Engineering -- an endless frontier
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Technological products
High-tech goods and services permeate our daily life.  Less conspicuous are various implements and infrastructures geared toward processes of production.  Besides being capital investment, they embody certain human skills and experiences in hardware:

  • plant layouts and operating procedures

  • machines for agriculture and manufacture

  • control mechanisms for automation

  • standards for technological systems and products

  • public infrastructures for energy, communication, transportation, information processing, public health, and national defense.

References

Descriptions of major engineering products are found in  www.greatachievements.org.  More extensive references are found under various branches of engineering.

Goods and services

Armstrong, N. 2000. The engineered century. www.greatachievements.org 

Badamis, V. V. 1998.  Home appliances get smart.  IEEE  Spectrum, 35(8): 36-40.

Borwn, D. E. 2002.  Inventing America: From the Microwave to the Mouse.  Cambridge, MIT Press.

Johnstone, B. 2001.  A bright future for displays.  Technology Review, April, 81-8.

Morton, D. 1999.  Viewing television’s history.  Proceedings of the IEEE, 87: 1301-4.

Rhodes, R. 1999.  Visions of Technology, New York: Simon & Schuster.

Sobel, A. 1998.  Television’s bright new technology.  Scientific American, May, 70-7.  

Energy

Anderson, R. N. 1998.  Oil production in the 21st century.  Scientific American, 278(3): 86-90.

Bull, S. R. 2001.  Renewable energy today and tomorrow.  Proceedings of the IEEE, 89: 1216-27.

Hoffert, M. I. et al. 2002.  Advanced technology path to global climate stability: energy for a greenhouse planet.  Science, 298: 981-8.

Holdren, J. P. and Baldwin, S. F. 2001.  The PCAST energy studies.  Annual Review of Energy and Environment, 26:391-434.

Katzer, J. R., Ramage, M. P., and Sapre, A. V. 2000.  Petroleum refining poised for profound changes.  Chemical Engineering Progress. July, 41-52.

Mandelbaum, R. 2002.  Reap the wild wind.  IEEE Spectrum, 39(10): 34-9.

Ramage, J. 1997.  Energy: a Guidebook.  New York: Oxford University Press.

Ramakumar, R. 1993.  Economic aspects of advanced energy technologies.  Proceedings of the IEEE, 81: 318-27.

Service, R. F. 2000.  New tigers in the fuel cell tank.  Science, 288: 1955-7.

Srinivasan, S., Mosdale, R., Stevens, P. and Yang, C. 1999.  Fuel cells: reaching the era of clean and efficient power generation in the twenty-first century.  Annual Review of Energy and Environment, 24: 281-328.

Electricity

Green, R. 2000.  Competition in generation: the economic foundation.  Proceedings of the IEEE, 88: 128-39.

International Energy Agency. 2000.  Electricity Information.  Paris: International Energy Agency.

Schurr, S. H., Burwell, C. C., Devine, W. D., and Sonenblum, S. 1990.  Electricity in the American Economy.  New York: Greenwood Press.

Standards

Light, W. and Collins, B. L. 2000.  Setting the standards.  Mechanical Engineering. www.memagazine.org/backissues/febryary2000/features/setting/setting.htm.

Sherif, M. H. 2001.  A framework for standardization in telecommunications and information technology.  IEEE Communications Magazine, 39(4): 94-101.

Machinery and equipment

Appenzeller, T. and Norman, C. 1997.  New eyes on hidden world.  Introduction to a special issue on imaging technologies in Science, 276 (27 June): 1981-98.

Ashburn, A. 1988.  The machine-tool industry: the crumbling foundation.  In Is New Technology Enough? Hicks, D. A. ed.,  Washington D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, pp.19-85.

Douthwaith, B. 2002.  Enabling Innovation, London: Zed Books.  (agricultural machinery)

Materials

Ball, P. 1997.  Made to Measure: New Materials for the 21st Century.  Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Peterson, D. J., LaTourrette, T., and Bartis, J. T. 2001.  New Forces at Work in Mining.  Santa Monica, CA: RAND.

Communication and information processing

Foster, I. 2002.  The Grid: a new infrastructure for 21st century science.  Physics Today, February, 42-7.

Pool, I de Sola, 1983.  Technologies of Freedom: On Free Speech in an Electronic Age.  Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Scientific American, 1997.  The Internet: fulfilling the promise.  Special issue, March.

Waldrop, M. M. 2002.  Grid computing.  Technology Review, May, 31-7.

Transportation and navigation

Bretz. A. 2000.  X marks the spot, maybe.  IEEE Spectrum, 37(4), 26-36.

Herring, T. A. 1996.  The global positioning system.  Scientific American, February, 44-50.

Perry, T. S. 1997.  In search of the future of air traffic control.  IEEE Spectrum, 34(8): 18-35.

Stix, G. 1994.  Aging airways.  Scientific American, 271(5): 96-105.

National defense

Drell, S. D. 2000.  On physics and national security.  Introduction to a special issue in Physics Today, December, 25-56.