Why historians and engineers need each other

Do engineers need more history, or do historians need more engineering?

Both; engineers need historical context, while historians benefit from technical and mathematical literacy.

Both fields need more familiarity with the other. Historians benefit from enough mathematics and engineering to follow technical evidence, while engineers need historical context around the systems they study. Classroom reactions to mathematics on one side and to the word context on the other illustrate the divide. Technical literacy and historical context are presented as complementary skills.