ENGINEER. - The word "engineer" is commonly derived from the term ingenium (in its late meaning of machine, especially a war machine), through the medieval form encegnerius, builder of machines.
In antiquity the figure of the architect is hardly distinguishable from that of the engineer. On the other hand, the simplicity of the machines then in use, their application, and their little-developed variety, while detracting nothing from the ingenuity of their builders, offered them relatively limited and traditional means. It is no wonder, therefore, that down to the Renaissance, even amid grandiose and gigantic constructions, the figure of the builder acquired little prominence, remaining almost that of a master mason or a master carpenter. He relied on centuries-old experience, continually perfected, or on secrets jealously guarded within the craft guilds. It was above all with the close of the 18th century that the engineer won first-rate importance and a wholly particular and specialized figure; thus arose the specializations of civil, industrial, railway, naval, aeronautical, mechanical, electrical, agricultural engineering, etc., and the engineer's profession acquired importance with each passing day in proportion to the multiplication of scientific discoveries and technical applications.
The engineer's profession as it exists today demands a solid preparation and, moreover, given the rapid scientific advances, a continual updating — an indispensable requirement for personal affirmation, also because of the notable social repercussions of the work and the numerous and complex human problems: moral, economic, financial, commercial, etc., which are intimately bound up with the exercise of the profession itself.
For the engineer too, the duties of professional correctness include strict honesty and uprightness in business, charity toward one's neighbor, and not allowing oneself to be absorbed by the concern for gain to the point of compromising one's spiritual rectitude.
The engineer is many times a scientist himself, who has concentrated his investigation in a very specialized field of applied science; but he is above all a technician who carries out such applications, perfecting them as far as he can, inserting his work between capital and labor.
To the former he offers the possibility of greater gain, to the latter that of less toil, of more rapid execution, of fewer hands. Technical improvement therefore has an enormous impact on social life, and the engineer, who is its immediate minister, has a task that must be a pacifying one amid the harshnesses that arise from it in regard to production and exchange.
As a leader of men, even when he is not a head of an enterprise (v.), the engineer, by the very nature of his profession, has relations with a very varied human world, which he cannot and must not neglect. Sometimes these are relations of direct subordination; at other times contact occurs through intermediaries, such as shop foremen, head workmen, etc. In every case it matters that his technical and moral formation be such as to impose itself spontaneously and win him the esteem, trust and affection of his subordinates.
His technical preparation must enable him to give work orders that are clear, precise and well considered, so as not to impose futile work on the workman, which would considerably compromise his prestige. But it is not enough that the engineer be an expert connoisseur of machines; he must be above all a connoisseur of men, so as to be able to proportion each one's capacities and character to the work and the treatment.
Bibliography10 works
Luigi Morstabilini