Engineering Knowledge

The 19th- and early 20th-century history of US university research in agriculture, aviation, and chemicals illustrates how universities assumed central roles not only in advancing the frontier of knowledge but also in pioneering new means for diffusing and exploiting this knowledge. We highlight features of the engineering knowledge of this period that distinguished it from scientific knowledge, the interplay between public and private initiatives that supported changes in the roles of universities, and the contemporary implications of this history.