Category:Scientific Engineering

This section contains canon info from officially published sources

The advancement of fundamental scientific research is hardly possible without experimentation. A given experiment may require equipment that is both mundane and commonplace or it may require equipment that is sufficiently exotic that it simply cannot be found anywhere at any price. Scientific engineering is a discipline focused narrowly upon crafting the means, however exotic, for the pursuit of fundamental scientific research. Given the limited scale at which fundamental scientific research exists in the Land of Mists, there is an extremely limited market for the products of scientific engineering and consequently very few scientific engineers. In fact the individual doing fundamental scientific research may be obliged to become his or her own scientific engineer. And rarely is such an individual interested in supplying rivals, even for a price, with the keys to breakthroughs that are deemed to be proprietary. In universities a scientific engineer may be on staff with the call on his or her time and resources being divided among the various approved projects in fundamental research.

In either case, the results of scientific engineering are first and foremost functional. No thought is given to pleasing design for there is essentially no marketplace for the wares. The results are often also fragile and ponderous. Scientific engineering is essentially about building equipment destined to occupy relatively secure and spacious laboratories for individuals who are vastly more concerned with cost than with the mutually opposed criteria of solidity and portability. Equipment for field research can of course be commissioned, but for a far higher price and all the more so if both solidity and portability are required. Additionally, the difficulty for crafting such equipment may simply be too great. For example, huge mechanical clocks appear in the medieval period, smaller versions that would fit within the home and budget of the wealthy appear in the chivalric period, pocket watches that would fit within the budget of the wealthy appear in the renaissance period, and watches that are truly affordable are actually a quite recent phenomena that presupposes mass production and a global marketplace numbered in the billions. Scientific engineers in the Land of Mists are never engaged in, and never enjoy the benefits of, mass production. Each of their creations is handcrafted and very often a unique item for a market of one. Given the task of creating a device that can record and play back sound, a scientific engineer is never going to produce an Ipod. A computer created by a scientific engineer, were such even possible, would take up rooms and could be broken with a mere bump.

The premier scientific engineer in the Land of Mists is Dr. Victor Mordenheim (Craft (scientific engineering) +25). He has created a battery, a laboratory pump, an electrical motor, and an electrical generator. The good doctor, however, does not see himself as a scientific engineer. He understands himself as being engaged in fundamental scientific research with his "inventions" being mere means to an infinitely more important end. Mordenheim is typical then in that he is a fundamental researcher who is his own scientific engineer. He is probably atypical in having little fear that making his inventions available to others would enable discoveries on the part of other. Rather he simply cannot be bothered, for the most part, to do so, the lightning box being the exception. And as to sharing the Dark Powers-inspired particulars of his methods, they do not admit of repetition by others.

References

Gazetteer II, p. 151