Dr Robert Hooke and the origins of engineering science

When John Aubrey described Hooke as the 'Greatest Mechanick this day in the World', he acknowledged Hooke's genius as an experimentalist. To Hooke, the whole of nature was a great machine or engine in motion, the deepest truths of which could be uncovered by means of ingeniously contrived instruments. In the 1650s, the 'ingeniosi' of the future Royal Society were beginning to revolutionise our sense of 'natural knowledge' and coming to envisage ways of applying it to 'the Relief of Man's Estate'. This paper describes Hooke's early life, his development of precision instruments such as the microscope, his Micrographia and its influence on engineering, his work on motion and elasticity, and his inventions, including the airpump, wheel barometer, hygrometer, spring watch, and various machine tools.