Egypt’s richest Library established in 1798 by Napoleon set on Fire

This is horrible that all of this wealth of information and knowledge has been damaged or destroyed. Shera~

CAIRO- The 213-year-old Egyptian maps and historical manuscripts — described as “irreplaceable” — were destroyed after a library in Cairo was set ablaze during the clashes, Egyptian officials said Sunday.

A fire that engulfed the building of the historic Egyptian Scientific Institute on Saturday morning has been extinguished. The extent of the damage has not yet been determined.

The fire started on the lower floors of the building, which is on Qasr al-Aini Street in central Cairo, but later reached the higher floors. The firemen, who arrived very late at the site, could not initially control the fire.

Eyewitnesses were reported to have seen protesters throwing a Molotov cocktail at stone-throwing soldiers at the Shura Council building, but the projectile missed the intended target and instead landed in the Egyptian Scientific Institute.

The website of Youm7 newspaper alleged that a protester was set on fire after trying to set the building on fire. No other source confirmed this news.

The institute is considered the oldest scientific institute in Egypt. It was established as L’Institute d’Egypte in August 1798 by Napoleon Bonaparte during the French invasion of Egypt.

THE POLYTECHNIC LEGACY

for the ASME Management Training Workshop, Sheraton Dallas Brookhollow Hotel, Dallas TX,
9:30 AM, Saturday, August 22, 1998

by John H. LienhardMechanical Engineering Department
University of Houston
Houston, TX 77204-4792
jhl@uh.edu

Every now and then, it’s worth any group’s time to take stock of who they are and where they came from. So, who are we and where did we come from? Who are we who’ve been calling ourselvesengineers since the early 19th century?

Actually, so much of who we are and what we do traces to what I call The Legacy of the Polytechnic Institute. To explain that, I first need to play with the word engineer. Engineers have been around a long time. Whoever organized construction of the Great Pyramid five thousand years ago richly deserves to be called an engineer. But the term engineer has been generally used only since people started learning how to build things in universities. Before that, most of the great inventors and builders did their work without formal education. Young James Watt spent a year in London as an apprentice instrument maker. The rest he had to get from conversation, reading, or his own invention. But as we trace the etymology of the word engineer, we find that it’s grown up around the formation of schools meant to teach us how to make things.

The word engineering probably derives from the Latin word ingeniatorum. In 1325 a contriver of siege towers was called by the Norman word engynours. By 1420 the English were calling a trickster an yngynore. By 1592 we find the word enginer being given to a designer of phrases — a wordsmith. The Oxford English Dictionary gets to the first use of the modern word engineer in 1635, but you might not be crazy about its use. Someone is quoted as calling the devil — “that great engineer, Satan.”

Its mission is to advance high quality research in various fields, ranging from biology and mathematics to fine arts and archaeology. Its library contains more than 200,000 books, including the original volumes of the “Description de l’Égypte” (Description of Egypt), begun in 1798 by French scientists in Egypt.

thank you Winter Lake

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