Origins

The word society encompasses most of our day to day lives. But how exactly have engines changed our society since their invention? Not by much until the days of the industrial revolution. From the first days of the industrial revolution (1760s) rivers and canals were used for transportation of goods (iron, wood, coal, etc) internally. As more and more people became involved with the revolution, the need for a better method of transportation became more and more apparent.

The railway had existed for a while before any engines were introduced into the revolution, and it was between 1804 and 1820 that the first practical integrations of the engine into the railway were attempted. Richard Trevithick’s “New Castle” was one of the first steam engines, among John Blenkinsop’s and William Hedley’s locomotives1. All of these proved too heavy or too impractical for everyday use. To the right shows James Watt’s steam engine, the first to be credited as a working engine1. From here on, the use of the engine grew at an increasing rate.

Today

How did you get to the place you are reading this from, today? By car? You know your car has an engine. By Bus? A bus is the same, just with a more powerful engine. By bike? Your bike was created on a line of mass production fueled by the use of some form of engine. Even if your bike was handmade, the parts would have been manufactured by some form of engine. Even if those parts were made by hand, the person or people who created them would have travelled to work by a car or something likewise. As do the teachers at your school, and so do the people who created who created your school.

As you can see, just getting to where you are in your life to be reading this required an engine. Engines have worked themselves into almost every single part of our society. Even the Amish use engines to power their vehicles2! Do your parents drive you to your friend’s house on a weekend, or perhaps do they pick you up? Either way, engines. Head over to sizzler, surely they don’t use engines to cook their food? No, they use electricity, however. Electricity comes from a turbine somewhere, run by coal or solar power or wind power. The point being, most things we do day by day require power from some energy source. These energy sources are turned to power via some form of engine, as described in the “What is an Engine?” part of the website.

The things we have today most people take for granted. Imagine a world where everyone walked everywhere and did EVERYTHING themselves. Welcome to an engine-less world, not pretty. Our beliefs of this world and everything else have been affected by engines. Telescopes are a technology that has allowed us to view everything that we know about what is not on this earth. The parts for those were manufactured, using engines.

Everything we do and know these days has been formed by our past, and engines have been an important part in modeling that past.