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Did the Romans have engineers?
3

Did the Romans have engineers?

Did the Romans have engineers?

(OP)
From the thread on ladies in engineering a question?

Can you be an engineer w/o higher math skills?

RE: Did the Romans have engineers?

I was watching "Alexander" on DVD the other day and noticed a quote... for got the exact quote but, as Alexander was entering Babylon he was impressed by the "architects and engineers" who built the city.  I had to chuckle.

Romans probably had equivalents of architects who actually had "engineering sense".  The term architect (one involved with art and science of buildings and built environment) is more appropriate than engineers for those in the Roman days but those involved in design of aqueducts and colosseum can also be considered engineers in todays terms.

For todays engineers, mathematics is definitely important, but more than that, knowledge of physics is a prerequisite.  I believe one can be an engineer with mediocre math skills but equipped with exceptional physics skills.  Legally though, you do not need either.  You just need to pass the license exam which isn't too difficult with proper preparation.

RE: Did the Romans have engineers?

In some cases, yes.  But the question is ill-asked.  Can you be a GOOD engineer without higher math skills?  Probably not.

To a large degree, engineering today is based on using tools that insulate the engineer from the bulk of the math required to actually do the problem.  Simulators, FEA, etc., all provide results without the user necessarily knowing or understanding what's going on under the hood.  Thus, someone with minimal understanding of math can indeed run the programs and engineer solutions that are within the confines of the existing parameters or routines.

However, such as person will probably have a limited ability to know when the answer coming back is incorrect.  Also, this person will likely be unable to do an engineering analysis that's not already canned and waiting for him.

One of the engineers at work is considered a hack, because he has not grasped using VHDL as it was intended, thus producing designs that are unsimulatable, untestable and undebuggable.  He's an engineer, but we will NEVER use him do to a new design every again.

TTFN



RE: Did the Romans have engineers?

The Romans and Babylonians had excellent engineers, better than most today. Those structures took more than artistic sense, there were practical calculation of dimensions and load capacity that were done by the builders of the aquaducts and great monuments, not to mention figuring out the logistics and construction methods.

-The future's so bright I gotta wear shades!

RE: Did the Romans have engineers?

I don't think that buildings of the scale that the Romans, Greeks, Egyptians, etc., built are possible without some level of engineering.

Even though they might not have had the math, the designers had at least an intuitive visualization of the loads and how they were distributed.  They had sufficient understanding of surveying to square up their buildings and aligned the edges to specific angles.

TTFN



RE: Did the Romans have engineers?

Do you think any of the roads built in the last 150 years or so will last 2000 years?  The Romans built many.
Did you ever watch a road construction site where they were using a sheeps foot roller?
http://sbe.napier.ac.uk/projects/compaction/chapter2d.htm

They are called sheeps foot rollers because the Romans compacted road base material by driving herds of sheep back and forth over the area.
The Roman roads were built to move the Army around quickly, increased trade and commerce was a secondary benifit.

RE: Did the Romans have engineers?

Architects and builders of Gothic Cathedrals did not have much more math than the Romans. Yes, they had Arabic numbers and the zero, but not much advanced math. And, still, who would dare to build anything like a cathedral today? There was no prestressed concrete in those days. No gas or electric welding and no computers.

Gunnar Englund
www.gke.org

RE: Did the Romans have engineers?

In fact there wasn't even much in the way of concrete... this being an 18th & 19th century reinvention of the Roman concrete.

The mortar used in building prior to that date is made from slaked lime & a variety of other exotic substances.

Such as dung.

Since it never "sets" as such, it gives much more flexibility than a modern concrete.

And churches & cathedrals have a fair history of falling down at inopportune moments, some more than once.

RE: Did the Romans have engineers?

Just to add to zeitghost's comment - there is a tendency to assume a high level of engineering and architectural skill when looking at old cathedrals and other ancient structures.  But we're only seeing the structures that have survived.  These structures were designed and built empirically, without any underlying understanding of the basic physics or material characteristics.  They learned by trial and error.  Vast numbers of cathedrals collapsed during construction or shortly thereafter.  Through trial and error, the builders developed rules of thumb for building proportions, materials, spans, etc, but they did not really understand the basic principles.

Just as wine and beer makers learned to make wonderful stuff without ever knowing about yeast or enzymes.

RE: Did the Romans have engineers?

Quote (whyun):

I believe one can be an engineer with mediocre math skills but equipped with exceptional physics skills.

I have never seen this.

RE: Did the Romans have engineers?

Gaudi designed his cathedral by hanging appropriate weights from an overhead framework. The threads that were used to suspend the weights gave the line of action of the forces, so should form the centre of each column.

It is not inconceivable that the Romans, or some Gothic cathedral masons, used a similar technique.

Cheers

Greg Locock

Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

RE: Did the Romans have engineers?

So perhaps we need to step back a minute and define "engineer" prior to deciding if the Romans had any....

-The future's so bright I gotta wear shades!

RE: Did the Romans have engineers?

2
Step back in time a back a bit further: did the ancient Egyptians employ engineering techniques and principles to construct the pyramids? Or the Mayan people before them? I think they must have had some understanding of the materials they worked with and of how to go about assembling these vast structures. The designers of them must surely be the forefathers of todays civil engineers.

As for learning empirically, weren't the Tay Bridge, the Titanic, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, the Comet airliner, and the space shuttle all designed by engineers? They all incorporated inherent weaknesses whose significance was not understood or fully appreciated at the time of design: learning through trial and error is still going on in modern times.

----------------------------------

One day my ship will come in.
But with my luck, I'll be at the airport!

RE: Did the Romans have engineers?

A real eye-opener, Scotty!

Gunnar Englund
www.gke.org

RE: Did the Romans have engineers?

Main Entry: 1en•gi•neer
Pronunciation: "en-j&-'nir
Function: noun
Etymology: alter. of earlier enginer, from Middle English, alteration of enginour, from Middle French engigneur, from Old French engignier to contrive, from engin
1 : a member of a military group devoted to engineering work
2 obsolete : a crafty schemer : PLOTTER
3 a : a designer or builder of engines b : a person who is trained in or follows as a profession a branch of engineering c : a person who carries through an enterprise by skillful or artful contrivance
4 : a person who runs or supervises an engine or an apparatus  

Main Entry: en•gi•neer•ing
Function: noun
1 : the activities or function of an engineer
2 a : the application of science and mathematics by which the properties of matter and the sources of energy in nature are made useful to people b : the design and manufacture of complex products <software engineering>
3 : calculated manipulation or direction (as of behavior) <social engineering> -- compare GENETIC ENGINEERING  

So did the Roman road and structure designers and constructors meet these definitions?

-The future's so bright I gotta wear shades!

RE: Did the Romans have engineers?

is said that Rome had a much better training system for engineers than our modern EIT system.

Each time a capstone was hoisted into place the engineer was required to stand under it.  There is no more profound way to assume accountability.

RE: Did the Romans have engineers?

"the application of science and mathematics by which the properties of matter and the sources of energy in nature are made useful to people"

That does not seem an unreasonable definition.

It does not say that engineers have to understand analytically every last nuance of their design, all you have to do is use the available maths and science to make useful things.

So, rules of thumb and books of proportion (how ships were designed), represent the accepted practice at the time. By that standard, the Romans had engineers.

To take a later example, think about Brunelleschi's dome. He didn't know how to solve one part of the design, and as we have seen, he could not have analytically solved a beam equation, none the less, it is a /designed/ structure. It would be interesting for someone to reverse engineer it to find out how close to the mark the design was by modern standards.



Cheers

Greg Locock

Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

RE: Did the Romans have engineers?

i've always thought that scientists study things to understand how/why they are that way, and engineers apply science to make things.

like greg, i don't think engineers have to understand the basic physics in order to make things.  tho' the better the understanding, the greater the likelihood of getting something usefull.  

look at the development of the airplane.  i'm pretty sure that the wright bros never understood (certainly not in a mathematical way) prandt's lift theoory; but they were able to make an airplane through experiment (and insight).  look at all the failed airplane designs, and the free thinking going on, in the early days of aviation.  everyone had ideas at the beginning, some were good, most weren't, but once the underlying science was understood better then the success ratio went up a lot.

can you be an engineer without math skills ... certainly if you've the insight as to how something's going to work, and the patience to develop your ideas though experiment.  someone mentioned that today's mathematical tools isolate the users from their creations ... i would add isolate them from understanding the underlying fundamentals ... how often do we see people proficient at driving the software (designers CAD, analysts FEM) without really appreciating what's going on ?

RE: Did the Romans have engineers?

   The Ancient Engineers
   by L. Sprague De Camp

   This book is an excellent description of engineering from the ancient Egyptians, up to the Renaissance.  Whether or not Imhotep qualifies as an engineer depends upon your standard.  He knew as much or more about the subject than any of his contemporaries.  He knew the value of PI to one digit, 3, and he did not know anything about calculus, which would not be worked out for another four and a half millenia.

   I was under the impression that the Wright brothers advanced aeronautical engineering, at least in the practical sense.  They did accurate calculations of lift and drag versus velocity.  They recognized the importance of a high aspect ratio wing.  You have to consider the possibility that the technology was at a low enough level that a couple of bicycle mechanics could improve it.  

   The part of De Camp's book that amused me was the revelation that artists and engineers were one and the same person in medieval Europe.  After years of joking about artsies in college!  It explains a lot about Leonardo Da Vinci.

                     JHG

RE: Did the Romans have engineers?

Skim through some of the ancient literature, Vitruvius, Archimedes, Ptolemy, and you will quickly come to appreciate that the ancients excelled in both engineering and mathematics. Roman construction materials were manufactured to an Imperial standard. Construction methods reflected an understanding of physics.

The arithmetic used by the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans was derived from the Babylonian sexigesimal counting system. This system, in turn, derived from an ancient finger counting technique, and can still be recognized in applications which use 12,60,or 360 divisions of a whole. By the time of the Romans, finger counting techniques had reached the point where surprisingly complex mathematics could be worked out using "digital" techniques. The Romans also used a device called a counting table, similar in concept to an abacus, to extend the range and complexity of their calculations.

The concept of zero, one of the keys to modern mathematics, seems to have taken seed in many places and times. But it wasn't until the middle ages that it was generally accepted in Europe. Whether the Romans understood zero is a matter of some question.

Trigonometry was well advanced by Roman times, and was probably the "highest math" practiced by engineers. They were pretty good at using trig for surveying: water tunnels were dug from both ends, often extending many hundreds of feet underground, and meeting within a small margin of error. Newton was far in the future, as was calculus.

Good reading on this topic, as Drawoh pointed out, is L Sprague De Camp's book on ancient engineers. Also check out Vitruvius's "Ten Books on Architecture", and George Ifrah's books, "From One to Zero", "Universal History of Computing", and "Universal History of Numbers".

RE: Did the Romans have engineers?

There's no question that the Romans had a fair grasp advanced concepts.  The reason you rarely read about Roman "Engineers" has more to do with the licensing boards of the time.  Faced with having to chisel their P.E. number (in roman numerals, remember) on each design, professional registration quickly fell out of favor.


RE: Did the Romans have engineers?

Some 20 or so years ago, I was in Zaragosa Spain and was shown a bridge that the romans built that was carrying modern day traffic.

I had to wonder if any of the bridges built today would be carrying traffic in 100 years, much less 2000 years.

rmw

RE: Did the Romans have engineers?

How about to relate engineering with ingenious or the use of  INGENIO , spanish word , babelfish translate it as TALENT.????

Maybe talent to build things needs more talent that math, you coul get a math to calc your facts , but is rare to get a math to build things.



 

www.cadtutorforum.net

RE: Did the Romans have engineers?

What about organizational and project engineering skills required in such huge and time-lasting projects as the building of cathedrals, bridges, pyramids...
How did ancient "engineers" coordinate workers, mobilize resources, etc. ?
I would be interested if anyone had references about the history of project engineering.

RE: Did the Romans have engineers?

If you have ever been to the Pantheon in Rome, you would have absolutely no doubt in their engineering skills. This is NOT the work of an artist who happened to make something that didn't collapse, this is the work of an Engineer with an artistic bent.

I'm surprised at all of the focus on structural engineering here. How about their use of piping, fittings and valves?
http://www.novanet.it/com/personale/togliard/nemi/nindex_e.htm

More proof of their engineering skills is in the area of warfare machinery. You don't build things like this by artistic trial and error!
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.romancoins.info/mil-artillery.JPG&imgrefurl=http://www.romancoins.info/MilitaryEquipment-Artillery.html&h=480&w=640&sz=69&tbnid=kBmT9bFjRR4J:&amp;tbnh=101&tbnw=135&hl=en&start=12&amp;prev=/images%3Fq%3Droman%2Bweapons%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26c2coff%3D1%26safe%3Doff%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official_s%26sa%3DG

The calculations we use today to determine projectile trajectories are all based upon the original works of Roman artillery engineers, some of them little changed. In fact Vitruvius, who wrote the Ten Books of Architecture which are the basis for all western architecture since, was first an artillery engineer for the Roman Army.

And as to math skills, how about the fact that the Romans actually invented the Abacus in a portable format, derived from the Phoenician or Babylonian sand pile calculators used by merchants (abak was the Phoenician word for sand). To me, that came as a result of the Romans needing to use math in places other than the market, i.e. the battle field or the engineer's office.

Roman's had engineers. They did not have the cumulative wealth of knowledge that we enjoy today, but in my mind that makes some of their accomplishments all that much more astounding.

"Our virtues and our failings are inseparable, like force and matter. When they separate, man is no more." Nikola Tesla
Read the Eng-Tips Site Policies at FAQ731-376  
Member, P3

RE: Did the Romans have engineers?


There is no doubt on the fact that Romans had engineers. When the Romans conquered the Greek cities, they absorbed the Greeks' advanced geometry and knowhow.

About the abacus, I was all the time under the impression that its origin was traced to the chinese of about 5000 years BC...

RE: Did the Romans have engineers?

I mean 5000 years ago .

RE: Did the Romans have engineers?

Google the history of the abacus. By most accounts it was a Roman adaptation of earlier non-portable technology from Greece or even Phoenicia before that, then adopted by the Chinese later, around 1200AD by recorded accounts, but as early as 166AD. Abacus history link I know there are some websites that claim it is as old as you say, but they don't appear to ofer any documentation to that efect. Wikipedia tends to back up what I had read, but mentions a Babylonian system that may have predated the Phoenician.

"Our virtues and our failings are inseparable, like force and matter. When they separate, man is no more." Nikola Tesla
Read the Eng-Tips Site Policies at FAQ731-376  
Member, P3

RE: Did the Romans have engineers?

Here is a site that offers some resolution to the origin of the abacus.

http://www.ee.ryerson.ca:8080/~elf/abacus/history.html

This is Ryerson University, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.


This site makes a distinction between the ancient counting boards, and the "abacus" the Chinese invented.

"The difference between a counting board and an abacus."

It is important to distinguish the early abacuses (or abaci) known as counting boards from the modern abaci. The counting board is a piece of wood, stone or metal with carved grooves or painted lines between which beads, pebbles or metal discs were moved. The abacus is a device, usually of wood (plastic, in recent times), having a frame that holds rods with freely-sliding beads mounted on them.

Both the abacus and the counting board are mechanical aids used for counting; they are not calculators in the sense we use the word today. The person operating the abacus performs calculations in their head and uses the abacus as a physical aid to keep track of the sums, the carrys, etc."

The oldest surviving counting board is the Salamis tablet (originally thought to be a gaming board), used by the Babylonians circa 300 B.C., discovered in 1846 on the island of Salamis. There are references to them going back much further of course.

The abacus as we know it today, appeared (was chronicled) circa 1200 A.D. in China.

One can argue that the two are related, or not. Often, history has shown that inventions arise independently in mulitple times and places. Historians, seems to want to only give credit to one (usually their own).

RE: Did the Romans have engineers?

I think 25362 Chemical said it best that Rome adsorbed Greek engineering.

The Greeks invented the railway somewhere in the 6th century BC. The Diolkus of Corinth, moved ships on a "railway" of limestone, which may be why the gauge of UK track is still 3 cubits. (US rail is 1/8th inch narrower to round off the numbers).  The system fell into disuse by 90AD and was forgotten until C14th in Europe when miners pushed ore to the surface on rail carts.

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