How engineering as a modern profession emerged as a global phenomenon—and why its development and expansion are so critical to our understanding of twentieth-century world history.An Engineered World examines the dramatic and global expansion of modern, professional engineering between roughly 1870 and 1950. Over these decades, the number of people who called themselves “engineers” (or who were recognized as such by others) expanded from a small and eclect...

In the late nineteenth century, Mexican citizens quickly adopted new technologies imported from abroad to sew cloth, manufacture glass bottles, refine minerals, and provide many goods and services. Rapid technological change supported economic growth and also brought cultural change and social dislocation.Drawing on three detailed case studies—the sewing machine, a glass bottle–blowing factory, and the cyanide process for gold and silver refining—Edward Beatty explores a central pa...