Engineering Wonders of the World
Volume I

ANCIENT ENGINEERING. BY THE IT has been well said that a characteristic of modern thought is the increasing desire to look backwards, and appreciate the work of generations which have long passed away, thereby checking any inordinate pride that might be bred by a self-satisfied con- centration on the immense advance made, during the last few decades, in all branches of science. In the absence of contemporaneous detailed accounts of an ancient nation’s manner of life and civilization, we are obliged to base our estimates of its social and scientific status largely upon those works of its engineers which, in a more or less ruined condition, have survived the ravages of time. Even where we have the testimony of ancient The but more recent writers to Engineer their information is of Ci r*c<i t . double value when corroborated Historian. by the discoveries of energetic excavators, who perpetually bring to light fresh reasons for admiring the extent to which, in the historical infancy of the human race, mind triumphed over matter. Thousands of years ago men were busy erecting splendid monu- EDITOR. ments and constructing works of the utmost importance to the physical well-being of their fellows. Then the tide of conquest rose in Central Asia and swept westwards, destroying man and his monuments alike ; and for many hundreds of years the engineer’s activities were confined, with few exceptions, to the construction of huge castles and religious edifices. With the revival of learning, greater political stability, the invention of gunpowder, and the rediscovery—for as such it must be regarded— of many principles of natural physics, engin- eering awoke from its long sleep, and now we have to our hands such mechanical appliances as the ancients could hardly even have dreamed of—appliances in themselves as wonderful as the results for which they are partly respon- sible. Yet, considering the difficulties which even the modern engineer encounters, notwith- standing these appliances, the work performed by men who had at their command little else than a bountiful supply of cheap labour and, as is likely, comparative freedom from galling con- tracts, may well make us think highly of those great ones of old whose engineering achieve-