Engineering and Humour in the Late Ottoman Empire: The Journal ‘Shaqa’

This paper focuses on a humour journal ‘Shaqa’ which was issued by the students of the Mühendis Mektebi (Engineering School) that offered training between the years 1908-1928 during the late Ottoman and early Republican periods and turned out to be today’s Istanbul Technical University. This journal includes not only technical information about the engineering education of the time but it also covers some drawings and cartoons related to the instruments used by the engineering education.

Reader can also taste a kind of the social history of engineering through various articles and poems written by engineering students. Conceptualisation of engineering, extents of tolerance, perception of women, changing moods and psychology of the students, famous teachers, comparion with other schools, tuberculasis as a dedly diease, problems of the students, difficulties of education in the time of national struggle during the WWI are among many topics included in the journal.