Engineering -- an endless frontier
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Civil engineering

When engineering first emerged as a modern profession, "civil" broadly meant civilian, as distinct from military.  As engineers with various expertise separately developed their systematic knowledge and professional organizations, the scope of "civil engineering" narrowed to construction, which was the first to develop scientific principles.  For instance, the principle of cantilever was first investigated by Galileo Galilei, whose illustration is reproduced on the left.  The applicability of the general principle to bridges, tall buildings, and many other constructions exemplifies the scientific nature of engineering.

Anderson, G. and Roskrow, B. 1994.  The Channel Tunnel Story.  London: E.& F.N. Spon.

Benvenuto, E. 1991.  An Introduction to the History of Structural Mechanics.  New York: Springer-Verlag.

Billington, D. P. 1983.  The Tower and the Bridge: The New Art of Structural Engineering.  Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Billington, D. P. 1984.  Bridges and the new art of structural engineering.  American Scientists, 27(1): 22-31.

Charlton, T. M. 1982.  A History of Theory of Structures in the Nineteenth Century.  New York: Cambridge University Press.

Eager. T. W. and Musso, C. 2001.  Why did the World Trade Center collapse?  Science, engineering, and speculation.  JOM, December, 8-11.

Fredrich, A. J. ed. 1989.  Sons of Martha: Civil Engineering Readings in Modern Literature.  New York: ASEE.

Hitchcock, H. R.  1969.  Architecture: Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, 3rd ed.  Baltimore, MD: Penguin Books.

Jordan, R. F. 1969.  A Concise History of Western Architecture.  London: Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich.

Kranakis, E. 1997.  Constructing a Bridge.  Cambridge: MIT Press.

McCullough, D. 1982.  The Great Bridge.  New York: Simon & Schuster.

Morgenstern, J. 1997.  The fifty-nine-story crisis.  Jouurnal of Professional Issues in Engineering Education and Practice, 123(1): 23-9.

Pannell, J. P. M. 1977.  Man the Builder: an Illustrated History of Engineering.  New York: Crescent Books.

Peters, T. F. 1987.  Transitions in Engineering.  Basil: Birkhäuser Verlag.

Peters, T. F. 1996.  Building in the Nineteenth Century.  Cambridge: MIT Press.

Petroski, H. 1995.  Engineers of Dreams: Great Bridge Builders and the Spanning of America.  New York: Knopf.

Reuss, M. 1999.  The art of scientific precision: river research in the United States Army Corps of Engineers to 1945.  Technology and Culture, 40: 292-323.

Robertson, L. E. 2002.  Reflections on the World Trade Center.  The Bridge, 32(1): 5-10. www.nae.edu.

Rosenberg, N. and Vincenti, W. G. 1978.  The Britannia Bridge: The Generation and Diffusion of Technology Bridge.  Cambridge: MIT Press.

Roush, W. 2001.  Fathoming the tower’s structural failure.  Technology Review, November, 14-5.

Shallatt, T. 1994.  Structures in the Stream: Water, Science, and the Rise of the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers.  Austin: University of Texas Press.

Smith, C. B. 1999.  Program Management B.C.  Civil Engineering Magazine,  www.pubs.asce.org/ceonline/0699feat.html.

Smith, N. 1971.  A History of Dams.  London: Peter Davis.

Straub, H. 1952.  A History of Civil Engineering.  Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Tamoro, G. J. 2002.  World Trade Center “bathtub,” from genesis to Armageddon.  The Bridge, 32(1): 11-7.

World Business Council for Sustainable Development. 2001.  Mobility 2001.  www.wbcsdmobility.org.  (Transportation issues in developed and developing countries).