The rise of the civil engineering profession in Britain

Abstract

In this paper, based on his James Sutherland History Lecture delivered to the Institution of Structural Engineers in 2020, Steven Brindle provides a brief history of civil engineering in Britain, charting its development from hydraulic projects and early attempts to apply intellect to structural design in the 17th century, through a great commercially driven boom in the Georgian era, to the foundations of the modern profession in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.