- Nikola Tesla
Nikola Tesla (10 July 1856 - 7 January 1943) was an inventor, physicist, mechanical engineer and electrical engineer. Born in Smiljan, Croatia, he was an ethnic Serb subject of the Austrian Empire and later became an American citizen. Tesla is best known for his many revolutionary contributions to the discipline of electricity and magnetism in the late 19th and early 20th century.
- James Watt
James Watt (19 January 1736 - 19 August 1819) was a Scottish inventor and engineer whose improvements to the steam engine were fundamental to the changes wrought by the Industrial Revolution. His influential teacher was Joseph Black
- Bill Nye
William Sanford Nye (b. November 27, 1955), also known as "Bill Nye the Science Guy," is an American television program host, scientist, and mechanical engineer.
- William Howard
William Howard (1793 - 1834) was an American mechanical engineer who was one of the first to work for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. When the railroad built its first cars using friction bearings first developed by Ross Winans, Howard made his own design and patented it on November 2 1828.
- Nigel Gresley
Sir Herbert Nigel Gresley (19 June 1876 - 5 April 1941) was one of Britain's most famous steam locomotive engineers, who rose to become Chief Mechanical Engineer (CME) of the London and North Eastern Railway (LNER). He was the designer of some of the most famous steam locomotives in Britain, including the LNER Class A1 and LNER Class A4 4-6-2 Pacific engines. An A1, Flying Scotsman, was the first steam locomotive officially recorded over 100mph in passenger service, …
- George Stephenson
George Stephenson was an English mechanical engineer who designed the famous and historically important steam locomotive named "Rocket" and is known as the "Father of Railways". The Victorians considered him a great example of diligent application and thirst for improvement, with self-help advocate Samuel Smiles particularly praising his achievements. His rail gauge of 4 ft 8½ in (1435 mm), sometimes called "Stephenson gauge", is the world's standard gauge.
- Al-Jazari
Ibn Ismail Ibn al-Razzaz Al-Jazari I (1136-1206) was an important Arab Muslim scholar, inventor, and mechanical engineer during the Islamic Golden Age (Middle Ages). Al-Jazari was named after the area in which he was born, Al-Jazira - the traditional Arabic name for what is now northern Iraq and northeastern Syria, between the Tigris and the Euphrates, corresponding to Mesopotamia. Like his father before him, he served as a chief engineer to the Ortukids, …
- Robert Stephenson
Robert Stephenson FRS (16 October 1803 - 12 October 1859) was an English civil engineer. He was the only son of George Stephenson, the famed locomotive builder and railway engineer; many of the achievements popularly credited to his father were actually the joint efforts of father and son.
- William Stanier
Sir William Arthur Stanier F.R.S. (27 May 1876 - 27 September 1965) was Chief Mechanical Engineer of the London, Midland and Scottish Railway.
- Seth Lloyd
Seth Lloyd is a Professor of mechanical engineering at MIT. He refers to himself as a "quantum mechanic". Lloyd was born on August 2, 1960, received his AB from Harvard College in 1982, his Math.Cert. and M.Phil. from Cambridge University in 1983 and 1984, and his Ph.D. from Rockefeller University in 1988 (advisor Heinz Pagels) for a thesis entitled "Black Holes, Demons, and the Loss of Coherence: How complex systems get information, …
- John Kelly
John Edmund Kelly (born July 2, 1852; died 1933 or 1934) was a politician in Alberta, Canada and a municipal councillor in Edmonton.
- Rudolf Diesel
Rudolf Christian Karl Diesel was a German inventor, famous for the invention of the Diesel engine.
- James Anderson
James Edward Anderson, CBE (3 April 1871 - 15 January 1945) was a mechanical engineer of the Midland Railway and later the London, Midland and Scottish Railway and had a great influence on the latter's adoption of the former's unwise locomotive policies.
- Joseph Whitworth
Sir Joseph Whitworth, Baronet (December 21, 1803 - January 22, 1887) was an English engineer and entrepreneur.
- George Jackson Churchward
George Jackson Churchward (31 January 1857 - 19 December 1933) was Chief mechanical engineer of the Great Western Railway of England (GWR) from 1902 to 1922.
- Ma Jun
Ma Jun (馬鈞, Wade-Giles: Ma Chün; 200 - 265), styled Deheng (徳衡), was a Chinese mechanical engineer and government official during the Three Kingdoms era of China. His most notable invention was that of the South Pointing Chariot, a directional compass vehicle which actually had no magnetic function, but was operated by use of differential gears (which applies equal amount of torque to driving wheels rotating at different speeds).
- Frederick Winslow Taylor
Frederick Winslow Taylor (March 20 1856 to March 21 1915) was an American engineer who sought to improve industrial efficiency. A management consultant in his later years, he is sometimes called "The Father of Scientific Management." He was one of the intellectual leaders of the Efficiency Movement and his ideas, broadly conceived, were highly influential in the Progressive Era.
- Henry Fowler
Sir Henry Fowler (July 29 1870-October 16 1938) was a Chief Mechanical Engineer of the Midland Railway and subsequently the London, Midland and Scottish Railway.
- Richard Roberts
Richard Roberts (22 April 1789 - 11 March 1864) was a British engineer whose development of high-precision machine tools contributed to the birth of production engineering and mass production.
- Charles Collett
Charles Benjamin Collett (September 10 1871 - April 5 1952) was chief mechanical engineer of the Great Western Railway from 1922 to 1941. He designed (amongst others) the GWR's 4-6-0 Castle and King Class express passenger locomotives.
- Edward Thompson
Edward Thompson (1881-1949) was Chief Mechanical Engineer of the London and North Eastern Railway between 1941 and 1946.
- Oliver Bulleid
Oliver Vaughan Snell Bulleid (19 September 1882 - 25 April 1970) was a British railway and mechanical engineer best known as the Chief Mechanical Engineer (CME) of the Southern Railway between 1937 and the 1948 nationalisation, developing many well-known locomotives.
- Samuel Bentham
Sir Samuel Bentham (11 January 1757 in England - 31 May 1831 in London, England) was a noted English mechanical engineer credited with numerous innovations, particularly related to naval architecture, including weapons. He was also the brother of philosopher Jeremy Bentham. At the age of 14, Bentham was apprenticed to a shipwright at Woolwich Dockyard, serving there for seven years. In 1780 he moved to Russia, where he was employed in the service of Prince Potemkin, …
- John Ericsson
John Ericsson was a Swedish inventor and mechanical engineer, as was his brother, Nils Ericson. He was born at Långbanshyttan in Värmland, Sweden, but primarily came to be active in the United States
- John Smeaton
John Smeaton, <small>FRS</small>, (June 8, 1724 - October 28, 1792) was a civil engineer - often regarded as the "father of civil engineering" - responsible for the design of bridges, canals, harbours and lighthouses. He was also a more than capable mechanical engineer and an eminent physicist. He was associated with the Lunar Society. He was the first self-proclaimed civil engineer.
- Daniel Gooch
Sir Daniel Gooch, 1st Baronet (August 24 1816 - October 15 1889) was first chief mechanical engineer of the Great Western Railway from 1837 to 1864 and its Chairman from 1865 to 1889. Born in Bedlington, Northumberland, the son of an ironfounder, he trained in engineering with a variety of companies, including a period with Robert Stephenson and Company, but was aged barely 21 when recruited by Isambard Kingdom Brunel for the Great Western Railway.
- Kalpana Chawla
Kalpana Chawla (Punjabi:ਕਲਪਨਾ ਚਾਵਲਾ) (7 March 1962 – 1 February 2003), was an Indian-born American astronaut and space shuttle mission specialist. She was one of seven crewmembers lost aboard Space Shuttle Columbia during mission STS-107 when the shuttle disintegrated upon reentry into the Earth's atmosphere. Kalpana Chawla is a posthumous recipient of the Congressional Space Medal of Honor.
- Linus Yale Jr.
Linus Yale, Jr. (14 April 1821 - 25 December 1868) was an American mechanical engineer and manufacturer, best known for his inventions of locks, especially the cylinder lock. Linus Yale, Jr. was born in Salisbury, New York. Yale's father, Linus Yale, Sr., opened a lock shop in the 1840s in Newport, New York, specializing in bank locks. His son joined him in the business in 1850, and introduced some combination safe locks and key-operated cylinder locks around 1862.
- George Hughes
George Hughes (9 October 1865 - 27 October 1945) was a locomotive engineer, Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway and the London, Midland and Scottish Railway.
- Willis Carrier
Willis Haviland Carrier was an engineer and inventor, and is known as the man who invented modern air conditioning.
- Su Song
Su Song (style Zirong was a renowned Chinese statesman, astronomer, cartographer, horologist, pharmacologist, mineralogist, zoologist, botanist, mechanical and architectural engineer, and ambassador of the Song Dynasty (960 - 1279 AD). Su Song was the engineer of a water-driven astronomical clock tower in medieval Kaifeng, which employed the use of an early escapement mechanism; the verge escapement was not known in Europe until 1275 AD.
- William Mason
William Mason (1808-1883) was a master mechanical engineer and builder of railroad steam locomotives. He founded Mason Machine Works of Taunton, Massachusetts. His company was a significant supplier of locomotives and rifles for the Union Army during the American Civil War.
- John Rennie
John Rennie (7 June 1761 at "Phantassie", near East Linton, East Lothian, Scotland - 4 October 1821), a farmer's younger son, was a Scottish civil engineer who designed many bridges, canals, and docks. A tinkerer and model builder even as a child, he first worked as a millwright with noted mechanical engineer Andrew Meikle (inventor of the threshing machine). Rennie then attended the University of Edinburgh (1780-1783) and began work as an engineer, …
- Andrew Meikle
Andrew Meikle (1719 - 27 November 1811) was an early mechanical engineer credited with, in about 1786, inventing (though some say he only improved on an earlier design) the threshing machine (used for removing the outer husks from grains of wheat, etc; occasionally also known as a 'thrashing machine'), regarded as one of the key developments of the British Agricultural Revolution in the late 18th century. Earlier (c.1772), he also invented windmill 'spring sails', …
- Zhang Heng
Zhang Heng (78 - 139 AD) was an astronomer, mathematician, inventor, geographer, artist, poet, statesman, and literary scholar of the Eastern Han Dynasty in ancient China. He had extensive knowledge of mechanics and gears, applying this knowledge to several of his known inventions. According to historian Joseph Needham, Zhang Heng was noted in his day for being able to "make three wheels rotate as if they were one" ("neng ling san lun du zhuan ye")".
- Christopher Dunn
"Christopher Dunn" is a mechanical engineer with an interest in history. He is most famously known for his investigations into the precision machining evident in ancient Egyptian structures (particularly in the Giza pyramid complex), and has written a book and numerous articles on the subject. Dunn's theory was used as a basis for physicist Joseph P. Farrell's work the Giza Death Star trilogy in 2001
- Graham Webb
Born in Birmingham, UK, to L. Webb a battle of El Alamein war widow, I was the youngest of 5 children. Started cycling at the age of 8 and was many times British National cycling champion and National record holder at 10 miles, 25 miles and 1 hour. Moved to the Netherlands in 1967 where I became world cycling road champion, signed a professional contract with the French Mercier team in 1968 and moved to Belgium, where I still live with my family. http://crazyaboutbelgium.co.uk/blogs/webb.htm
- Henry Gantt
Henry Laurence Gantt, A.B., M.E. (1861-23 November 1919) was a mechanical engineer and management consultant who is most famous for developing the Gantt chart in the 1910s. These Gantt charts were employed on major infrastructure projects including the Hoover Dam and Interstate highway system and still are an important tool in project management.
- Frederick Hawksworth
Frederick W. Hawksworth (10 February 1884 - 13 July 1976), was Chief Mechanical Engineer of the Great Western Railway (Great Britain) (GWR). Born in Swindon, he joined the GWR in 1898, aged 15, but did not become CME until he was 57, in 1941. Having been at the forefront of steam locomotive development under George Jackson Churchward, ideas at Swindon Works had somewhat stagnated under the later years of his successor C. B. Collett, …
- Marc Isambard Brunel
Sir Marc Isambard Brunel, FRS (25 April 1769 - 12 December 1849) was a French-born engineer who settled in the United Kingdom. He preferred the name Isambard, but is generally known to history as Marc to avoid confusion with his more famous son Isambard Kingdom Brunel. The younger son of a farmer in Normandy, initially he was set to train for the priesthood, but had a more practical mind, and became a naval officer cadet instead.