Engineers Make Great Inventors

Or is it that inventors make great engineers? Either way, they go hand-in-hand.

Engineers of virtually any specialty get paid to experiment with the technologies of today and add in improvements of their own. In the process, they often create new, useful inventions that may be eligible for a patent.

Engineers invent new technologies for the rest of us.

There are many engineers (otherwise known as inventors) in history. I’m sure you’ll recognize the names of a few.

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patent information, engineering

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Or is it that inventors make great engineers? Either way, they go hand-in-hand.

Engineers of virtually any specialty get paid to experiment with the technologies of today and add in improvements of their own. In the process, they often create new, useful inventions that may be eligible for a patent.

Engineers invent new technologies for the rest of us.

There are many engineers (otherwise known as inventors) in history. I’m sure you’ll recognize the names of a few.

For instance, take Leonardo da Vinci. He drew plans for several flying machines, including a helicopter and a hang glider as well as many military machines. In addition, da Vinci may have made a great civil engineer as shown from his plans for a 720-foot bridge that was recently turned into a reality.

Another engineer/inventor is Eli Whitney. He invented the first cotton gin. Whitney is also credited with the creation of interchangeable parts. Oddly enough, the ability to interchange parts is thought to be a much more important and long lasting invention than the cotton gin (although that is all he is usually remembered for).

Orville and Wilbur Wright, otherwise known as the Wright Brothers are credited with the creation of a practical airplane. They actually wrote a patent application in 1903 which was rejected. Eventually, patent #821,393 for a “Flying Machine” was granted to them in 1906.

Fast forward to today, when inventors are rewarded for their labors with patents that can bring in large sums of money. A large number of the patents awarded today are granted to engineers. And the number of patents applied for keeps growing each and every year in the U.S.

If you choose this career field, you will no doubt be exposed to patents and quite possibly even apply for one yourself. Who knows? You could make history!

Group Helps Needy, Motivates New Engineers

When you think of volunteering, you probably think of canned food drives, nursing homes and home building. But a group called Engineers Without Borders-USA is taking volunteering to a new high.

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Group Helps Needy, Motivates New Engineers

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When you think of volunteering, you probably think of canned food drives, nursing homes and home building. But a group called Engineers Without Borders-USA is taking volunteering to a new high.

With projects like improving drinking water for citizens and building irrigation systems for crops, Engineers Without Borders-USA makes a difference in people's lives. Made up of student chapters based at universities across the United States, the organization seeks to implement sustainable engineering solutions and inspire new engineers in the process.

One group of students from the University of Colorado is designing and building a water system for a village in Rwanda. In a project conducted in May 2003, a team of six engineering students from the Colorado School of Mines at Golden worked alongside the villagers of San Pablo, Belize, to site a pair of solar panels and install the electrical wiring in a school, a church and other community buildings.

The nonprofit organization has coordinated humanitarian projects all over the world, including Thailand, Mali, Senegal, Peru and Afghanistan.

ASME, which provided partial funding for the Belize project, has teamed up with Engineers Without Borders to promote the involvement of ASME members and student members in future overseas projects. These projects are slated for fall 2004 and throughout 2005.

Next year, ASME and Engineers Without Borders will lead a coalition of technical societies and other organizations for Engineers Week 2005. ASME will facilitate communications with other engineering groups to organize project teams to support Engineers Without Borders' endeavors around the world.

Engineering Directory is an Invaluable Aid to Engineers and Businesses

An engineering directory could save hours or even days of work for an engineer engaged in engineering work. Engineering typically involves finding alternatives available in the market and selecting those best suited to achieve desired objectives.

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Businessmagnet Directory Ltd , Business To Business Directory

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An engineering directory could save hours or even days of work for an engineer engaged in engineering work. Engineering typically involves finding alternatives available in the market and selecting those best suited to achieve desired objectives.

Engineering is a Complex Function

Engineering involves design and development of products or equipment, construction or operation of equipment and forecasting the behavior of equipment under different operating conditions. These activities seek to find how best

• A function could be carried out, or






• Economics of operation could be improved, or






• Safety to life and property could be enhanced during use or operation.

The engineering function goes about these tasks by trying to find alternatives to existing components and ways of doing things and testing these under different operating conditions.

Examining Alternatives is a Key Engineering Activity

It would be obvious that achieving these kinds of objectives is a complex exercise and that an awareness of different solutions available in the market could help the engineer immensely. For example, a component using a new composite material might recently have been introduced in the market and if the engineer knew about it, the person could find an excellent solution to a persisting production problem.

A specialized engineering directory that lists products by application could highlight such new solutions and bring it to the attention of the directory user (including our engineer).

Standard Directory Services

In addition to the kind of design and development help mentioned above, an engineering directory can help users to find sources for their regular business requirements. Good directories would be organized in a manner that makes finding things easy. A few typical examples can make this clearer.

There might be an Automotive category with such sub categories like Paint & Finishes, Materials, etc; a Building & Civil category with Consulting & Design services and other relevant sub categories; and so on.

The same businesses can also be categorized under Architectural, Communications, Quality Management, Reliability Engineering, etc for those who search along such lines.

These kinds of categorizations seek to capture the complexity of the field and provide satisfactory solutions.

An Engineering Directory is a Niche Directory

It would be clear from the above that an engineering directory seeks to meet the special kinds of needs that an engineer is likely to have. It is thus a niche directory targeted to this group.

Another kind of nicheness is seen when the engineering directory lists only suppliers from a particular country or region. Such regional directories focus to promote the engineering industry of particular regions. Additionally, regional directories help users to identify local or nearby sources for their requirements.

Conclusion

Engineering is a complex activity involving consideration of many alternatives to achieve desired aims. A source that could help the engineer become aware of different alternatives (such as components and solutions) available in the market can definitely help the person perform better and achieve better quality results.

An engineering directory is such a source of information. It is typically organized to facilitate finding information in different ways such as by products, industries, solutions and functions.