The term engineering is derived from the Latiningenium, meaning "cleverness". (Full article...)
Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the limitations imposed by practicality, regulation, safety and cost. The word engineer (Latiningeniator, the origin of the Ir. in the title of engineer in countries like Belgium and The Netherlands) is derived from the Latin words ingeniare ("to contrive, devise") and ingenium ("cleverness"). The foundational qualifications of a licensed professional engineer typically include a four-year bachelor's degree in an engineering discipline, or in some jurisdictions, a master's degree in an engineering discipline plus four to six years of peer-reviewed professional practice (culminating in a project report or thesis) and passage of engineering board examinations. (Full article...)
The process grants the operator greater control over the weld than competing processes such as shielded metal arc welding and gas metal arc welding, allowing stronger, higher-quality welds. However, TIG welding is comparatively more complex and difficult to master, and furthermore, it is significantly slower than most other welding techniques.
TAG welding was the name given in the early 1970's to the then novel and revolutionary method of rod welding previously problematic metals. TAG welding was then the use of a tungsten tipped arc creating welding machine. The tip was centred in shroud that fed argon gas around tungsten tip to prevent the composition of the weld becoming oxidised and fragile. TAG welding used rods of a metal suitable for the material to be welded permanently together. The rods could be a metal coated in oil to prevent the rod oxidising if needed or in more complicated welding of metals the rod would be coated in a "flux" that was not an active flux but a method of protecting the welding rods from oxidisation during storage (the major examples of this were rods for welding; pure aluminium, duralumin, magnesium/aluminium alloy and stainless steel rods used for repairing ultra high grade carbon steel as in WW2 Sherman tanks). At this time the most prevalent use of TAG welding is in the production of higher end aluminium alloy bicycles, these welds are clearly visible as ripples in the welded joint. Other than mostly bicycle production TAG has been surpassed by the use of tungsten alloy tips and argon gas combined with other inert gasses. TAG welding rods are now highly specific project metal alloy rods or more frequently mass production flexible "flux" cable/wire fed drum machines. These developments have rendered the TAG name as not specific and has fallen out of favour although the basic revolutionary process remains the same.
A related process, plasma arc welding, uses a slightly different welding torch to create a more focused welding arc and as a result is often automated. (Full article...)
... that before becoming a successful children's author, Myron Levoy was an engineer doing research on nuclear-powered spaceships for a mission to Mars?
The Rockwell scale is a hardness scale based on indentation hardness of a material. The Rockwell test determines the hardness by measuring the depth of penetration of an indenter under a large load compared to the penetration made by a preload. There are different scales, denoted by a single letter, that use different loads or indenters. The result is a dimensionless number noted as HRA, HRB, HRC, etc., where the last letter is the respective Rockwell scale (see below).
When testing metals, indentation hardness correlates linearly with tensile strength. This important relation permits economically important nondestructive testing of bulk metal deliveries with lightweight, even portable equipment, such as hand-held Rockwell hardness testers.
Little Boy was developed by Lieutenant CommanderFrancis Birch's group at the Manhattan Project's Los Alamos Laboratory during World War II, a reworking of their abandoned Thin Man nuclear bomb. Like Thin Man, it was a gun-type fission weapon. It derived its explosive power from the nuclear fission of uranium-235, whereas Thin Man was based on fission of plutonium-239. Fission was accomplished by shooting a hollow cylinder (the "bullet") onto a solid cylinder of the same material (the "target") by means of a charge of nitrocellulose propellant powder. Little Boy contained 64 kilograms (141 lb) of highly enriched uranium, although less than a kilogram underwent nuclear fission. Its components were fabricated at three different plants so that no one would have a copy of the complete design. Unlike the implosion design, which required sophisticated coordination of shaped explosive charges, the gun-type design was considered almost certain to work so it was never tested before its first use at Hiroshima. (Full article...)
Bell was an energetic and skilful entrepreneur as well as an innovative metallurgist. He was involved in multiple partnerships with his brothers to make iron and alkali chemicals, and with other pioneers including Robert Stirling Newall to make steel cables. He pioneered the large-scale manufacture of aluminium at his Washington works, conducting experiments in its production, and in the production of other chemicals such as the newly discovered element thallium. He was a director of major companies including the North Eastern Railway and the Forth Bridge company, then the largest bridge project in the world. (Full article...)
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A voltage doubler is an electronic circuit which charges capacitors from the input voltage and switches these charges in such a way that, in the ideal case, exactly twice the voltage is produced at the output as at its input.
The simplest of these circuits is a form of rectifier which take an AC voltage as input and outputs a doubled DC voltage. The switching elements are simple diodes and they are driven to switch state merely by the alternating voltage of the input. DC-to-DC voltage doublers cannot switch in this way and require a driving circuit to control the switching. They frequently also require a switching element that can be controlled directly, such as a transistor, rather than relying on the voltage across the switch as in the simple AC-to-DC case. (Full article...)
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The Castaing machine is a device used to add lettering and decoration to the edge of a coin. Such lettering was necessitated by counterfeiting and edge clipping, which was a common problem resulting from the uneven and irregular hammered coinage. When Aubin Olivier introduced milled coinage to France, he also developed a method of marking the edges with lettering which would make it possible to detect if metal had been shaved from the edge. This method involved using a collar, into which the metal flowed from the pressure of the press. This technique was slower and more costly than later methods. France abandoned milled coinage in favour of hammering in 1585.
England experimented briefly with milled coinage, but it wasn't until Peter Blondeau brought his method of minting coins there in the mid-seventeenth century that such coinage began in earnest in that country. Blondeau also invented a different method of marking the edge, which was, according to him, faster and less costly than the method pioneered by Olivier. Though Blondeau's exact method was secretive, numismatists have asserted that it likely resembled the later device invented by Jean Castaing. Castaing's machine marked the edges by means of two steel rulers, which, when a coinage blank was forced between them, imprinted legends or designs on its edge. Castaing's device found favour in France, and it was eventually adopted in other nations, including Britain and the United States, but it was eventually phased out by mechanised minting techniques. (Full article...)
The Wignacourt Aqueduct (Maltese: L-Akwedott ta' Wignacourt) is a 17th-century aqueduct in Malta, which was built by the Order of Saint John to carry water from springs in Dingli and Rabat to the newly built capital city Valletta. The aqueduct carried water through underground pipes and over arched viaducts across depressions in the ground.
The first attempts to build the aqueduct were made by Grand Master Martin Garzez in 1596, but construction was suspended before being continued in 1610. The watercourse was inaugurated five years later on 21 April 1615. Several engineers took part in the project, including Bontadino de Bontadini, Giovanni Attard and Natale Tomasucci. The aqueduct was named after Grand Master Alof de Wignacourt, who partially financed its construction. (Full article...)
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Birdsill Holly Jr. (November 8, 1820 – April 27, 1894) was an American mechanical engineer and inventor of water hydraulics devices. He is known for inventing mechanical devices that improved city water systems and patented an improved fire hydrant that is similar to those used currently for firefighting. Holly was a co-inventor of the Silsby steam fire engine. He founded the Holly Manufacturing Company that developed into the larger Holly Steam Combination Company that distributed heat from a central station and developed commercial district heating for cities in the United States and Canada. (Full article...)
Nichols remained with the Manhattan Project after the war until it was taken over by the Atomic Energy Commission in 1947. He was the military liaison officer with the Atomic Energy Commission from 1946 to 1947. After briefly teaching at the United States Military Academy at West Point, he was promoted to major general and became chief of the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project, responsible for the military aspects of atomic weapons, including logistics, handling and training. He was deputy director for the Atomic Energy Matters, Plans and Operations Division of the Army's general staff, and was the senior Army member of the military liaison committee that worked with the Atomic Energy Commission. (Full article...)
Meticulous naval inventories show that HMS Beagle carried a total of at least 34 recorded chronometers on its three main survey voyages from 1826 to 1843, and 22 on the second voyage with Darwin on board, when they had a dedicated cabin. Some were Navy property and others were on loan from the manufacturers, as well as six on the second voyage owned by the captain, Robert FitzRoy. Both the two known survivors from the second voyage are owned by the British Museum (the second is registration No. CAI.1743). (Full article...)
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The radius of maximum wind (RMW) is the distance between the center of a cyclone and its band of strongest winds. It is a parameter in atmospheric dynamics and tropical cyclone forecasting. The highest rainfall rates occur near the RMW of tropical cyclones. The extent of a cyclone's storm surge and its maximum potential intensity can be determined using the RMW. As maximum sustained winds increase, the RMW decreases. Recently, RMW has been used in descriptions of tornadoes. When designing buildings to prevent against failure from atmospheric pressure change, RMW can be used in the calculations. (Full article...)
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The Sinclair C5 is a small one-person battery electricrecumbenttricycle, technically an "electrically assisted pedal cycle". It was the culmination of Sir Clive Sinclair's long-running interest in electric vehicles. Although widely described as an "electric car", Sinclair characterised it as a "vehicle, not a car".
Sinclair had become one of the UK's best-known millionaires, and earned a knighthood, on the back of the highly successful Sinclair Research range of home computers in the early 1980s. He hoped to repeat his success in the electric vehicle market, which he saw as ripe for a new approach. The C5 emerged from an earlier project to produce a small electric car called the C1. After a change in the law, prompted by lobbying from bicycle manufacturers, Sinclair developed the C5 as an electrically powered tricycle with a polypropylene body and a chassis designed by Lotus Cars. It was intended to be the first in a series of increasingly ambitious electric vehicles, but the development of the follow-up C10 and C15 models never progressed further than the drawing board, mostly due to the poor public response to the C5. (Full article...)
ODB++ is a proprietary CAD-to-CAM data exchange format used in the design and manufacture of electronic devices. Its purpose is to exchange printed circuit board design information between design and manufacturing and between design tools from different EDA/ECAD vendors. It was originally developed by Valor Computerized Systems, Ltd. (acquired in 2010 by Mentor Graphics which was later acquired by Siemens in 2016) as the job description format for their CAM system.
ODB stands for open database, but its openness is disputed, as discussed below. The '++' suffix, evocative of C++, was added in 1997 with the addition of component descriptions. There are two versions of ODB++: the original (now controlled by Mentor) and an XML version called ODB++(X) that Valor developed and donated to the IPC organization in an attempt to merge GenCAM (IPC-2511) and ODB++ into Offspring (IPC-2581). (Full article...)
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Carl Edgar Myers (1842–1925) was an American aeronautical engineer. He was born at March 2, 1842 at Herkimer, New York, to Abram H. and Eliza Ann (Cristman) Myers. At various times in his life, he was employed as carpenter, mechanician, plumber, electrician and chemist, banker, and photographer. After 1978, he focused on aeronautical engineering. He became known as the inventor of new or improved systems for generating gases, and as the constructor of hydrogen balloons and airships, including the aerial velocipede, gas kite, sky-cycle and electrical aerial torpedo. He married Mary Breed Hawley on November 8, 1871.
Myers, after spending two years hiring professional balloonists to test his designs, Myers went up in a balloon himself. (Full article...)
The following are images from various Engineering-related articles on Wikipedia.
Image 1Graphic representation of a minute fraction of the WWW, demonstrating hyperlinks (from Engineering)
Image 2A drawing for a steam locomotive. Engineering is applied to design, with emphasis on function and the utilization of mathematics and science. (from Engineering)
Image 3The Ancient Romans built aqueducts to bring a steady supply of clean and fresh water to cities and towns in the empire. (from Engineering)
Image 11Engineers conferring on prototype design, 1954 (from Engineer)
Image 12Archimedes is regarded as one of the leading scientists in classical antiquity whose ideas have underpinned much of the practice of engineering. (from Engineer)
Image 29The application of the steam engine allowed coke to be substituted for charcoal in iron making, lowering the cost of iron, which provided engineers with a new material for building bridges. This bridge was made of cast iron, which was soon displaced by less brittle wrought iron as a structural material. (from Engineering)
Image 30Design of a turbine requires collaboration of engineers from many fields, as the system involves mechanical, electro-magnetic and chemical processes. The blades, rotor and stator as well as the steam cycle all need to be carefully designed and optimized. (from Engineering)
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