Engineering the Revolution documents the forging of a new relationship between technology and politics in Revolutionary France, and the inauguration of a distinctively modern form of the “technological life.” Here, Ken Alder rewrites the history of the eighteenth century as the total history of one particular artifact—the gun—by offering a novel and historical account of how material artifacts emerge as the outcome of political struggle. By expanding the “political” to include conflict over material objects, this volume rethinks the nature of engineering rationality, the origins of mass production, the rise of meritocracy, and our interpretation of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution.

Over the past two million years that human species have inhabited the Planet Earth they have distinguished themselves by their ability to make and do things creatively to ensure their survival. From the beginning, therefore, they have been defined by their technology, and the history of technology is the history of the species. For most of this period, the development of human technical skills has been extremely slow and repetitive, limited to basic tools and weapons and the ability to control fire. The utilization of animal power and the invention of the means of harnessing the power of wind and falling water added gradually to their technical skills, but it was the discovery of ways of using power from heat engines a mere three hundred years ago that accelerated this process into a prodigious expansion of technical power that fundamentally transformed human societies . It is this development which deserves to be to be called The Engineering Revolution and provides the primary focus of this book.

A study of French military engineers at a crucial point in the evolution of modern engineering.

An up-to-date guide for using massive amounts of data and novel technologies to design, build, and maintain better systems engineering Systems Engineering in the Fourth Industrial Revolution: Big Data, Novel Technologies, and Modern Systems Engineering offers a guide to the recent changes in systems engineering prompted by the current challenging and innovative industrial environment called the Fourth Industrial Revolution—INDUSTRY 4.0. This book contains advanced models, innovative practices, and state-of-the-art research findings on systems engineering. The contributors, an international panel of experts on the topic, explore the key elements in systems engineering that have shifted towards data collection and analytics, available and used in the design and development of systems and also in the later life-cycle stages of use and retirement. The contributors address the issues in a system in which the system involves data in its operation, contrasting with earlier approaches in which data, models, and algorithms were less involved in the function of the system. The book covers a wide range of topics including five systems engineering domains: systems engineering and systems thinking; systems software and process engineering; the digital factory; reliability and maintainability modeling and analytics; and organizational aspects of systems engineering. This important resource: Presents new and advanced approaches, methodologies, and tools for designing, testing, deploying, and maintaining advanced complex systems Explores effective evidence-based risk management practices Describes an integrated approach to safety, reliability, and cyber security based on system theory Discusses entrepreneurship as a multidisciplinary system Emphasizes technical merits of systems engineering concepts by providing technical models Written for systems engineers, Systems Engineering in the Fourth Industrial Revolution offers an up-to-date resource that contains the best practices and most recent research on the topic of systems engineering.

A Revolution Is Coming. It Isn't What You Think.This book tells the improbable stories of Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering, a small startup in Needham, Massachusetts, with aspirations to be a beacon to engineering education everywhere, and the iFoundry incubator at the University of Illinois, an unfunded pilot program with aspirations to change engineering at a large public university that wasn't particularly interested in changing. That either one survived is story enough, but what they found out together changes the course of education transformation forever: - How joy, trust, openness, and connec- tion are the keys to unleashing young, courageous engineers.- How engineers educated in narrow technical terms with a fixed mindset need an education that actively engages six minds-analytical, design, people, linguistic, body, and mindful- using a growth mindset.- How emotion and culture are the crucial elements of change, not content, curriculum, and pedagogy.- How four technologies of trust are well established and widely available to promote more rapid academic change.- How all stakeholders can join together in a movement of open innovation to accelerate collaborative disruption of the status quo.Read this book and get a glimpse inside the coming revolution in engineering. Feel the engaging stories in this book and understand the depth of change that is coming. Use this book to help select, shape, demand, and create educational experiences aligned with the creative imperative of the twenty-first century.

This collection of documents, including many previously unpublished, details the role of the Army engineers in the American Revolution. Lacking trained military engineers, the Americans relied heavily on foreign officers, mostly from France, for sorely needed technical assistance. Native Americans joined the foreign engineer officers to plan and carry out offensive and defensive operations, direct the erection of fortifications, map vital terrain, and lay out encampments. During the war Congress created the Corps of Engineers with three companies of engineer troops as well as a separate geographer's department to assist the engineers with mapping. Both General George Washington and Major General Louis Lebéque Duportail, his third and longest serving Chief Engineer, recognized the disadvantages of relying on foreign powers to fill the Army's crucial need for engineers. America, they contended, must train its own engineers for the future. Accordingly, at the war's end, they suggested maintaining a peacetime engineering establishment and creating a military academy. However, Congress rejected the proposals, and the Corps of Engineers and its companies of sappers and miners mustered out of service. Eleven years passed before Congress authorized a new establishment, the Corps of Artillerists and Engineers.