Engineering and Mathematics

A historical Overview
 Welcome

As a Senior Lecturer in the Department of

Mathematics, I warmly welcome you to our
Department.
 Congratulations

on your success in gaining admissions into a

prestigious Engineering Faculty in the
country.
 Best wishes

for continued success in all your future

endeavors too.
 We are proud

to have you here as the best students in our

country in the Mathematics stream
 You can be proud too

For having an opportunity to learn both

Engineering and Mathematics

 Throughout history

Mathematics has been one of the most

prominent subjects of human learning
 It is unfortunate

that some people dont like Mathematics !!

Why do they hate Mathematics?
 The mistake is not in
Mathematics!.

It is in the way some people look at

Mathematics!!.
 Some people look at

Mathematics

only as a

subject for an examination

 So, they see

Mathematics

only as a collection of

Theorems,
Proofs and
Formulas
 Then they say,

theorems are hard to understand

proofs are boring to read and

formulas are difficult to remember

 For them,

Mathematics
Appear to be

difficult,
uninteresting and

useless.
But there are others who look at

Mathematics
as the

most beautiful and useful

subject
It is remarkable that the Famous
mathematician
Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777 - 1855)

once said:

Mathematics
is the
Queen of the Sciences.
Why did Gauss compare

mathematics
to the

Queen?
Because, both have two important
attributes in common:
Because, both have two important
attributes in common:

Beauty and Power

 In fact, the

Beauty and Power

of Mathematics are the two important factors

that attracted people towards Mathematics
throughout history.
 Aesthetic pleasure
derived from looking at beautiful
patterns and relationships
in

numbers and geometrical shapes

encouraged people to sacrifice their time and
energy to develop subjects like
NUMBER THEORY and GEOMETRY.
 On the other hand,

Power of Mathematics
to solve their
day to day problems
encouraged them to develop subjects like

ALGEBRA and TRIGONOMETRY

 Today,

The Power and Beauty of Mathematics

has

increased manifold
 In fact, the astonishing

scientific and technological

developments

of the present day world are mainly due to

the advancement in the

mathematical knowledge
 Influence of Mathematics
has now penetrated into almost every other
field like
Chemistry,
Physics,
Medicine,
Economics,
Social Sciences etc.
 Engineering
in particular, depends heavily on

Mathematics
 Your success
as an engineering student will mostly
depend on the

Quality of Mathematics
that you learn.
 Our Department

is responsible for teaching you the

Essentials of Mathematics

that are needed for a successful engineering

education
 We shall try to make

learning Mathematics

Fruitful and enjoyable.

Before beginning to learn
Advanced Mathematics

as engineering students,

You should have the

correct attitude
towards Mathematics.
 We should learn to

appreciate the power

and

enjoy the beauty

of Mathematics.
The purpose of this presentation is to give
you few glimpses of the

history,

power and

beauty

of mathematics
Important Milestones in the
History of Mathematics
Why should we learn History?
Earliest Branch of Mathematics:
Earliest Branch of Mathematics:

Arithmetic
 Counting and measuring has
been an essential activity in
human life from ancient times.
When people of early civilizations began to do,
farming and agriculture
a basic need in their life was to count or
measure their belongings like

Number of animals
Sacks of Grain
Area of Land
This inevitably led them to discover

numbers
Earliest type of numbers introduced by ancient
people were the integers:

one, two, three, four,

and so on.
They also used various objects like

fingers,

pebbles and

sticks

to represent these numbers.

The Oldest Counting Machine
As Agriculture and Commerce expanded
between communities, they had the
problem of

recording and communicating

numbers in written form

They solved this problem by introducing various

symbols and notations

which varied from civilization to civilization
In about 1500 B.C., Egyptians were
using the following symbols:
At that time they did not have

instruments

like

paper and pencil

to write these numbers.

 They had to
inscribe
them on materials like
stones, wood, leather etc.
 They had to
inscribe
them on materials like
stones, wood, leather etc.
An ancient mathematical text
The Romans were active in trade and
commerce, and the numeral system
they developed lasted many centuries.
 Roman Numerals

1 5 10 50 100 500 1000

I V X L C D M
CCLXXVI

276
Much later, in the period 50 550 A.D.,
Indian and Arabic mathematicians
introduced the Arabic Numeral
System that we use today.
As trade and commerce expanded
between communities, people
began to perform simple
arithmetical operations like
addition and multiplication
The discovery of the Arabic numeral
system made application of
arithmetical operations very easy for
them.
By 1600 years B.C., arithmetic was being
used for a number of practical purposes
like agriculture, farming and trade and
architecture
They also discovered several devices to
perform such operations.
The oldest adding machine.
Later in about 300 B.C., the Babylonians
invented the earliest calculator the
abacus. Astonishingly, the abacus was
in use in many parts of the world, even
during the last century.
 THE ONLY CALCULATING DEVICE
THEY HAD WAS THE ABACUS
A CHINESE ABACUS
A ROMAN ABACUS
It is remarkable that even before paper and
pencil were discovered, people were able
to compute an expression like

1.2345 2.3456
2 2

3.4567 4.5678
2 2

using an abacus. But, it would have

consumed a tremendous amount of
time.
IT IS REMARKABLE THAT WITH SUCH
PRIMITIVE DEVICES THEY WERE ABLE
TO PERFORM MARVELOUS
ENGINEERING FEATS LIKE .
PYRAMIDS OF EGYPT (2000
B.C.)
BRIDGES OF ROME (2000 YEARS
OLD)
GREAT WALL OF CHINA (200 B.C)
For the next few centuries,
Mathematics evolved into
various fields like

ALGEBRA
NUMBER THEORY
GEOMETRY AND
TRIGONOMETRY
During the 17 th and 18th century
a revolutionary change took
place in the History of
Mathematics
When mathematicians were trying to study
quantities which are infinitely large or
infinitely small, they faced with apparent
contradictions called

Paradoxes
 Bertrand Russel

Mathematics is the Science in which we do

not know what we are talking about,
neither what we are saying is true
Newton and Leibniz
discovered Calculus
independently
 Formal

Set Theory

Was established giving definitions of LIMIT,

DIFFERENTIATION and INTEGRATION
These concepts had lots of applications in
Physics, Chemistry, Engineering and
Economics which involved more and
more complicated calculations that
could not be done with fingers or abacus
So, people were trying to invent easier and
faster ways of calculating
In 1614, Scotsman John Napier discovered
logarithm. Napier also invented an
ingenious system of moveable rods
(referred to as Napier's Rods or Napier's
bones). These allowed the operator to
multiply, divide and calculate square and
cube roots by moving the rods around and
placing them in specially constructed
boards.
NAPIERS BONE John Napier (1550-1617),
The Slide Rule was invented by William
Oughtred in 1625. The slide rule is based
on Napier's ideas about logarithms - it has
logarithmic scales that can be slid past
each other to allow approximations to
multiplication to be carried out quickly and
easily.
SLIDE RULE John Napier (1550-1617),
Slide Rules
Slide rules were in continual use by
scientists and mathematicians right up
until to the introduction of the first
handheld calculator by Hewlett Packard in
1972.
THE PASCALINE Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)
Leibniz Stepped Drum Wilhelm Von Leibniz (1646-1716),
The Difference Engine (1822)

British mathematician Charles Babbage

designed this mechanical device. It was
able to calculate up to a precision of 31
digits
Analytical Engine(1830)
 Electrical and Electronic
devices:

The following is a summary of remarkable

events with regard to computational
devices.
1906 birth of electronics.
 1940

Electronic computers were invented. This invention made

arithmetical computations very fast and accurate. But
early computers were the size of houses and were
very expensive. Even though the actual computation
took very minute time, writing computer programs
and feeding them into the computer involved
considerable amount of time. The only way of
communication with these giant computers was
through punch cards, tapes and print-outs only.
There were no keyboards, mouses or video screens
 1964

IBM introduced the first mainframe computer.

These computers enabled users to perform
thousands of arithmetical operations in a
fraction of a second. In 1970 there were only
three or four such computers in whole of Sri
Lanka. Two of them were at the Universities of
Moratuwa and Peradeniya.
 1967

A team of three engineers from Texas Instruments, Inc.

invented the electronic pocket calculator. The
invention of the pocket calculator was a great leap
forward in the history of computational mathematics.
With calculators, performing arithmetical operations
became an instantaneous task. As engineering
students you should be thorough in using facilities
available in a calculator. The most simple tasks are to
evaluate arithmetical expressions
THIS CENTURY WE SAW ANOTHER
IMPORTANT MILESTONE IN THE
HISTORY OF MATHEMATICS:
THE DISCOVERY OF ELECTRONIC
CALCULATORS AND THE
COMPUTERS
 THIS HAS MADE
MATHEMATICS EVEN
MORE POWERFUL AND
AN INDISPENSABLE
TOOL OF AN ENGINEER
THESE DEVELOPMENT BROUGHT

ABOUT A REVOLUTIONARY

ADVANCEMENT IN THE FIELDS OF

SCIENCE, ENGINEERING AND

TECHNOLOGY.
ONE EXAMPLE IS THE MOST
WONDERFUL

ENGINEERING FEAT
OF HUMAN HISTORY:

THE PANAMA CANAL

PANAMA
 THEY WERE FASCINATED BY
THE BEAUTIFUL INTRINSIC
MATHEMATICAL
RELATIONSHIPS THAT EXIST
BETWEEN NUMBERS,
GEOMETRICAL SHAPES AND IN
NATURE.
 FOR EXAMPLE, WHILE
ENGINEERS IN EGYPT WERE
DOING CALCULATIONS ON
BUILDING PYRAMIDS PEOPLE IN
CHINA SPENT THEIR TIME AND
ENERGY DISCOVERING THINGS
LIKE
MAGIC SQUARES

3 7 14 16 25
11 20 23 2 9
22 4 6 15 18
10 13 17 24 1
19 21 5 8 12
While serious mathematicians were working
on theory of numbers, some others
derived pleasure constructing anagrams
like the following
What is

A decimal point
I'm a dot in place !
Is pity love?
Positively !
WHILE ENGINEERS ARE REJOICING OVER
THE ACHIEVEMENT OF CONSTRUCTING
PANAMA CANAL
SOME OTHER MATHEMATICAL MIND HAS
CONSTRUCTED A FASCINATING
SENTENCE IN HONOUR OF THE PERSON
WHO PLANNED IT
A MAN, A PLAN, A CANAL,
PANAMA
 WE SHOULD LEARN
MATHEMATICS WITH THIS
SPIRIT. THEN, LEARNING
MATHEMATICS WILL BE AN
INTERESTING EXPERIENCE