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. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.