Engineering And Its Impact On The United States - 1418 Words

Engineering was newly introduced to the United States in the late 1700s. The jobs were minimal and fully educated men were few and far between. America had a shaky start in the engineering field, but the profession quickly picked up speed. From 2009 to 2013, engineering degrees grew twice as fast as other disciplines (Bidwell, â€Å"The number of STEM degrees earned in the last 5 years grew exceptionally†). Everything from the most basic principles of engineering and the minutiae of an engineer’s daily routine, to complexities such as payment and respect for the profession have changed drastically since the 1800s due to more people becoming open to the ideas of innovation and diversity in such an integral field. Engineers are the life-blood of†¦show more content†¦It was not until the mid-1900s that only educated and trained people could call themselves engineers. To be considered a professional engineer, a license is needed (Mraz, â€Å"Changes in the Enginee ring Profession Over 80 Years†). Another evolution of engineering that occurred, was companies switching to a system called concurrent engineering. This is essentially just making sure that all of the employees for a certain job understand each step of the design process, giving them the ability to share opinions on each step along the way. Prior to this development, each engineer in a company had knowledge only on their specialty and could not offer input on any other process. This was largely implemented in the 1980s. When this was used, companies had 100% improvement in quality (Salustri, â€Å"an Extremely Abbreviated History of Engineering Design†). Engineering used to be a small, seemingly insignificant job. There were not many places and ways to successfully apply engineering, and even in the times where actual engineering was done, the engineer may not have been properly credited. There were people throughout history that accomplished things that would today be categorized as engineering, but at the time, all the fields of engineering had not yet been discovered. A good example of this is Dr. William Gorgas, who believed that mosquitoes were responsible for infecting thousands of workers with malaria during the building of the