History
As the field of engineering has evolved over time so has the field of forensic engineering. Early examples include investigation of bridge failures such as the Tay rail bridge disaster of 1879 and the Dee bridge disaster of 1847. Many early rail accidents pioneered the use of tensile testing of samples and fractography of failed components.
With the prevalence of liability lawsuits in the late 1900s the use of forensic engineering as a means to determine culpability spread in the courts. Edmond Locard (1877–1966) was a pioneer in forensic science who formulated the basic principle of forensic science: "Every contact leaves a trace". This became known as Locard's "exchange principle".
Read more about this topic: Forensic Engineering
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“We said that the history of mankind depicts man; in the same way one can maintain that the history of science is science itself.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)
“There is nothing truer than myth: history, in its attempt to “realize” myth, distorts it, stops halfway; when history claims to have “succeeded” this is nothing but humbug and mystification. Everything we dream is “realizable.” Reality does not have to be: it is simply what it is.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)
“The history of mankind interests us only as it exhibits a steady gain of truth and right, in the incessant conflict which it records between the material and the moral nature.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)