Engineers in Britain

First Engineering Society, Civil Engineering, in Britain... 

Quite clearly, would-be chemical engineers in Britain had but the faintest notion of what they were or wanted to be. It is no wonder, therefore, that the English should react so positively to the appearance of the famed Principles of Chemical Engineering by Walker, Lewis, and McAdams ... 

Colin Divall is professor of railway studies at the University of York, UK. He has written extensively on the history of engineering professions in the United Kingdom and is currently writing, with Sean Johnston, a history of chemical engineering in Britain. 

For comparisons of the situation around 1900, see Robert Fox and Anna Guagnini, Life in the Slow Lane Research and Electrical Engineering in Britain, France, and Italy, c. 1900 , in Peter Kroes... 

He went Co Owens College (later Manchester University) as the first ever full time professor of engineering In Britain, on 26th March, 1868. Full details of his outstanding career there are In the centenary volume (2). 

The first professorship in chemical engineerings in Britain (believed to be the first in Europe) was established at UCL in 1923. It was founded in memory of Sir William Ramsay and a thriving department has been active there ever since. The paper describes the early history of the department research activities, course syllabus and the severe disruption caused by the war of 1939-45. 

The particular world we wish to help people to understand is the world of the engineer in Britain. We suggest that the relatively low status of British engineers and their work is one of the most important and interesting features of contemporary British society compared with other industrial ones. It is a sociological analysis of this issue and the reasons for it which constitute the major focus of this book. 

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