Engineering science in Glasgow: economy, efficiency and measurement as prime movers in the differentiation of an academic discipline

Abstract

In what follows I use the term ‘academic engineering’ to describe the teaching of engineering within a university or college of higher education: specifically, this differentiates an institutional teaching framework from the broader assimilation of engineering working practices in nineteenth-century Britain by the then standard method of apprenticeship or pupillage, and from the practice of engineering as a profession. The growth of academic engineering, both in terms of student numbers and the variety of courses, profoundly influenced the structure of what we might call ‘practical engineering’, the status of engineering as a profession searching for recognition within society, and the corporate relationship between engineers and places of higher education. These are issues which I will only touch on here.

Efficiencies of Balance

“…Technical efficiency (Haber called it mechanical) played an important supporting role in both studies, but it was not their focus; instead, their focus was on how the claims of technical experts and the knowledge of technical methods played out in larger political, economic, social arenas. 1 Mechanical efficiency has been little studied in its own right, and the contributions that do exist do not address the progressive era (Marsden, 1992;Cardwell, 1993Cardwell, -1994). Haber's use of the term 'mechanical efficiency' was helpful for his orientation outward, away from the workings of engines and machines, but it inadequately characterized what one saw when looking at them more closely.…”

“…5. See Marsden (1992) and Oxford English Dictionary (1989), second edition (<www.lib.umn.edu/cgi-bin/oed.cgi>). 6.…”

Conceptualizing First Principles Thinking in Engineering Education

“…The history of Engineering Science programs also provides a lens to consider this tension and the motivation for a more theoretical approach, for example, [3] argues that war prompted an engineering research space between pure science and industry, influencing the design of undergraduate education. Harwood also examined David Channell's [4] and Ben Marsden's [5] studies of the development of W. J. M. Rankine's conception of engineering, which provided students who had apprenticeship experiencethe predominant model of early engineering education in the United Kingdomwith engineering science, to help them link idealized systems with real-world problems, connecting science and practice.…”