Essays On The History Of Mechanical Engineering

This book treats several subjects from the History of Mechanism and Machine Science, and also contains an illustrative presentation of the Museum of Engines and Mechanisms of the University of Palermo, Italy, which houses a collection of various pieces of machinery from the last 150 years. The various sections deal with some eminent scientists of the past, with the history of industrial installations, machinery and transport, with the human inventiveness for mechanical and scientific devices, and with robots and human-driven automata. All chapters have been written by experts in their fields. The volume shows a wide-ranging panorama on the historical progress of scientific and technical knowledge in the past centuries. It will stimulate new research and ideas for those involved in the history of Science and Technology.

Although the disciplines of architecture and structural engineering have both experienced their own historical development, their interaction has resulted in many fascinating and delightful structures. To take this interaction to a higher level, there is a need to stimulate the inventive and creative design of architectural structures and to persuade architects and structural engineers to further collaborate in this process, exploiting together new concepts, applications and challenges. This set of book of abstracts and full paper searchable CD-ROM presents selected papers presented at the 3rd International Conference on Structures and Architecture Conference (ICSA2016), organized by the School of Architecture of the University of Minho, Guimarães, Portugal (July 2016), to promote the synergy in the collaboration between the disciplines of architecture and structural engineering.

What is mechanical engineering? What a mechanical engineering does? How did the mechanical engineering change through ages? What is the future of mechanical engineering? This book answers these questions in a lucid manner. It also provides a brief chronological history of landmark events and answers questions such as: When was steam engine invented? Where was first CNC machine developed? When did the era of additive manufacturing start? When did the marriage of mechanical and electronics give birth to discipline of mechatronics? This book informs and create interest on mechanical engineering in the general public and particular in students. It also helps to sensitize the engineering fraternity about the historical aspects of engineering. At the same time, it provides a common sense knowledge of mechanical engineering in a handy manner.

This book offers insights relevant to modern history and epistemology of physics, mathematics and, indeed, to all the sciences and engineering disciplines emerging of 19th century. This research volume is the first of a set of three Springer books on Lazare Nicolas Marguérite Carnot’s (1753–1823) remarkable work: Essay on Machines in General (Essai sur les machines en général [1783] 1786). The other two forthcoming volumes are: Principes fondamentaux de l’équilibre et du mouvement (1803) and Géométrie de position (1803). Lazare Carnot – l'organisateur de la victoire – in Essai sur le machine en général (1786) assumed that the generalization of machines was a necessity for society and its economic development. Subsequently, his new coming science applied to machines attracted considerable interest for technician, as well, already in the 1780’s. With no lack in rigour, Carnot used geometric and trigonometric rather than algebraic arguments, and usually went on to explain in words what the formulae contained. His main physical– mathematical concepts were the Geometric motion and Moment of activity–concept of Work . In particular, he found the invariants of the transmission of motion (by stating the principle of the moment of the quantity of motion) and theorized the condition of the maximum efficiency of mechanical machines (i.e., principle of continuity in the transmission of power). While the core theme remains the theories and historical studies of the text, the book contains an extensive Introduction and an accurate critical English Translation – including the parallel text edition and substantive critical/explicative notes – of Essai sur les machines en général (1786). The authors offer much-needed insight into the relation between mechanics, mathematics and engineering from a conceptual, empirical and methodological, and universalis point of view. As a cutting–edge writing by leading authorities on the history of physics and mathematics, and epistemological aspects, it appeals to historians, epistemologist–philosophers and scientists (physicists, mathematicians and applied sciences and technology).

One of the leading contributors of historical articles to ME over the past fifty years was Fritz Hirschfeld. In preparation for the United States' bicentennial year in 1976, the editors of Mechanical Engineering contracted with engineer-historian Hirschfeld for a series of articles on the county's early engineering history. Just a few years later, as the Society was nearing its centennial in 1880, the editors again turned to Hirschfeld and asked him to write a series of articles about the founding of ASME and important early mechanical engineers. Hirschfeld's articles, collected here, provide the foundation for the early portion of this volume. Building upon Hirschfeld's foundation, we selected a wide assortment of other articles about aspects of mechanical engineering history in the United States from the Revolutionary War until recent times. We largely limited our selections to those articles published in Mechanical Engineering magazine during the last fifty years (i.e., 1971-2021). Even for this period, the volume does not include all such articles due to limitations in length and editorial judgments. For instance, some articles duplicated coverage of specific events or innovations. In such cases we picked what we deemed the best, or most comprehensive of overlapping articles. We also decided to focus this volume on the history of mechanical engineering in America. We thus excluded articles on historical developments largely occurring outside the United States. At some future time, we may "harvest" both pre-1971 ME articles and unselected post-1971 articles, as well as articles focusing on non-American mechanical engineering achievements, for a separate collection or collections. Of the more than seventy articles collected in this volume, well over ninety per cent were drawn from issues of ME published during the past fifty years. Five pieces, however, were drawn from outside that chronological limit or from other sources. We have, for example, included a 1933 biographical article from ME about American engineer George H. Corliss. Corliss's innovations in the design and manufacture of steam engines and related devices helped establish the United States as a major player in the manufacture of prime movers. Corliss was considered by his contemporaries to be such a significant figure in mechanical engineering circles in the United States that we elected to include him. He was, after all, asked to serve as the first president of ASME-an offer which he declined. A second exception is another biographical article, one on Edwin Reynolds, a significant steam engine designer. It was authored by Thomas Fehring, one of the editors of this volume. Reynolds worked for a time for the Corliss Steam Engine Company, as did other notable American engineers such as Erasmus Darwin Leavitt (second president of ASME) and Alexander L. Holley (one of the founders of the Society), before moving to Allis-Chalmers. Reynolds made significant improvements in steam engine design. He was president of ASME in 1902-03, and three of his steam engines have been designated as Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmarks by the Society.