Subject: RE: OFF TOPIC - Bail money for IETF 64?

From: "Hallam-Baker, Phillip" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 20 Sep 2005 20:52:15 -0700

The origins are military, the Romans were the first engineers. The root
is ingeniosus, meaning "skilled". 

The military engineers were always responsible for more than building of
siege engines, they would also build the earth works for attack and
defense.

The term 'civil engineer' was coined to differentiate building of public
works from the military form. I have a feeling it might have been
Brunnel who coined the term but it might be earlier.

During the 19th century engineers were the rock stars of the day. 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On 
> Behalf Of George Swallow
> Sent: Tuesday, September 20, 2005 8:23 AM
> To: Jeffrey Hutzelman
> Cc: JFC (Jefsey) Morfin; [email-masked]; [email-masked]
> Subject: Re: OFF TOPIC - Bail money for IETF 64? 
> 
> 
> > Unfortunately, the English term can carry either of these meanings, 
> > depending largely on context.  It is applied to people who drive 
> > trains (because they operate an "engine", to people who provide 
> > technical support, and also to people who design complex 
> electrical or 
> > mechanical systems or structures.  You have to know from 
> context which 
> > is which.
> 
> It's my (non-authoritative) understanding that the term 
> engineer originally meant someone who built engines (think 
> seize engines, etc).  
> 
> When locomotive were first invented they were not very 
> reliable so the guy who drove them was a kind of 'field 
> support engineer' and the name engineer stuck.
> 
> ...George
> 
> ==============================================================
> ==========
> George Swallow             Cisco Systems                  
> (978) 936-1398
>                            1414 Massachusetts Avenue
>                            Boxborough, MA 01719
> 
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From: "JFC (Jefsey) Morfin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 21 Sep 2005 14:09:15 +0200

>is ingeniosus, meaning "skilled".

Yeap. Or "in  genere" which means to puts his "gen-" (same as ADN 
gene, conception, genius, live, "gens"=extended familly, gang ) into 
something. This is complementary to the "architect" who says what is 
behind (archi) what is built. The first architect and ingineer is 
God. The term degraded to the military engineer - through Romans etc. 
down to French Polytechnic School by Napoleon, and ARPA. Civil 
Architects and Engineers were at work very early when you see the 
Iraqi and the Roman water systems or Pyramids. (Cartographers should 
not be forgot as they were the most important ones [deciding of the 
taxes on land] and being the applied mathematicians).

The military engineers were protected and made responsibles by their 
Military Rank received through a "Brevet" and the civil engineers 
were protected and made responsible by their "Lettres Patentes" (the 
King or an authority acknowledging their competence or their rights 
over an invention). This developped under Louis XV and Louis XVI due 
to a guy named Beaumarchais who generalised the concept to the 
authors and to copyrights, finding this way to make benefits which 
were used to finance French unformal support to the Insurgents (La 
Fayette) and once stabilised to a broad part of American War budget 
(so the USA are sons of the French poets). Today a right on an 
invention is a "Brevet" in French and a "Patent" in English. We see 
that some Americans want to patent everything (including softwares) 
making everyone an engineer and an IPR holder, and Europe just 
refused to follow them to such extent considering that Open Source 
was a better economic and societal approach.

This is also the same problem IESG currently faces with RFC 3066 bis, 
hence my opposition. Is a language a commodity defacto "patented" by 
a IANA registry managed by Unicode, or is a language a common 
cultural right of those using it, documented by an ISO 11179 conformant
registry system?

Something which may be fun to some: when the Abbé (priest) Chappe 
started the first telecommunication system (panthograph) he met a 
problem when somebody built a castel in between two pantographs. He 
explained that to Louis XVI (the fellow who sponsored the first human 
flight and the first parachute jump in his Versailles Castle). The 
King gave him a "Lettre Patente" granting him the right to forbide 
such buildings between two pieces of land used or to be used for 
Panthograph Towers. This created the Telecom monopoly and forced 
Chappe to buy lands and to set-up communication rates to pay for 
them. These lands became military lands under Napoleon (back to 
military engineering) to protect communications (up to Moscow). When 
Marconi invented Radio they took 20 years to start thinking of TV. TV 
need local towers: they used Chappe's properties. Today TV in France 
is supported by a public common service to all the TV Chains, using 
them. I suppose Wi-Fi is around. From ADN genes to ADSL memes ...

jfc