Low Cost, Mass Use: American Engineers and the Metrics of Progress

Abstract

This paper examines initiatives in engineering formation in the USA as, in part, responses to dominant territorial identities defining what counts as progress. The absence of a primary method of engineering formation during the antebellum period suggests that no metric of progress had yet scaled up to a level of dominance. Robert Thurston's efforts in the 1890s to scale up school‐based formation without liberal education did not fit a country that emphasized high‐volume production at low costs. The attempts of the Wickenden study in the 1920s to achieve coordination did not fit a country highlighting self‐realization through consumption. The 1955 Grinter Report achieved great success when the sudden appearance of Sputnik scaled up a new territorial identity for the USA. Overall, by responding to the evolving metric of low cost, mass use, advocates of engineering formation have designed engineers to serve the country.

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