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Engineers have invented modern necessities such as automobiles, airplanes, and computers. All of these inventions better our life and make our world an easier place to live in. According to McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific and Technical Terms engineering is defined as the science by which the properties of matter and the sources of power in nature are made useful to humans in structures, machines, and products (542). Chemical, electrical, and mining engineering are a few of the additional fields in engineering that have a major impact on our humanity. Engineers have one of the most important occupations in the world because they construct almost everything that we utilize on a daily basis. Engineering is the profession that puts scientific knowledge to practical knowledge. The words engineering and ingenuity are linked to the same Latin word-root and that the verb ‘to engineer’ means ‘to be ingenious’. So the kinds of things engineers have done have been generally ingenious, and the word engine means an ingenious and useful device. Engineers use principles of science to design structures, machines, and products of all kinds. They look for better ways to use existing resources and often develop new materials. Engineers have had a direct role in the creation of most modern technology such as tools, materials, techniques, and power sources that make our lives easier (Becoming an Engineer). The history of engineering is the record of human ingenuity through the ages. Even in prehistoric times, people adapted basic engineering techniques from things that were available in nature. In prehistoric times, men and women had to be ingenious in order to survive hunger, enemies, climate, and later, the tyranny of distances. So there have always been engineers around, many of whom were involved in activities we would not associate with engineering today but, rather with hunting farming, fishing, fighting, tool making, and many other things. Early engineers have invented farming tools, designed elaborate irrigation networks, and built the first cities. The first engineer known by name and achievement is Imhotep, builder of the Step Pyramid at Saqqarak, Egypt, probably in about 2550 B.C (Engineering). Imhotep’s successors carried civil engineering to remarkable heights on the basis of empirical methods aided by arithmetic, geometry, and a smattering of physical science. There were a lot of early engineers in B.C such like the Greeks, Romans, Chinese and Asians. The Greeks, which were known as the inventors, made significant contributions in the 1000 years from B.C to A.D. They produced the screw, the ratchet, the water wheel and the aeolipile, better known as Hero’s turbine. The Romans, who were known as the improvers and adapters, built fortifications, roads, aqueducts, water distributions systems and public buildings across the territories and cities they controlled. The Chinese developers are also known has early engineers. They have developed the rotary fan, the sternpost rudder that guided their bamboo rafts, and they began to make paper from vegetable fibers and gunpowder. In Asia, engineering had a separate but very similar development, with more sophisticated techniques of construction, hydraulics, and metallurgy helping to create advanced civilizations such as the Mongol empire, whose large, beautiful cities impressed Marco Polo in the 13th century (Build Better World). In the Dark Ages, 500 to 1500 AD, things were still being produced that were ingenious. For example, there was the development of the mechanical clock and the art of printing. Then the technique of heavy iron casting was applied to products for war, religion and industry. After the Dark Ages the Renaissance of the 16th century followed, which was dominated by Leonardo Da Vinci who was an engineer, inventor, and an artist.
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