Paper short abstract:

In Spain, industrial engineering, covering a wide range of engineering specialities was originated in a state initiative in 1850. The system was established taking the Centrale of Paris as part of the model.

Paper long abstract:

In Spain, industrial engineering, covering a wide range of engineering specialities was originated in a state initiative in 1850. During the 1830s and 1840s, in Spain there was a process of intensive reformism in the world of education. The context was the bases of the "liberal" state, promoted after the death of Fernando VII in 1833, who had reintroduced the Ancien Régime after the Peninsular War (1808-1814) against the Napoleonic troops. The reform included the set-up of a state secondary education (the Institutos, created after 1835) and the University reform, with the sciences incorporated in the syllabus of the new Faculty of Philosophy. The engineering schools, such as Mines or Civil engineering, were centres to provide members for the Corps of the State. Their schools were not included in the universities. At that time, industrial technologies (mechanics, chemistry) were trained in a multiplicity of schools, without a higher engineering. In 1850, the Spanish State ordered industrial engineering with a decree in which a complete system of education was forecast, from apprenticeship to higher engineering. The idea for a system of coordinate education of industrial technicians came from the schools created at that time in Berlin. The higher education took its model from the Ecole centrale des arts et manufactures of Paris, in which several of the promoters of the Spanish law were trained as early as 1837. The aim of the paper is to analyse this process, discussing the elements shared by the Spanish industrial engineers and the centraliens.