"The first self-proclaimed civil engineerwas John Smeaton, who constructed the Eddystone Lighthouse. In 1771 Smeaton and some of his colleagues formed the Smeatonian Society of Civil Engineers, a group of leaders of theprofession who met informally over dinner."The practice of civil engineering may have come into the practice between 4000 BC and 2000 BC in Indus Valley, ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia.Up until the modern times, there was no proper distinction between architects and engineers and their functions greatly overlapped. Construction of the pyramids of Egypt can be easily identified as some of the first instances of creation of large structures. Some other notable civil engineering constructions from around the world are Qanat water management, the Parthenon by Iktinos in Ancient Greece (447–438 BC), the Appian Way by Roman engineers (c. 312 BC). Similar kinds of historic civil engineering constructions from the eastern world are the Great Wall of China by General Meng T’ien and the stupas constructed in ancient Sri Lanka.
In 1818 the Institution of Civil Engineers was created in London, England. Two years later in 1820 the renowned engineer Thomas Telford became its first president. The establishment received a Royal Charter in 1828, thus civil engineering formally got recognized as a profession. Its charter defined civil engineering as, “the art of directing the great sources of power in nature for the use and convenience of man, as the means of production and of traffic in states, both for external and internal trade, as applied in the construction of roads, bridges, aqueducts, canals, river navigation and docks for internal intercourse and exchange, and in the construction of ports, harbors, moles, breakwaters and lighthouses, and in the art of navigation by artificial power for the purposes of commerce, and in the construction and application of machinery, and in the drainage of cities and towns.”
