The Distance We've Come

This article discusses contribution of engineering technologies through years. It is achievements and advances in engineering that changed all. The development of safe drinking water supplies, sanitary sewer systems, and wastewater treatment schemes drastically reduced diseases that were rampant a hundred years ago, and so reduced infant mortality. Mechanical engineering has changed the quality of life significantly from that of a century ago. Air conditioning, which was developed early in the 20th century to control humidity in plants, factories, and mills where manufacturing processes were affected by too damp a sheet of paper or too dry a spool of thread, was widely domesticated in the second half of the century. Air travel is similarly comfortable and even safer, and few of my generation grow anxious even when flying across the country or around the world. The level of engineering accomplishment and dependability embodied in our terrestrial travel seems to be rivalled only by that achieved in space travel, a distinctly 20th-century engineering achievement.