Origins of engineering and beginning of engineering education

Military engineering is the oldest of the engineering skills and was precursor of civil engineering. Evidence of the work of the earliest military engineers can be found in the hill forts constructed in Europe during the late Iron Age, and later in the massive fortresses built by the Persians. The military engineers learned the art and practice of designing and building military works and of building and maintaining lines of military transport and communications.

The first electrical engineer is considered to be William Gilbert, with his 1600 publication of De Magnate. The first steam engine was built in 1698 by mechanical engineer Thomas Savery. The development of this device gave rise to the industrial revolution in the coming decades, triggering the beginning of mass production. With the rise of engineering as a profession in the nineteenth century the term became more narrowly applied to many fields such as mathematics and science. Similarly, in addition to military and civil engineering the fields then known as the mechanic arts became incorporated into engineering. Chemical engineering developed in the nineteenth century during the Industrial Revolution. In late ninetieths, computer engineering has developed rapidly after the invention of computer. Electrical and Electronic engineering which can trace its origins in the experiments of Alessandro Volta in the 1800s, the experiments of Michael Faraday, Georg Ohm and the invention of the electric motor in 1872 and also the work of James Maxwell and Heinrich Hertz is one of the most popular engineerings in these days. Moreover, Industrial engineering has been realized with Frederick Taylor.

Engineering was born in military so its education also born with it as educating the officers. However, the first schools of engineering were founded in France in the middle of the 18th Century and the first PhD in engineering awarded in the United States went to Willard Gibbs at Yale University in 1863 for the purpose of promoting "the application of science to the common purposes of life" and its entire history parallels the changing needs of a growing nation for scientifically and technically trained manpower.

References:

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel5/7/4102314/04102331.pdf?tp=&isnumber=&arnumber=4102331

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering#History

http://books.google.com.tr/books?id=rOg6B38bunIC&pg=PA17&lpg=PA17&dq=%22beginning+of+engineering+education%22&source=web&ots=0WD4Eqczyt&sig=pfnhivI9M2dZqjvIoDmc4IGW4Q8&hl=tr