An Engineered World

How engineering as a modern profession emerged as a global phenomenon—and why its development and expansion are so critical to our understanding of twentieth-century world history.

An Engineered World examines the dramatic and global expansion of modern, professional engineering between roughly 1870 and 1950. Over these decades, the number of people who called themselves “engineers” (or who were recognized as such by others) expanded from a small and eclectic number of individuals to one of the most numerous, mobile, and influential professional groups of the twentieth century.

Tens of thousands of university-trained engineers and other professionalized technical experts, a few famous but most anonymous, became critical to the technological, organizational, and political development of global capitalism and socialism in the twentieth century.… Keep Reading