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Do you want to cut a sheet of paper in half? Would you like to open a tin can? Or maybe you need to pull a cord to open a curtain?
The objects you use to do these things are all products of engineering. In fact, engineering touches just about every part of life, and it’s as old as civilization itself.
The first engineers were solving problems more than a million years ago. We have proof of that from stone tools found in China and Kenya. People had to figure out how to cut fruits, roots, vegetables, and meat. How did they do it? First, they hit stones together so that sharp pieces broke off. The stones with sharp edges became tools. Today, we call them wedges. When you cut food with a knife, you are using a wedge. It is one of the six simple machines. ▶
◀ What do pulling a wagon, pushing a shopping cart, and riding a bike have in common? They are all things an engineer made happen. About 2,500 years ago, an engineer made it easier to move objects. Their invention was a wheel and axle, which is another simple machine. It is a big part of how cars, buses, bikes, carts, and wagons work. The wheel itself is a round object with a hole in the middle. It existed more than a thousand years before the wheel and axle. From what we know, the first wheels were made for potters. At first, the wheel was turned by hand to shape a pot and smooth out its surface. Today, an electric motor turns a potter’s wheel.
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▲ A very strong person could lift a 450-pound stone. Moving that rock would be really hard. What if many stones were lying in a field? How could they be moved to clear the land? About 7,000 years ago, an engineer solved the problem. This person shoved a strong tree branch under the edge of a stone. They pushed down on the branch and rolled the rock forward. That was the first lever, another of the six simple machines. A couple thousand years later, this same tool was used on a different problem: bringing water from a river. The tool, called a shaduf, is still used today to irrigate land. People use it in Egypt, India, and other countries.
From the earliest times, people had to get across streams and rivers. It was a problem that needed a solution. In places where people could get large, flat stones, an ancient engineer used them to make a path to the other side. In areas that had a lot of trees, ancients laid logs end to end above the water. They might have been the first engineers. ▶
