Abstract:
The Industrial Revolution led to the creation of a new profession, modern engineering, with engineers trained in special schools that came into being only after the Industrial Revolution made them a necessity. While this is well known, what is not so well known is that the developments brought on by the Industrial Revolution were responsible for a new type of art, which is entirely the work of engineers and the engineering imagination. This paper defines this new art form and shows that it has been consciously practiced since the late eighteenth century, that it is parallel to and fully independent from architecture, and that numerous modern engineers are creating such works of art in the twentieth century. The new art is illustrated in this paper by the work of four of the leading bridge designers in the modern tradition: Gustave Eiffel, John Roebling, Robert Maillart, and Christian Menn.
