Engineering has been around as a concept for a long time, because the history of human progress has been one of technological development. For example, inventions such as the wheel and lever exploited basic mechanical principles to develop useful tools. 

In ancient times, many of the wonders of the world can be credited to the skill and ingenuity of what were, effectively, civil engineers. The Great Wall of China, and the Pyramids in Egypt, were engineering designs that have stood the test of time. The ancient Greeks developed machines for both civilian and military purposes. Some ideas, such as the Antikythera mechanism – the first known mechanical computer – and the mechanical inventions of Archimedes, are examples of early mechanical engineering. Some of Archimedes’ inventions required sophisticated knowledge of differential gearing or epicyclic gearing – two key principles in machine theory that helped design the gear trains of the Industrial Revolution – and are still widely used today in fields such as robotics and automotive engineering.

William Gilbert, who coined the term “electricity” in 1600, is thought of as the first electrical engineer, while the first steam engine was built in 1698 by mechanical engineer Thomas Savery. This device led to the Industrial Revolution in the coming decades, allowing for the beginnings of mass production, where the skills of engineers were suddenly needed en masse. The inventions of Savery and the Scottish engineer James Watt gave rise to modern mechanical engineering. The development of specialised machines and their maintenance tools during the Industrial Revolution led to the rapid growth of mechanical engineering, both in Britain and abroad.

Engineering began to be recognised as a distinct profession in the 18th century. Engineers from the Victorian era in Britain, such as Isambard Kingdom Brunel and George Stephenson, enjoyed celebrity status. Brunel was responsible for bridges and dockyards including the construction of the first major British railway, the Great Western Railway; a series of steamships, including the first propeller-driven transatlantic steamship; and important bridges and tunnels. Brunel’s designs revolutionised public transport and modern engineering. George Stephenson was an English civil engineer and mechanical engineer who built the first public railway line in the world to use steam locomotives. Sometimes dubbed the “Father of Railways”, he was considered a hero by the Victorians. His gauge of 4 feet 8.5 inches (1,435mm), or the “Stephenson gauge”, is the world’s standard gauge for railways.

Electrical engineering can trace its origins to the experiments of Alessandro Volta in the 1800s, the experiments of Michael Faraday, Georg Ohm and others, and the invention of the electric motor in 1872. The work of James Maxwell and Heinrich Hertz in the late 19th century gave rise to the field of electronics. The later inventions of the vacuum tube and the transistor further accelerated the development of electronics. Electronics are so critical to modern industry that electrical and electronics engineers outnumber colleagues in any other engineering discipline.

Chemical engineering, as with mechanical, developed in the 19th century during the Industrial Revolution. Large-scale production of chemicals was needed, along with the demand for new materials and new industrial processes. By 1880, the need was such that a new industry was created, dedicated to the development and large-scale manufacturing of chemicals in new industrial plants. The role of the chemical engineer was the design of the plant and processes. 

The development of the engineering of aircraft in the 20th century is traced back to the pioneers of powered flight. Only a decade after the successful flights by the Wright brothers, aeronautical engineering was extended through the development of the military aircraft used in World War I. Meanwhile, research to provide fundamental background science continued by combining theoretical physics with experiments. Early knowledge of aeronautical engineering was largely empirical, with some concepts and skills imported from other branches of engineering. Today, the more modern term “aerospace engineering” is used to encompass engineering for both civil aviation and for space.