HIST 100: Engineering The Past

Features of The Fair

by 1 Comment

 I think from my reading so far of the Devil in the White City, it showed that overcrowding was a really big issue in the 1880 or 1890’s. More and more people began to shift from living in the rural farm town and open areas to more of the populated and city like areas with more local shops and people. When the Chicago Fair came around even more people came flooding into the urban Chicago area which made it harder for police or local authorities to locate people who have gone missing. Like every other place, when a place has too many people to support, homelessness will begin to occur and more problems will arise as well such as not enough jobs.

I think Larson chose the Chicago fair to be intertwined with Holmes, the murderer, because that is when most of the innocent killings began to happen more frequently. The fair did a great job of attracting and bringing in many people so that also played apart for the overcrowding and made it harder to find missing people. The more variety of people also probably gave Holmes more of an open killing option and better ways to hide his tracks.

Defining Engineering

by 1 Comment

To me, the definition of an engineer is someone who builds or design structures or machines. This definition fits many of the topics we have covered in this class: sacred structures like the Hagia Sophia, the Mosque-Cathedral of Cordoba, or the Great Mosque of Djenne. Engineers also designed ancient water structures. Most of the things we have covered in this class fall into the category of civil engineering. They design cars, houses, buildings, roads, dams, bridges; the list goes on.

 

Although my definition of engineers is close to the literal definition, I think that you can engineer things that are not material like buildings or bridges or roads. I think people can be engineers of ideas, and how we construct these ideas and put them to action falls on constructing or building them. This is how we have “engineered the past”. There were some pretty amazing structures built in the past, but people have also engineered concepts, such a political systems or education.

 

Define Engineering

by 1 Comment

From what I’ve gathered so far in the class, I would define engineering as style or method to go about a certain problem. For example, we’ve studied how the agriculture of the Mayans and how they built their whole culture around farming. Since most of the population were farmers they centered it very close to them, even having a god tied to it. This class incorporates the many styles of engineering from several different cultures. We as humans have always studied this, in hope of finding more new and improved ways to society. Connecting this to our resent topic with water, Americans are fighting the war of drought and we as students can potentially fix this in the new future. Even if it may not be a problem you can fix as an individual, the knowledge will surely help with other problems we may face.