Wind engineering—Past, present and future

This paper firstly considers the history of wind engineering in five rather arbitrary time periods—the “traditional” period (up to 1750), the “empirical” period (1750–1900), the “establishment” period (1900–1960), the period of growth (1960–1980), and the modern period (1980 onwards). In particular it considers the development of the discipline in terms of the socio-economic and intellectual contexts of the time. This leads to a description of the current state of the discipline and a forward look at possible developments, again taking into consideration the likely socio-economic and intellectual changes in the next few decades.