British Engineering Research Articles

A geopolitics of the diaspora of British engineers in South America in the first half of the 20th century: the cases of the Institution of Locomotive Engineers centre in Argentina

A geopolitics of the diaspora of British engineers in South America in the first half of the 20th century: the cases of the Institution of Locomotive Engineers centre in Argentina

The South American Center of the Institution of Locomotive Engineers: Circulation of British Engineers in South America, 1920–1949

British migration to Argentina was a phenomenon that occurred at the end of the nineteenth century, reaching its peak between 1850 and 1880. The circulation of British professionals, however, took place during the first half of the twentieth century as part of the migratory phenomenon framed in the context of a second phase of imperialism, the large number of British engineers, and the demand of South-American countries to develop their railways. This migratory process of professionals implied the transmission of knowledge and technology transfer, as well as a response from local engineering communities. The Institution of Locomotive Engineers and its center in Argentina are a clear example of the evolution of the forms of association characteristic of the nineteenth century, but also of the structuring, organisation, and expansion of the circulation of British engineers.

Promoting standardisation in modern China: British and American engineers’ organisations, local Chinese engineers, and their transnational networks, 1901–41

Abstract Standardisation is a product of the second wave of the Industrial Revolution in Europe and North America. This article examines how Western standardisation practices were introduced, transmitted, and promoted in China during the first half of the twentieth century. In particular, it looks at the critical role played by British, American, and local Chinese engineers in the transmission process. The topics covered in the present article have seldom been considered, and this article tries to fill the gap in scholarship. It analyses the shifting patterns of various standardisation efforts that are closely related to the governance of both cities and the wider nation. Work examined includes that of the Engineering Society of China, led by British engineers, which initiated standardisation in the Shanghai International Settlement in the early twentieth century; that of the Association of Chinese and American Engineers, founded by engineers of China and the USA, which, after World War I, began to implement the standardisation of railway infrastructure, with the cooperation of the Ministry of Transportation of the Beijing government; and efforts in the 1930s under the Nanjing government to establish an ‘engineering’ or ‘technocratic’ state, which included the execution of national schemes for the development of industrial standardisation. From the period of World War I until the 1930s, the orientation and practices of American standardisation strategies dominated China; then, due to the worsening situation of the Chinese–Japanese War, ideological tendencies and national strategies for standardisation began to diverge.

25 Years Ago

Marwin builds biggest machine tool in the world; Startrite Machines enjoying a renaissance; Kitagawa Europe going from strength to strength; RK develops a new CNC milling machine; and British motorsport engineering remains number one

Foreign Business and Revolution: The British Engineering Company of Russia and Siberia, 1918–1921

This article examines the activities of the British Engineering Company of Russia and Siberia and of its managing director, Arthur Marshall, in the almost three years between the Bolsheviks’ seizure of power and the signing of the Anglo-Soviet Trade Agreement. Sources from the Leeds Russian Archive outline how the company attempted to continue operations in Russia after the establishment of the Soviet government. In Great Britain, meanwhile, the managing director sought compensation for losses incurred during the Revolution and attempted to influence government policy towards permitting commerce with Soviet Russia. This article argues that although Marshall was unsuccessful in securing recompense for his company’s losses, his outward support for establishing Anglo-Soviet trade contributed to the pressures which, some interpretations conclude, make the 1921 agreement chiefly an economically rather than politically motivated arrangement from Britain’s perspective.

Nuts and bolts of informal empire – 19th century railway bridges in South America

Pedro Guedes explores the role of British, European and US engineers in developing the railway networks that spread across South America in the 19th century.

Briefing: British civil engineering biography – 10 years on

Biography illuminates the lives of past generations of engineers and puts their engineering achievements in human context. It joins the dots between the design and construction of works by individuals and teams. Recognising that the civil engineering profession lacked a reference source on the lives and achievements of previous generations, the Institution of Civil Engineers’ Archives Panel established an editorial board under the initial chairmanship of Professor Sir Alec Skempton to create a biographical dictionary in 1995. Work on the project resulted in three published volumes, the last of which appeared in 2014. This paper reflects on what has happened in the world of civil engineering biography in the following decade and what more can be done to ensure the lives and achievements of civil engineers can be adequately recorded for posterity.

The Yunnan–Burma railway, 1860s–1940s: Imagining, planning and rejecting a railway that was never built

In the late nineteenth century, British commercial interests in Asia and back home visualised a railway connecting British Burma with inland China, which they saw as a vast unexplored market. British engineers and adventurers were then employed by the commercial bodies to investigate the economy and geography of Yunnan and Upper Burma for the project. The railway was eventually rejected by the British as being unviable and unprofitable. The colonial knowledge created by these missions (in the form of travelogues, survey reports, interviews and studies) was later interpreted by Chinese nationalists as evidence of Britain's ambitions to colonise southwest China in 1905 (the Russo-Japanese War) and 1927 (the Northern Expedition) when the Chinese nation was in deep crisis. But the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War led the Chinese Nationalist government to reconsider the Yunnan–Burma railway as necessary infrastructure for obtaining foreign supplies to save the nation. The colonial knowledge produced by British explorers and merchants earlier was reinterpreted by the Nationalists to try to persuade the British authorities to construct the Burma section of the railway. By tracing the history of this failed project, this article argues that nationalist understandings of colonial infrastructure were far from fixed and consistent. It recounts the circulation of colonial knowledge on the Yunnan–Burma railway from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century, showing how different nationalist agents in Asia interpreted and reinterpreted colonial infrastructure at various critical periods.

Work values and cultural background: a comparative analysis of work values of Chinese and British engineers in the UK.

In literature of work-related values and attitudes, it is often argued that different work attitudes could be attributed to different ethnic origins and cultural backgrounds. This perspective article argues that we should avoid a deterministic argument of cultural essentialism and explore how ethnic differences in work values were formed in specifical socioeconomic and cultural contexts. To support this argument, this research conducted in-depth interviews to explore the mechanisms underlying the formation of British and Chinese immigrant engineers' work values in three dimensions: intrinsic-extrinsic, masculine-feminine, uncertainty avoidance-entrepreneurial risk. The main finding in this paper is that the different social and cultural milieus where both ethnic groups grew up to a large extent contributed to their different work habitus, which further resulted in their different work values. To conclude, this paper contributes to the literature by rejecting the cultural essentialism, which links individual work attitudes with their ethnic/cultural backgrounds in a "deterministic" way.

Renishaw – 50 Years of Innovation

In the half-century of its existence, Renishaw has become a byword for British engineering and manufacturing excellence on the global stage. So how did it get here and where is it going?

The Engineer as Economist: Sewers and the Making of the Water Consumer in Colonial Cairo, 1890.

Modern sewage systems were once a cutting-edge innovation that transformed how people consumed water. This article examines a debate among a group of British engineers involved in a sewage system scheme in late nineteenth-century Cairo, when Egypt was under British colonial rule. Assessing the project's economic feasibility, the engineers came to different conclusions regarding the future users of the system and, by extension, future consumers of water. Reconstructing the debate sets up a dialogue between engineering and economics to show that engineers could be economists too. This debate represents a type of economic analysis that public works engineers pioneered in the mid-nineteenth century. The engineers reached novel conclusions by centering consumers as the foundation for calculating economic realities.

50 Years & Counting for Renishaw

Renishaw is one of the jewels in the crown of British engineering and this year, the company celebrates its 50th anniversary. To mark the milestone, Renishaw held an event at its factory in Miskin, South Wales which Justin Burns attended

Best of British engineering

Best of British engineering

An Investigation on Humanoid Robots with Biped Locomotion and Walking

Human figures move, speak, and perform actions through certain features, such as sensors and actuators. Android is a humanoid robot that looks like a human, while Ginoids look like female humans. Human figures function through certain features. Arts, the UK-based designer and creator of anthropological robots, recently posted a video on YouTube showing one of the most vivid works with sensors that can sense their environment. Amega, a robot, has been shown to create incredible human-like facial expressions, and in fantasy systems, the human figure is used to represent amazing creatures such as a dwarf, cub, cub. gnome, Halfling, goblin, Troll, orc or an ogre, and Bigfoot Actuators are the motors responsible for the robot's movement. Humanoid robots are designed to mimic the human body. Although with different structures, they use accelerators that act like muscles and joints. The actuators of humanoid robots can be electric, pneumatic or hydraulic. Well, almost. Recently, the UK-based robotics company Engineering Arts showcased its Artificial Intelligence (AI) anthropology robot Amega, which is almost bizarre. Anthropology robots, on the other hand, did not reach the target. Following humans in form and ambiguous function. They have very specific roles - More than just being a "do it all" assistant. Our own TUG mobile robots and the robot's Ramba are prime examples of humanoid robots, with many features such as flexible flexibility, law enforcement and motion redundancy. The humanoid robot assists working people by ensuring their care and complete safety. Such robots also work in factories and can perform repetitive tasks without any mistakes. Honda Motor Corporation's Asimov is known as the most sophisticated robot in the world due to its human appearance and ability to walk and climb stairs. Amega is a humanoid robot from the British company Engineering Arts. The company claims to be introducing 20 years of innovation in motion and natural gestures, with the ability to use sophisticated AI.

THE BEST OF BRITISH

British Engineering Excellence Awards give Innovative Physics the Grand Prix: Research and development company hailed for solving complex engineering challenges

THE BEST OF THE BEST

Held in person for the first time in two years the British Engineering Excellence Awards celebrated the best in UK engineering.

Contested infrastructures: the case of British-mandate Palestine

ABSTRACT This study looks at infrastructures as sites of contest between empire and settler-colonialists. It analyses the construction of Mandate Palestine's Haifa seaport and Lydda Airport as imperial projects and traces the techno-political networks that allowed Jewish settlers to build their own competing seaport and airport in Tel-Aviv during the anti-colonial Arab Revolt (1936–1939). It identifies a dialectical relationship between colonisers and empire: Jewish settlers welcomed Palestine’s intended role as an arena of imperial development but soon developed their own stakes in securing access to sea and skies. The study contributes to the scant knowledge about infrastructures in colonial settings and specifically to the little-known role of British consultant engineers in facilitating them. All in all the article de-centres the Arab-Jewish conflict as a major historical focus and instead considers Palestine through the lens of the British empire’s conception of the Middle East.

“To Interfere on Their Behalf”: Sovereignty, Networks, and Capital in the Dominican Republic

This article uses a lawsuit between British engineers and Dominican merchants over a sugar estate mortgage to examine how transnational capital networks functioned at the local level during a moment of transition in the late nineteenth-century global economy. When Dominican courts ruled against the engineers, the firm unsuccessfully sought diplomatic intervention, raising questions on the one hand about the incremental construction of Dominican sovereignty and on the other about the links between diplomatic and business networks on the ground. It is situated within calls for new approaches to the history of the Dominican Republic that utilize international archives and focus on corporate bodies, both in local and Pan-Caribbean contexts.

Civilizing the Past: Egyptian Irrigation in the Colonial Imagination

Abstract Reviews of the historiography of irrigation regularly single out Karl August Wittfogel’s “hydraulic hypothesis” as a uniquely deleterious contribution to the study of ancient water management. His errors notwithstanding, this article argues that the ideological misshaping of Western scholarship on irrigation instead emerged from Egypt’s long colonial experience. First articulated in the Napoleonic Description de l’Égypte, the theory of a centralized, ancient Egyptian “hydraulic state” was crafted to justify French attempts to reshape Egypt’s irrigated landscape. British hydraulic engineers later received and refined this narrative during the British colonial period. Their popularizing discourse retrojected the technocratic character of modern irrigation into antiquity, defining the Egyptian “irrigation system” as a static and unchanging fusion of hydraulic expertise and state power. Widely disseminated in specialist and popular fora, this tendentious argument had become received wisdom by the beginning of the twentieth century and subtly shaped early Egyptological descriptions of irrigation in antiquity.

The Fab

A dream team made of British electric propulsion companies, academics and engineers are working collaboratively on the Triumph-TE 1 electric motorcycle project. We speak to all the partners involved in the unique arrangement to understand each part of the groundbreaking bike’s anatomy