Andrew A. Humphreys and the Development of Hydraulic Engineering: Politics and Technology in the Army Corps of Engineers, 1850-1950

Abstract

In 1861, Captain Andrew A. Humphreys of the United States Army Corps of Topographical Engineers and his young assistant, Lieutenant Henry L. Abbot, completed their Report upon the Physics and Hydraulics of the Mississippi River. The report was based on a thorough investigation of the lower Mississippi basin. Congress had authorized the survey in 1850, following two disastrous years of flooding and an appeal from the Louisiana legislature. It was far from being the first river survey, but it was the most extensive ever undertaken at that time. In it the authors challenged earlier hydraulic theories and introduced entirely new formulations to explain river flow.2 Although much of the theory introduced in the report was later disproved, the conclusions decidedly influenced the development of