Engineering is where human knowledge meets real-world problems—and solves them. It's the source of some of our greatest inventions, from the catapult to the jet engine. Marshall Brain, creator of the How Stuff Works series and a professor at the Engineering Entrepreneurs Program at NCSU, provides a detailed look at 250 milestones in the discipline. He covers the various areas, including chemical, aerospace, and computer engineering, from

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Follows the development of roads in the United States--and the new forms of transportation that used them--from the National Highway of 1805 through railroads and paved roads for bicycles and automobiles to the interstate system.

When World War I began in 1914, the air forces of the opposing nations consisted of handfuls of rickety biplanes. By the war's end, the blueprint of the modern fighter aircraft had emerged. To trace the story of this astonishingly rapid technological revolution, NOVA takes viewers inside The Vintage Aviator, a team of New Zealand-based aviation buffs dedicated to bringing back classic World War One fighters.

Throughout history, the advantages and costs of technological innovations have been unevenly distributed between the powerful and the rest of society, assert economists Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson in their new book, Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity. In a Q&A, they discuss what’s wrong with today’s approach to automation, why machine usefulness is more important than machine intelligence,...

"Some of humanity's mightiest engineering achievements are small in scale--and, without them, the complex machinery on which our modern world runs would not exist. In Nuts and Bolts, structural engineer Roma Agrawal examines seven of these extraordinary elements: the nail, the wheel, the spring, the magnet, the lens, the string, and the pump. Tracing the evolution from Egyptian nails to modern skyscrapers, and Neanderthal string to musical instruments,...

This is the story of how humans changed the world forever, told through six iconic objects. They are familiar, yet hidden within them are thousands of years of thought, struggle, sacrifice, determination, and insight. There are surprising accidents, colorful characters, and moments of joy or despair stretching back in time, often to the beginning of human civilization itself. The result is a journey through human history. It reveals how science, invention,...