American Culture of Engineering

American Institute of Electrical Engineers History Photo
American Institute of Electrical Engineers History Photo

TalentHunt 360’s founder and CEO Gurmeet Bambrah, PhD write on American Culture of Engineering:

Initially the United States combined the Military academy model with British hands-on training and self-regulation at the Military Academy at West Point in 1802. This remained the case until the 1860s. Civil engineering schools remained obsessed with balancing academic teaching and hands-on experience either independently from the universities or as colleges of engineering only loosely affiliated with universities.6 In a groundbreaking move in 1862, however through the Morrill Act, America initiated the crucial step of placing engineering education inside universities through land- grant colleges.

In a completely independent development, in early 1900s Wyoming, an American state required applicants wishing to gain access to state water to file a detailed technical application for this. It was in this context that licensing for the engineering profession was introduced to protect the public from inaccurate applications and to ensure accurate records on water abstractions. State registration became mandatory for those representing themselves to the public as engineers or land surveyors and the state board of examiners for the profession was created at the same time. So popular was this development that by 1950 all states across America had adopted the licensing tradition.

Alongside these developments engineering societies modeled on the British self-regulating model continued to grow and fragment by engineering discipline into civil, mechanical, electrical, and other forms of engineering. Examples of these included the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE, 1852), the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME, 1880) and the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE, 1884). However self-regulation by engineers never gained a stronghold in America.

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