An Engineered World

How engineering as a modern profession emerged as a global phenomenon—and why its development and expansion are so critical to our understanding of twentieth-century world history.

An Engineered World examines the dramatic and global expansion of modern, professional engineering between roughly 1870 and 1950. Over these decades, the number of people who called themselves “engineers” (or who were recognized as such by others) expanded from a small and eclectic number of individuals to one of the most numerous, mobile, and influential professional groups of the twentieth century.

Tens of thousands of university-trained engineers and other professionalized technical experts, a few famous but most anonymous, became critical to the technological, organizational, and political development of global capitalism and socialism in the twentieth century. This was the case in Western Europe and the United States, and it was also true in colonial settings and independent countries around the world, where the institutions of modern engineering were often established in the same era.

This collection edited by Edward Beatty and Israel Solares presents eight case studies of engineers’ work and interactions situated in local, national, or regional places but always intersecting with global influences.

Contributors: Edward Beatty, Marco Bertilorenzi, Aurora Gómez-Galvarriato, Mark Hendrickson, Doug Jones, Elisabeth Köll, Aparajith Ramnath, Israel G. Solares, Stephen Tuffnell, Mikael Wolfe