an English mathematical physicist, technical librarian, and a programmer of early analogue and digital computers to solve electrical engineering problems. She was born in Chippenham, Wiltshire, the eldest daughter of schoolteachers. The family left Chippenham in 1901, after her father became head teacher of the then recently established Warminster County School. In 1923, she graduated from the University of Bristol with First Class Honours in applied mathematics. She was awarded the Ashworth Hallett scholarship by the university and was accepted as a postgraduate student at Newnham College, Cambridge.
She returned to Bristol in 1925, after being appointed a researcher in the Physics Department at the University of Bristol, with her salary being paid by the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. In 1927, John Lennard-Jones was appointed Professor of Theoretical physics, a chair being created for him, with Dent becoming his research assistant in theoretical physics. Lennard‑Jones pioneered the theory of interatomic and intermolecular forces at Bristol and she became one of his first collaborators. They published six papers together from 1926 to 1928, dealing with the forces between atoms and ions, that were to become the foundation of her master's thesis. Later work has shown that the results they obtained had direct application to atomic force microscopy by predicting that non-contact imaging is possible only at small tip-sample separations. (Full article...)
Image 14
Birdsill Holly Jr. (November 8, 1820 – April 27, 1894) was an American mechanical engineer and inventor of water hydraulics devices. He is known for inventing mechanical devices that improved city water systems and patented an improved fire hydrant that is similar to those used currently for firefighting. Holly was a co-inventor of the Silsby steam fire engine. He founded the Holly Manufacturing Company that developed into the larger Holly Steam Combination Company that distributed heat from a central station and developed commercial district heating for cities in the United States and Canada. (Full article...)
Image 15
Genetic engineering, also called genetic modification or genetic manipulation, is the modification and manipulation of an organism's genes using technology. It is a set of technologies used to change the genetic makeup of cells, including the transfer of genes within and across species boundaries to produce improved or novel organisms.
New DNA is obtained by either isolating and copying the genetic material of interest using recombinant DNA methods or by artificially synthesising the DNA. A construct is usually created and used to insert this DNA into the host organism. The first recombinant DNA molecule was made by Paul Berg in 1972 by combining DNA from the monkey virus SV40 with the lambda virus. (Full article...)
Image 2Design of a turbine requires collaboration of engineers from many fields, as the system involves mechanical, electro-magnetic and chemical processes. The blades, rotor and stator as well as the steam cycle all need to be carefully designed and optimized. (from Engineering)
Image 3The InSight lander with solar panels deployed in a cleanroom (from Engineering)
Image 6A drawing for a steam locomotive. Engineering is applied to design, with emphasis on function and the utilization of mathematics and science. (from Engineering)
Image 9Graphic representation of a minute fraction of the WWW, demonstrating hyperlinks (from Engineering)
Image 10The application of the steam engine allowed coke to be substituted for charcoal in iron making, lowering the cost of iron, which provided engineers with a new material for building bridges. This bridge was made of cast iron, which was soon displaced by less brittle wrought iron as a structural material. (from Engineering)
Image 20Archimedes is regarded as one of the leading scientists in classical antiquity whose ideas have underpinned much of the practice of engineering. (from Engineer)
This list was generated from these rules. Questions and feedback are always welcome! The search is being run daily with the most recent ~14 days of results. Note: Some articles may not be relevant to this project.