Charles S. Storrow, Civil Engineer: A Case Study of European Training and Technological Transfer in the Antebellum Period

Abstract

Charles S. Storrow, Civil Engineer: A Case Study of European Training and Technological Transfer in the Antebellum Period PETER A. FORD Charles S. Storrow (1809-1904) occupies a distinguished place in the history of civil engineering for the role he played in the early stages of American industrialization. He began his professional career in 1832 working as an assistant engineer on the construction of the Boston and Lowell Railroad, and for ten years (1835—45) he served as the line’s chief engineer and superintendent. In 1845, he was called on by the Boston Associates, who had already launched successful industrial centers at Lowell, Manchester, and several other sites, to create the textile city of Lawrence on the Merrimack River, 11 miles downstream from Lowell. In three years he designed and constructed an entire industrial community, including the Great Stone Dam, an imposing granite structure that ranks as one of the monuments of 19th-century American engineering. During the next forty years, in his capacities as chief engineer, agent, and treasurer of the Essex Company, the land and waterpower company that developed the city, Storrow was a force in promoting Lawrence’s emergence as the nation’s leading producer of woolen and worsted textiles.1 Dr. Ford is professor of history at Merrimack College. He wishes to thank Mr. Charles S. Denny, great-grandson of Charles S. Storrow, for his kind permission to consult the Storrow papers in the Denny family collection. He would like to express his gratitude as well to Dr. Francis E. Griggs for valuable technical and bibliographical assistance and to Dr. Clarisse A. Poirier and Dr. Rose-Mary Sargent for reading the article and providing helpful comments. ‘On Storrow’s professional career, see Neil FitzSimons, “Charles S. Storrow and the Transition in American Hydraulics,” Civil Engineering 38 (December 1968): 81-82; Peter M. Molloy, “Nineteenth-Century Hydropower: Design and Construction of Lawrence Dam, 1845-1848,” Winterthur Portfolio 15 (1980): 315-43; Duncan E. Hay, “Building ‘The New City on the Merrimack’: The Essex Company and Its Role in the Creation of Lawrence, Massachusetts” (Ph.D. diss., University of Delaware, 1986); Theodore Steinberg, Nature Incorporated: Industrialization and the Waters ofNew England (New York, 1991), pp. 91—92; Hiram F. Mills, “Charles Storer Storrow,” Proceedings of© 1993 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/93/3402-0002$01.00 271 272 Peter A. Ford Although historians have recognized Storrow’s accomplishments as an engineer and urban planner, they have paid surprisingly little at­ tention to the remarkable training that made these achievements pos­ sible. In an age when few American engineers went overseas for their training, Storrow spent two years (1830—32) studying at the École des Ponts et Chaussées in Paris, regarded at the time as one of the world’s finest schools of engineering. Taking advantage of his stay abroad, he made a point of meeting prominent European scientists and engineers and inspecting major engineering works in England and France. He returned to the United States in 1832 having been exposed to the best of French engineering theory and British engineering practice. Storrow’s professional training is a subject worth examining be­ cause it tells us a great deal not only about an important American engineer but also about the transfer of technology during the first half of the 19th century. There has been a growing interest in recent years in the diffusion of technology between Europe and the United States during this period. Historians have begun to examine every important aspect of this phenomenon, from the specific technologies (particularly textile, mining, metallurgical, and railroad technologies) to the different vehicles of transmission, the social and economic preconditions of transfer, and the appropriate historical methodolo­ gies.* 2 Insofar as he was able to transmit to fellow American engineers what he had learned of European engineering, Storrow may be the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 40 (1904—5): 769—73; Engineering News and American RailwayJournal 28 (September 1, 1892): 207-8; 29 (February 16, 1893): 147; and 51 (May 5, 1904): 422-23; Biographical Dictionary ofAmerican Civil Engineers, 2 vols. (New York, 1972, 1991), 1:112-13; and Allen Johnson...