Integrating Historical Technologies And Their Impact On Society Into Today's Engineering Curriculum

Technologies of all types surround us today. Most are now so commonplace that they are simply taken for granted. It is only when they do not work as expected that they are noticed. What is lacking is an understanding of how these technologies accomplish their tasks. People may know how to utilize many of these technologies but know nothing about how they really work. To many the social, political, and economic impact of technologies is also unknown. However, this may not be a new phenomenon. Humans have utilized technologies to enhance their capabilities since the beginning of time. It started with simple stone tools and progressed in steps over time to where we are today. Perhaps even early technologies were misunderstood by the people of the time and today’s lack of understanding is just a continuance of that tendency. This may even be the case for today’s engineering students. For the most part, current technologies are included in the engineering and engineering technology curriculum. However, technologies from the past are not. To remedy the situation, a project was initiated to enhance the engineering student’s knowledge of how past technologies were developed. The objective was to improve their awareness of technology’s historical heritage and foundation. In order to accomplish this an active learning hands-on component was added to a traditional lecture based course studying the effects of technology on society. Technologies from the past were researched and manufactured utilizing historical skills, tools, and methods. The students examined the artifacts during the classroom discussion of the particular technologies, giving them a better understanding of the engineering challenges encountered and how they were overcome. Initial results from the project indicate improved interest, awareness, and retention of the evolution of technology. Overall, the engineering students have an enhanced understanding of past technological issues that can be utilized to tackle future technological challenges.