Mechanical engineering is the third-largest engineering profession (behind electrical and civil); there are 221,000 mechanical engineers at work today, and the projection is for average growth to 250,000 by the year 2010, according to federal data. Newly graduated B.S.M.E.s earn roughly $48,000.
History
Mechanical engineering can trace its roots back to the very beginnings of the Industrial Revolution, from 1750 to 1800 in Europe and 1800 to 1850 in the United States. Perhaps the most important single invention prior to the actual creation of the profession was the steam engine, invented by James Watt in 1802. In short order this led to the steam locomotive and self-propelled boat. These two modes of transportation soon caused canals and railroad tracks to appear all over Europe and then in the United States. Somewhat later, the adaptation of the steam engine allowed the mechanization of agriculture to begin. It freed manufacturing plants from water power, which had been the traditional source of power for running conveyors and grinding and cutting machines. The American Society of Mechanical Engineers was founded in 1888 by a group of leading businesspeople and the editors of a magazine called American Machinist. Two more developments created new demand for mechanical engineers around that time. One was the automobile, powered by the combustion of oil or other fuel. The other was the application of electricity for lighting-one of the many discoveries that came out of Thomas Edison's laboratories in the 1800s. With an electrical lighting system for the home or for city streets came the need for power generators and electrical conveying equipment. And with the automobile, the need for precisely machined metal became critical, as well as a more formalized method of assembling the components into finished autos.
Twentieth-Century Developments
By the 1920s, with the addition of the airplane to the growing number of methods of transportation, social commentators were hailing the establishment of a "machine civilization." The excitement of that time matches the excitement being generated today by computers.
Also by this time, the central element of mechanical engineering began to be clarified: the generation and use of power. Power means automotive horsepower, the watt-hours an electric utility generates, the thermal units that a heating system produces, and the thrust of a space rocket. Taking some form of energy and converting it into useful work is the primary activity of mechanical engineers.
A good example of this idea and of how mechanical engineers work can be found in a unique publication sponsored by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). That publication is the ASME Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code. The 2001 edition (the seventy-ninth) runs sixteen thousand pages! Luckily, it is now available on a single computer-compatible CD-ROM disk. The Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code provides all the details on how to design, assemble, and test a tank, usually made of steel, that contains heated water or high-pressure steam. The rules of the Code are written into state and national safety standards, and because they are followed with great exactitude by mechanical engineers, there are relatively few boiler explosions today. These explosions were a common occurrence in the 1800s on steamships, railroad trains, and in heaters and power systems.
During World War II the concepts of mechanical engineering were very important to the design of aircraft, tanks, and ships. This period also saw the first joining together of mechanical devices with electronics. In fact, the first computers, which were very mechanical devices, were developed by military-funded projects aimed at developing a way to compute the firing trajectories of artillery shells. World War II also brought about the development of the space rocket and the jet engine, which are commonplace today.
The mating of electronics and computers also made automatic machines-robots-possible. This field, expected to become a fast-growing, gigantic business a few years ago, is quieter right now. But most forecasters expect that as the cost and difficulty of guiding machines by computer become reduced, robotics will become a key technology in the future.