In what follows I use the term ‘academic engineering’ to describe the teaching of engineering within a university or college of higher education: specifically, this differentiates an institutional teaching framework from the broader assimilation of engineering working practices in nineteenth-century Britain by the then standard method of apprenticeship or pupillage, and from the practice of engineering as a profession. The growth of academic engineering, both in terms of student numbers and the variety of courses, profoundly influenced the structure of what (...) we might call ‘practical engineering’, the status of engineering as a profession searching for recognition within society, and the corporate relationship between engineers and places of higher education. These are issues which I will only touch on here. (shrink)