Engineering
Bridges, buildings and machines, and massive structures; these are the things we think of as what engineers do. We think of engineers as very practical people who are driven to get things done. This is probably a more or less accurate summation of the engineers’ character. If we think of some of the most famous engineers like James Watt, George Stephenson, Robert Stephenson and Isambard Kingdom Brunel, we think of eminently practical people.
On the whole these people did not do the pure research and science to do what they did. We can think of engineering as the practical application of scientific and mathematical knowledge. If science is the theory, engineering puts that knowledge into practice. This is not to say that engineering is without worth in comparison with science. Many scientific ideas lay dormant without practical application until an engineer came along with an idea to use the theory in some practical way.
The theory of the steam engine was around for a long time before someone like James Watt came along with a way practical use that, it is not an overestimate to say, changed the world. Watt’s steam engine is the foundation of the industrial revolution. It enabled the establishment of big factories that could mass produce products accurately, to a high quality and in a standardised way.
This enabled the building of the great engineering projects by the great engineers of the industrial age like the railways, the Crystal Palace, iron bridges and suspension bridges.