THE ENGINEERING DIMENSION

The earliest human societies relied for their subsistence on the hunting of animals and the gathering of food. The small bands of people who lived together pursuing these activities appear to have been the prototype of all human organisation. Hunting and gathering was the predominant type of social organisation until perhaps 12,000 years ago. Tools and weapons were not made of metal till around 4,000 B.C., the plough was not in use until about a thousand years later, and iron tools and weapons were not used until around 1,000 B.C. (Lenski and Lenski, 1978). The history of the human race has been intextricably bound up with that of engineering when this is very broadly defined as the making of tools and other contrivances as aids and adjuncts to life. From the Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages at one end of human experience to the Steam, Jet, Atomic and Computer Ages at the other, technical‐engineering achievements have defined and delimited whatever is possible for human beings. Thus throughout the long historical transition from a predominantly agricultural to a predominantly industrial society engineers, or rather anyone whose principal activity was making and tinkering with three‐ dimensional artefacts, played a crucial role.