Revolution’s engineers

SIR – Ian Berry (Letters, March 19) is quite correct to note that Oxford University failed to appoint a chair of engineering until the 20th century.

He should not, however, be unduly alarmed. Oxford’s oversight was not shared by Britain’s northern universities, in whose localities the Industrial Revolution was actually forged.

I refer him not only to Durham’s pioneering establishment, 71 years before Oxford, of the country’s first civil engineering course in 1837 but, thereafter, to the establishment of other courses specifically tailored to the local demands of the Industrial Revolution in mining (Newcastle), brewing (Birmingham), metallurgy and glass technology (Sheffield), and textiles (Leeds). Dr Bertie Dockerill Durham