Since the 17th century, the capitalist commodity economy has developed rapidly in Britain, France and other countries. Many people have devoted themselves to improving the working machinery needed by various industries and developing new power machinery, steam engines. The main material of manufacturing machinery gradually changed from wood to metal. Machinery manufacturing industry began to take shape and gradually became an important industry. Mechanical engineering has developed from a decentralized, mainly dependent on the craftsman's personal talents and skills to a theoretical, systematic and independent engineering technology. Mechanical engineering is the main technological factor contributing to the industrial revolution and capitalist mechanical production in the 18th to 19th centuries.
Mechanical engineering has always been to increase production, improve labor productivity, improve the economy of production, that is, to improve the interests of mankind as the goal to develop and develop new mechanical products. In the future era, the research and development of new products will take reducing resource consumption, developing clean renewable energy, controlling, reducing and even eliminating environmental pollution as the goal task of super-economy.
