The Application Of Science To Engineering

The Application of Science to Engineering

Improvements in engineering are very important to the industrialization and prosperity of a country. Although engineering improvements sometimes come through trial and error they are most often achieved by applying pure science and mathematics to engineering. Canadian engineering was improved a great deal in this manner. The engineering associated with building materials and long distance communication, two of Canada's most important industries, was improved through the application of pure science.

One of the most important scientific discoveries of all time was the law of electromagnetic induction discovered by an englishman, Micheal Faraday, in

1831. This discovery was applied to mechanical generation of electricity which made tremendous improvements to communications throughout Canada. The electric telegraph, first discovered in 1837 by Samuel Morse, was a great improvement over the mechanical telegraph which required the use of a telescope and was much less effective. It encodes messages electrically, transmits them over facilities such as copper wire, coaxial cable, and fibre optics to their destination where they are decoded into their original form. Combinations of long and short bursts of electric current are sent through a circuit thereby encoding each letter of the alphabet. More efficient transmission facilities were developed as the mining industry developed. The discovery of electricity sped up the development of mining through electric lighting and better machinery and ventilation, which led to better materials for wires and cables. Telegraph lines were set up along the CPR in 1885 as a convenient root, but also to relay information about the position of each train along the track to avoid collisions.

The telegraph was also the main source of information for newspapers.

Like the telegraph, the telephone wouldn't have been possible without the discovery of electricity. The telephone was discovered by Alexander Graham

Bell in 1876 and is much more advanced than the telegraph. It encodes variations in sound waves into variations of electric waves through vibrations of a diaphragm which are then transmitted. Electromagnets are used to send these vibrations through a cable, which are received on the other end by another diaphragm. For it's first few years the telephone was for public use only ( for calling fire stations, doctors…). A central exchange system was then set up and wealthy people began to gain access. The telephone quickly became essential in unifying and further developing the country.

In the construction industry there were several huge advances in the technology of building materials. Two related materials with similar methods of production are cement and bricks. Cement production in Canada began in 1889 in

Hull, Quebec. Portland cement was the principle type and consisted of lime,