The Quest for a Better World

This article highlights the pervasiveness of the products and processes of engineering in having improved the quality of life in the developed countries of the world. The airplane and its associated infrastructure of airports and ticketing schemes have come a long way since the Wright Brothers’ first flight in 1903, and the ensemble that goes under the rubric ‘airplane’ certainly warrants recognition as achievement. All the engineering achievements that have been identified as among the greatest of the past century leave room for improvement. Air conditioning and refrigeration are among the more domestic achievements of 20th century engineering, but at exactly what stage they became so is hard to say. Refrigerators especially came a long way in the second half of the century. Well-controlled air conditioning, for all the technological progress made in the field since air was fanned over a block of ice, seems to remain one of the great open problems of mechanical engineering. All achievements, engineering and otherwise, are relative to their time and circumstances.