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Old 17-06-2007, 08:07   #14
BBKing
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Re: Two jailed after bridge built by blind man collapses!

Quote:
No idea - the article doesn't say.
I suspect (and it's my degree subject, so I'm not totally flying blind here ) that civil engineers then were expected to do the lot - the word 'civil' merely indicated that they weren't 'military' engineers, who were definitely expected to be able to put up bridges and build roads. The idea of specialisation into structures, geotechnics, hydraulics etc. came much later, when the French idea of theoretical engineering rather than good old British rule-of-thumb came in and people actually had to do some hard-core maths.

The word 'theoretician' was an insult in those days (tantamount to calling someone a 'Frenchman'), which explains why a man who unable to explain his calculations could be a successful engineer.
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