History of Civil Engineering

(Civil Engineering Orientation – Chapter 1)

 Civil Engineering
 Buildings
 Bridges
 Highways
 Railways
 Airports
 Dams and Levees
 Civil Engineering’s Historical Inheritance

“The first engineers were irrigators, architects, and military engineers.

The same man was usually expected to be an expert at all three kinds of
work. This was still the case thousands of years later, in the
Renaissance, when Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Dϋrer were not only
all-around engineers but outstanding artists as well. Specialization
within the engineering profession has developed only in the last two or
three centuries.”
 The Ancient Engineers
 Great Pyramid at Giza, Egypt
“In southern Mesopotamia, “the land between the rivers”
 Hanging Gardens of Babylon, Mesopotamia
in Greek, at the beginning of recorded history [5,000 to
 Statue of Zeus years
6,000 at Olympia,
ago],Greece
the Sumerians—a people of unknown
 Temple oforigins—built the modern
Artemis at Ephesus, city walls and temples and dug the
Turkey
 Tomb canals that comprised
of King Mausolos of Kariathe world’s first engineering works.
at Halikarnassos,
Here, for over two thousand years, little city-states bickered
Greece
 and fought over water rights.”
Colossus of Rhodes, Mediterranean
 Pharos Lighthouse of Alexandria, Egypt
 ANCIENT STRUCTURAL SYSTEMS
AND SUCCESS FACTORS
 Intensive and careful use of existing principles and
 Corbel
tools, such as the water level and astronomical
 Postobservation
and Lintel
 ArchUnlimited
 labor and the power to organize and
and Vault
command it
 Truss
 A different perspective of time.
 Engineering in Medieval Times
 Medieval = between ages
 Roman Empire
 Byzantine Empire
 Islam and Medieval Muslim
 Dark Ages
 Gothic
 Water Wheels & Canals
 ENGINEERING IN THE RENAISSANCE AND THE
AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT

 Renaissance = Rebirth
 Florentine Filippo Brunelleschi
 Leon Battista Alberti
 Roberto Valturio
 Spanish Inquisition (starting in the 15th century and lasting several
hundred years) and Counter-Reformation (16th to mid-17th
centuries)
 Age of Enlightenment (18th century)
 THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
 John Smeaton “Father of Civil Engineering
 Cast and wrought iron as new materials
 Thomas Farnolls Pritchard designed “The Iron Bridge”
 Continued use of iron and glass
 Scott Thomas Telford
 Marc Brunnel, and his son, Isambard Kingdom Brunnel
 Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) —launched 1818
 Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) —launched 1834
 American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) —launched 1852
 American Institute of Architects (AIA) —launched 1857
 The Croton Aqueduct
 John Roebling
Modern Civil Engineering
Canton
Empire
One The
CN
AbrajTaipei
Willis
Tokyo
Burj
Tower
Shanghai
Tower
World
OstankinoAl in 101
Tower
Khalifa
Millau
State Bait
Trace
Tower ininMoscow,
Skytree
Building
in
Viaduct
Tower
OntarioinTaiwan
inChicago
Japan
Dubai
Guangzhou,
in
Saudi
Center in France
NewChina
Canada
China
in York
Arabia
New York
Russia