I have been thinking about who I would vote for, if I were asked, to be the 'best' engineer of all time.  I have come to the conclusion it must be Al Bengali.  Al is the engineer who designed the Great Pyramids.  According to the Wikipedia the Great Pyramids were built (by Al) in 300 AD.  The first thing I looked up was to find out when Pythagoras lived.  He was around in 600 BC.  So Al did have at least one of the mathematical tools to design the pyramids.  The Pythagoras Theorem.  Remember that it relates the length of the sides of a triangle to the hypotenuse, or longer side.  He would have need all his trigonometry.  He probably would have needed Newtons laws of motion as well, maybe his law of reciprocal action - to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.  But Newton wasn't around till 1687!  How the heck did Al design those things? 

The second achievement by Al is the size of the contract he landed.  Do you think there was a formal bidding process and proposal?  Think of the equivalent civil engineering project by todays standard.  It would probably be like proposing to the US government to build New York City and you would need to employ half of the US citizens to do it.

The third achievement by Al that astounds me is how long his pyramids have lasted.  How long do any of our engineering products last in todays world?  Maybe 3 years if your lucky?  OK, a good skyscraper will last a couple hundred years - if we don't kill ourselves or if a terrorist doesn't do it for us.  Those pyramids have lasted two thousand years!  I will tell you one thing, Al builds them to last and he probably didn't get much repeat business.  How many pyramids does a king really need if they last that long?