Birth of Mechanical Engineering
and a Glimpse into the Future Trends
Amitabha Ghosh
1 Introduction
To begin with it is being emphasized that this article is not on the history of Mechanical Engineering. There exist excellent volumes on the subject and any attempt in
this direction in an article is futile. Recently, IIT Guwahati has published a wonderful
book on History of Mechanical Engineering. The basic focus of this article is to first
identify the primary basic branches of physical science, which form the building
blocks of what one calls ‘Mechanical Engineering’. Next, it will be examined during
what period these areas acquired maturity and were applied for effective engineering
use. It is well known that although people have used many clever devices to employ
mechanical advantage in accomplishing various tasks in the past, there has been no
synthesis of the various scientific principles to evolve into an appropriate contrivance
that can be considered as a product of Mechanical Engineering. It will be demonstrated that the word ‘birth’ instead of ‘evolution’ is more appropriate as this process
of synthesizing various basic components of Mechanical Engineering was accomplished in a relatively short period of time in the human history when the first Prime
Mover was invented and improved resulting in the First Industrial Revolution. This
happened primarily in the seventeenth century.
The world has drastically changed during the past two centuries, and the human
civilization has gone through another major watershed event, the Second Industrial
Revolution, in the second half of the twentieth century that has resulted in the current
knowledge-based civilization. Computer and communication technology helped by
advances in material science has played a key role in this revolution.
As the time progresses, the nature of engineering activity is evolving continuously and, as a result, the subject Mechanical Engineering is also evolving like
A. Ghosh (B)
Indian National Science Academy, New Delhi, India
e-mail: amitabha@iitk.ac.in
Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology Shibpur, Howrah, India
© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021
U. S. Dixit and S. K. Dwivedy (eds.), Mechanical Sciences,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5712-5_1
1
and a Glimpse into the Future Trends
Amitabha Ghosh
1 Introduction
To begin with it is being emphasized that this article is not on the history of Mechanical Engineering. There exist excellent volumes on the subject and any attempt in
this direction in an article is futile. Recently, IIT Guwahati has published a wonderful
book on History of Mechanical Engineering. The basic focus of this article is to first
identify the primary basic branches of physical science, which form the building
blocks of what one calls ‘Mechanical Engineering’. Next, it will be examined during
what period these areas acquired maturity and were applied for effective engineering
use. It is well known that although people have used many clever devices to employ
mechanical advantage in accomplishing various tasks in the past, there has been no
synthesis of the various scientific principles to evolve into an appropriate contrivance
that can be considered as a product of Mechanical Engineering. It will be demonstrated that the word ‘birth’ instead of ‘evolution’ is more appropriate as this process
of synthesizing various basic components of Mechanical Engineering was accomplished in a relatively short period of time in the human history when the first Prime
Mover was invented and improved resulting in the First Industrial Revolution. This
happened primarily in the seventeenth century.
The world has drastically changed during the past two centuries, and the human
civilization has gone through another major watershed event, the Second Industrial
Revolution, in the second half of the twentieth century that has resulted in the current
knowledge-based civilization. Computer and communication technology helped by
advances in material science has played a key role in this revolution.
As the time progresses, the nature of engineering activity is evolving continuously and, as a result, the subject Mechanical Engineering is also evolving like
A. Ghosh (B)
Indian National Science Academy, New Delhi, India
e-mail: amitabha@iitk.ac.in
Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology Shibpur, Howrah, India
© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021
U. S. Dixit and S. K. Dwivedy (eds.), Mechanical Sciences,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5712-5_1
1