- History of Engineering - The progress of engineering works has already in our time been prodigious. As to the future, we know we cannot create a force; we can, and no doubt shall, greatly improve the application of those with which we are acquainted. What we called inventions can do no more than this, yet how much every day is being done by new machines and instruments! The telescope extended our vision to distant worlds. Progress has come to be enormously rapid, and the advance of a generation is much greater than was formerly that of centuries. We may reasonably hope to see something of this multiplied progress of the coming generation; our children will see the still larger multiplication of gain of the twentieth century, and help carry the world a long way toward that ideal which has been but feebly described in Plato's Republic and More's Utopia, and has been the aspiration of all good men.