Not quite, a governing body is what stipulates who can be called an engineer and who cannot (at least this is the case in Canada.) Certainly those who did engi

Not quite, a governing body is what stipulates who can be called an engineer and who cannot (at least this is the case in Canada.) Certainly those who did engineering-like work existed before governing bodies, you just never really knew whether they were any good, because there was no minimum set of competency defined. Ironically, one might say this is what software development is like right now! It is both a blessing and a curse, the accessibility of modern software development is what makes it so great, pitfalls and all.