The Tower and The Bridge

            
             The Tower and The Bridge is a very intresting book about structural engineering and opinions about it form an engineer named David Billington. Billington attempts to clearly define structural engineering by distinguishing it from science and architecture. His first topis was structural engineering and art. He argues that structural engineering or the structural arts follow the idea of efficiency, economy and elegance and by doing so provide evidence that communities flourish when such goals of freedom and discipline are balanced. .
             Engineering or technology is the making of things that did not previously exist, whereas science is the discovering of things that have long existed. Technological results are forms that exist only because people want to make them, where scientific results are formulations of what exists independently of human intentions. Technology deals with th artificial, science with the natural. In reality, machines are only one half of technology, the dynamic half, and structures are the are the other, static, half-objects that create a water supply, permit, transportation, and provide shelter. The new tradition arose with the Industrial Revolution and its new material, industrial iron, which in turn brought forth new utilities such as the railroad. These events led directly to the creation of a new class of people, the modern engineers trained in special schools which themselves came into being only after the Industrial Revolution had made them a necessity. Economy was a very important during this time. .
             Because of the great cost of the new industrilized iron, the engineers of the nineteenth century had to find ways to use it as efficiently as possible. For example, in their bridges, they had to find forms that would carry heavier loads-the locomotive-than ever before with a minimum amount of metal. Because of this the engineers had to speed up the design process and be mor efficient and economical.