The Beginning of Engineering Knowledge
Starting with the Renaissance, engineering knowledge was increasing based on scientific law in addition to the accumulation of empirical experience. The great scientific theorists of the Renaissance and this early modern era created a body of new knowledge that provided engineer inventors with enormous impetus. In addition, the notion of mechanical invention as the principal means toward industrial progress led many governments to offer rewards to inventive genius and to establish learned societies in which news of the latest discoveries and inventions could be shared.
During the 17th and 18th centuries improvements in basic materials also contributed to engineering progress. Metal - especially cast iron, which could be used in machine construction - gradually replaced wood as a building material, and relatively cheap coal and coke began to be used as fuel in place of wood. The rapidly expanding use of coal required an improvement in mining methods and in transportation, eventually the coal economy inspired the invention and rapid modernization of rail transport.
Perhaps the single most important result of the increase in coal mining, though, was the concomitant improvement in Pump technology. The necessity for pumping water from mine tunnel had occupied the energies of engineers for centuries. In 1698, Thomas Savey invented a steam powered pump. This machine was followed 14 years later by the first efficient steam engine, the Newcomen engine, which can be said to mark the beginning of the modern age of engineering.
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