This book explores the history of mechanical engineering since the Bronze Age. Focusing on machinery inventions and the development of mechanical technology, it also discusses the machinery industry and modern mechanical education. The evolution of machinery is divided into three stages: Ancient (before the European Renaissance), Modern (mainly including the two Industrial Revolutions) and Contemporary (since the Revolution in Physics, especially post Second World War). The book not only clarifies the development of mechanical engineering, but also reveals the driving forces behind it – e.g. the economy, national defense and human scientific research activities – to highlight the links between technology and society; mechanical engineering and the natural sciences; and mechanical engineering and related technological areas. Though mainly intended as a textbook or supplemental reading for graduate students, the book also offers a unique resource for researchers and engineers in mechanical engineering who wish to broaden their horizons.

What is mechanical engineering? What a mechanical engineering does? How did the mechanical engineering change through ages? What is the future of mechanical engineering? This book answers these questions in a lucid manner. It also provides a brief chronological history of landmark events and answers questions such as: When was steam engine invented? Where was first CNC machine developed? When did the era of additive manufacturing start? When did the marriage of mechanical and electronics give birth to discipline of mechatronics? This book informs and create interest on mechanical engineering in the general public and particular in students. It also helps to sensitize the engineering fraternity about the historical aspects of engineering. At the same time, it provides a common sense knowledge of mechanical engineering in a handy manner.

This book treats several subjects from the History of Mechanism and Machine Science, and also contains an illustrative presentation of the Museum of Engines and Mechanisms of the University of Palermo, Italy, which houses a collection of various pieces of machinery from the last 150 years. The various sections deal with some eminent scientists of the past, with the history of industrial installations, machinery and transport, with the human inventiveness for mechanical and scientific devices, and with robots and human-driven automata. All chapters have been written by experts in their fields. The volume shows a wide-ranging panorama on the historical progress of scientific and technical knowledge in the past centuries. It will stimulate new research and ideas for those involved in the history of Science and Technology.

This revised and updated classic explores the importance of technological innovation in the cultural and economic history of the West. Topics include technology of textile manufacture from primitive times, water wheels and wind mills, clocks and watches, and invention of printing. "Without peer in its field." — American Scientist.

Through the centuries, the intricacies of fluid mechanics — the study of the laws of motion and fluids in motion — have occupied many of history's greatest minds. In this pioneering account, a distinguished aeronautical scientist presents a history of fluid mechanics focusing on the achievements of the pioneering scientists and thinkers whose inspirations and experiments lay behind the evolution of such disparate devices as irrigation lifts, ocean liners, windmills, fireworks and spacecraft. The author first presents the basics of fluid mechanics, then explores the advances made through the work of such gifted thinkers as Plato, Aristotle, da Vinci, Galileo, Pascal, Newton, Bernoulli, Euler, Lagrange, Ernst Mach and other scientists of the 20th century. Especially important for its illuminating comparison of the development of fluid mechanics in the former Soviet Union with that in the West, the book concludes with studies of transsonic compressibility and aerodynamics, supersonic fluid mechanics, hypersonic gas dynamics and the universal matter-energy continuity. Professor G. A. Tokaty has headed the prestigious Aeronautical Research Laboratory at the Zhukovsky Academy of Aeronautics in Moscow, and has taught at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is Emeritus Professor of Aeronautics and Space Technology, The City University, London.

Machines, devices, and systems that have touched our lives, both intimately and for the public good, are often unheralded inventions that we take for granted or never even see. Fortunately, they claim landmark recognition by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, which now makes these engineering marvels accessible to teachers and students, travelers, researchers, and the curious. The 135 historic mechanical engineering landmarks in this book represent the accomplishments of mechanical engineers over the past 250 years - from the steam engine of Thomas Newcomen (1712), which launched the Industrial Revolution, to the Saturn V rocket (1967). This roster of landmarks tells a magnificent story of people and places and of innovation and discovery.