MIT engineering curriculum history

The first engineering school in this country was West Point, 1790-something — 1797 or '92 — and they trained military engineers. In 1823, the second engineering school in this country was Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, in Troy, New York. They were creating engineers to help build what was the big construction project in New York in 1823 — the Erie Canal. They needed people to dig the canal and build bridges and dams and locks. They created a curriculum of engineering different from the military engineers who built breastworks and catapults. They called it civil engineering to distinguish it from the only type of engineering that existed before that, which was military engineering.