Steamtech Engineer
The steamtech age preceeded the rise of dieseltech in the Manifold, though it didn't reach every corner of the world at the same time. A simpler, if more physically demanding age, the heyday of steamtech saw the rise of mechanical computers and the implementation of hot air balloons - the precursors to airships - for travel in devices like the liftcoach. Importantly, alongside the development of steamtech came a renewed focus on the technologies require to support it: vessels, pistons, valves, controls, meters, and transmissions all capable of standing up to the titanic pressures and scalding temperatures developed within steam engines. A new breed of steely-eyed engineers arose to meet the challenges of this new and dangerous technological environment.
Career
Qualifications
Early steamtech engineers were often inventors or tinkerers without necessarily having prior experience in professional engineering contexts. Steamtech required knowledge of metallurgy, mechanics, chemistry, and physics, each of which could have been garnered through educational institutions separately. It wasn't until later that steamtech engineering emerged as a subdiscipline of mechanical engineering, and much later as a discipline unto itself, within academia. Increasing incidents of boiler explosions and derailments drove polities to implement standards, regulations, and even licensing requirements based on the scale of produciton.
Career Progression
The term 'engineer' could sometimes become confusing in the later parts of the steamtech age due to the fact that, over time, the people who designed steamtech devices and those meant to operate or maintain them became two separate groups of people. Originally, it took someone with the unique knowledge of how a device functioned to operate it safely and effectively, but, as these devices became standardized and were increasingly produced in volume, other technicians became able to do the important work of making the devices go. A steamtech technician, driver, or mechanic worked in a related field and may have required less education to succeed in his or her chosen profession, but was no less essential to the wide-spread adoption of steamtech and related technologies.
Though steamtech has largely been supplanted by dieseltech, the knowledge, problem-solving skills, methodological rigor, and courage required of steamtech engineers also lend themselves well to the profession of diseltech engineers. The math and physics of heat engines is evergreen; the real change is in the way it the heat differentials may be generated or harnessed. Many of the technologies that sprung up in the periphery of steamtech remained nearly unchanged or, in the case of computing, developed into entire disciplines with the development of gasketype. Modern HVAC engineers can trace their roots to knowledge gained fromt the developments of the steamtech engineers.
Operations
Dangers & Hazards
Steamtech engineers and technicians often found themselves ensconced in sooty, scalding hot amalgamations of metal pressure vessels and mechanisms in motion - all of which are ready to fly apart if not properly tended to. For this reason, steamtech engineering always had a higher casualty rate than other engineering disciplines, though contemporary electrical engineering was always a competitor for this undesirable distinction. The combination of steamtech with moving vehicles and more volatile fuels increased the danger level, though directly working with the equipment in these contexts was typically the purview of technicians rather than engineers. Where steamtech is still used, advances in mechanical monitoring and control systems - via the development of more advanced mechanical computers and, later, autonets - has greatly improved workplace safety.
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