American Civil Engineering Research Articles

“Perpetual power” from the tides in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, 1813–1858

From 1822 to 1858, a “perpetual power” system supplied continuous, uniform tidal power to Boston industries. A 2.4 km dam in the Charles River estuary and a shorter cross dam formed two basins. Industries drew water from a “full” basin that was replenished at high tide, passed it through breast wheels, and discharged it to a “receiving” basin that emptied at low tide. Unlike owners of conventional, intermittent tide mills, who sold services or products, the managers of this system sold energy to industrial customers, as modern utilities do. They created new opportunities for Boston’s inventors and artisans, and the roads built on their dams became important transportation links for the city. Yet the project also degraded the estuarine environment and generated complaints about pollution. When population growth and falling costs for steam power made the extensive basins and mill sites more valuable for urban development than for generating renewable energy, a novel earth-moving process filled the basins to form Boston’s prestigious Back Bay district. This little-known, unique tidal-power development overcame daunting technological challenges in a period when American civil engineering was in its infancy.

Using the Environmental History of the Commonwealth to Enhance Pennsylvania and U.S. History Courses

Why teach Pennsylvania environmental history? How can teachers use it to improve students' understanding of the history of the state, the region, and the nation? I have found through my teaching at West Chester University that environmental history grounds American history in the physical realities upon which human history unfolds: the natural resource bases, both renewable and nonrenewable, that all societies use to construct their economies, cultures, and political systems. Recognizing this grounding, students can better understand the complex world in which they live, and thus better respond to the challenges they will face as citizens and consumers.

How Were the American Civil Engineers Born?

How Were the American Civil Engineers Born?

Historic canals of Maryland and Virginia, USA

This paper describes the canals of Maryland and Virginia as a means of capturing the essence of the American canal experience and the beginning of American civil engineering.

The Widening Gulf

A new report from the Rand Corporation suggests that while much technological progress will take place by the year 2020, the primary beneficiaries of this progress will be the nations currently at the forefront of scientific and technological advancement, not developing nations. What do these findings mean for American civil engineers?

Engineering legends: great American civil engineers: 32 profiles of inspiration and achievement

Engineering legends: great American civil engineers: 32 profiles of inspiration and achievement

Survival of International Civil Engineering Consultancies: The Need to Adjust to Reality

The paper describes the pressures currently being faced by American civil engineering consultancies trying to maintain a successful business in developing countries. Based on the author’s experience gained through almost thirty years of living and working as an environmental engineer in Asia, a number of strategies are described that enhance the chances of remaining viable as an international consultancy while maintaining the necessary quality of the finished product. Cost competition is intense in these environments and measures to cut costs are an essential component of a business survival package. Another important component of this survival package includes embracing localization and radically changing the corporate mindset. The pioneering spirit that was the backbone of the growth of the United States needs to be reawakened and exported overseas, where it can ensure the survival of U.S.-based civil engineering consultancies abroad.

William Mulholland and the Rise of Los Angeles

Catherine Mulholland was five years old when the career of her famous grandfather came to a sudden tragic end with the bursting of the Saint Francis Dam. The catastrophe of March 13, 1928, claimed at least four hundred lives, becoming “the greatest American civil engineering failure in the twentieth century.” Until that moment, William Mulholland had achieved a larger-than-life, Horatio Alger stature that leapt beyond bourgeois respectability to the Olympian heights of living legend. The story of the Irish immigrant's rise from ditch-digger to the “Chief” of the vast aqueduct and waterworks system of Los Angeles is the subject of this biography. More than filial piety but less than urban history, it contains prodigious research in newspaper archives and family scrapbooks. The result is a rather tedious chronicle that ultimately reveals little about the private side or family life of a very public man. Born in 1855, the Dubliner arrived in Los Angeles twenty-two years later, seeking his fortune. Finding a job with the water company, he learned the system, studied engineering, and worked his way up to become superintendent in 1887, when the city was fast approaching a population of fifty thousand. As the population doubled over the next decade, the exhaustion of indigenous supplies began to strangle further growth of the desert community despite Mulholland's conservation measures. Fred Eaton, the indefatigable engineer, booster, and mayor, led the way out of the difficulty not only by gaining municipal ownership of the waterworks but also by proposing to build a 240-mile aqueduct from the Owens Valley. While acting in secret made sense in order to keep the price of land and water rights at market values, some of the insiders including Eaton took advantage of their public roles to engorge their private bank accounts. They bought up huge chunks of desert in the San Fernando Valley just north of the city where the artificial river was planned to terminate since they knew that it would supply almost ten times the amount needed to meet the city's current demands. And here lay the local origins of endless conspiracy theories and political controversies that have spilled into national consciousness with ironically appropriate media productions such as Chinatown (1974) and Cadillac Desert (1997). Although Mulholland seems innocent of profiting personally from the scheme to suck dry the Owens Valley to make the San Fernando blossom, he does stand guilty of becoming obsessed with tapping every drop of water in the West for the profligate consumption of Los Angeles. In this respect, he personified the region's conservation movement in the twentieth century.

1869 Whipple Bridge Back across Enlarged Erie Canal

Cast and wrought-iron bridges across the Enlarged Erie Canal built by Squire Whipple, or to his 1841 patent, were commonplace in the period of the early 1840s up to the opening of the New York State Barge Canal in the second decade of the 20th century. Many bridges were removed and sold to private land owners for their use, and some were scrapped by the state. This article traces the history of one of his bridges and its recent rehabilitation and reconstruction over a portion of the Enlarged Erie Canal at Vischer’s Ferry, New York. Students and friends of Union College successfully rebuilt the bridge, stone abutments, and approaches with no state, federal, or town funding. It stands as a tribute to what can be done to preserve the heritage of American civil engineering.

Staging the Tragedy of Time: Paul Cret and the Delaware River Bridge

In the late nineteenth century American civil and structural engineers initiated a critique of architects that centered on their apparent inability to create a single style befitting the modern age. For many engineers, architecture had become anachronistic. Conversely, they asserted that their progressive, technological production was unquestionably modern. By the early twentieth century some architects looked to engineering for a path beyond the apparent impasse of eclecticism. They believed that their profession would regain its relevance if it could bridge the schism between architecture and engineering. One of the great building programs of the era, the bridge was elevated as the site and the metaphor for the reunification of architecture and engineering. From 1920 to 1927, Paul Cret served as the architect for the Delaware River Bridge in Philadelphia, the longest suspension bridge in the world when completed. Through his designs for this bridge, he asked what weight bridges were summoned to support when privileged as the point of professional reunion. In contrast to unification construed as total fusion, Cret asserted that bridging simultaneously generates connection and emphasizes separation. Acknowledging both aspects of bridging, Cret sought a form of collaboration that would preserve the limit between architecture and engineering. Our consciousness of limits, he insisted, separates us from other life forms and tragically renders us human. With his collaborative design for the Delaware River Bridge, Cret endeavored to stage this tragedy.

Review: Great American Bridges and Dams by Donald C. Jackson; Landmarks in American Civil Engineering by Daniel L. Schodek

Book Review| June 01 1989 Review: Great American Bridges and Dams by Donald C. Jackson; Landmarks in American Civil Engineering by Daniel L. Schodek Great American Bridges and DamsDonald C. JacksonLandmarks in American Civil EngineeringDaniel L. Schodek Robert Jay Robert Jay Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians (1989) 48 (2): 198–200. https://doi.org/10.2307/990369 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Robert Jay; Review: Great American Bridges and Dams by Donald C. Jackson; Landmarks in American Civil Engineering by Daniel L. Schodek. Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 1 June 1989; 48 (2): 198–200. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/990369 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentJournal of the Society of Architectural Historians Search This content is only available via PDF. Copyright 1989 The Society of Architectural Historians Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Landmarks in American civil engineering

Landmarks in American civil engineering

A Biographical Dictionary of American Civil Engineers. American Society of Civil Engineers

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsA Biographical Dictionary of American Civil Engineers. American Society of Civil EngineersJohn B. RaeJohn B. Rae Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Isis Volume 64, Number 3Sep., 1973 Publication of the History of Science Society Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/351150 Views: 3Total views on this site Copyright 1973 History of Science Society, Inc.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Civil Engineering History: An Appraisal

The National Bicentennial is less than 4 years away and ASCE has sparked the formation of a special committee by the Engineers Joint Council with the mission of preparing a series of programs so that engineers can make a significant contribution to the great celebration of 1976. Perhaps by then American civil engineers will recognize and fully appreciate the value of the history of their profession and perhaps our engineering schools will teach full courses in civil engineering history. If so, civil engineering will be a more rewarding profession to its members and a more respected profession to the public.

A Biographical Dictionary of American Civil Engineers

A Biographical Dictionary of American Civil Engineers

Earnings of American Civil Engineers 1820–1859

Skilled engineers who had sufficient technical know-how to construct the antebellum canals and railroads were viewed by their contemporaries as a key input in the transportation revolution, and a number of modern scholars have concurred in this judgment. Yet very little is known about the economics of the antebellum engineering profession. This article is a modest attempt to help remedy that deficiency. We shall present and describe three original salary series that chart the course of earnings for three distinct grades of antebellum civil engineers from 1820 through 1859. In addition, we shall argue that our data clearly indicate that a highly competitive market of broad geographical scope for high-ranking engineers was coming into being during the decade of the 1820's. This trend toward competition which these data reveal persisted until about 1835, but was then swamped by the rapid economic changes which occurred in the fifteen years from 1835 to 1850, only to reappear again in the last antebellum decade. As we shall argue below, the economic changes that temporarily overrode the earlier pattern of competition reflect a significant structural change in the antebellum engineer market.

Certain characteristics of American civil engineering practice of soil exploration and observations of slides

In recent years field methods of soil exploration have found ever wider use in our country. Therefore, the use of these methods in the USA is of definite interest. At the request of the editorial board an article on this subject was prepared by the prominent American specialist G. P. Tschebotarioff. For the most part the methods described in this article are known to us. Of interest are how these methods are regarded and their evaluation by a specialist who is both a theoretician and practician in the area of foundation engineering in the USA.

A Hundred Years of American Civil Engineering, 1852-1952

A Hundred Years of American Civil Engineering, 1852-1952

British and American Civil Engineers

British and American Civil Engineers

Storage Requirements for Northwestern Streams

The method developed by the late Allen Hazen for determining storage requirements of streams for varying drafts has not been widely used by other engineers and the present paper is to call attention to some of its advantages by presenting some preliminary data on streams in Washington and Oregon. The writer desires to present these data for the further reason that Hazen's estimates concerning the streams of these two states are too conservative. His method of study, however, calls attention to certain of the characteristics peculiar to stream flow in the Northwest concerning which little definite information has as yet been published. The method referred to is described by Hazen in the Manual of the American Water Works Association on Water Works Practice, pages 51 and 63 inclusive, and in the American Civil Engineers Handbook, 5th Edition, pages 1446 to 1452 inclusive. Briefly, it is a statistical study which consists of the determination of the mean annual flow of a stream for the period of record and the computation of a coefficient of variation to indicate the variability of the stream from the mean. These are the two most important characteristics of any stream, viz., its mean annual flow and the manner in which it varies from that mean.