The voyage of Captain George Vancouver, 1791 -1795, was commissioned by the British Admiralty to map in detail the west coast of North America from Mexico to Alaska and to meet with Spanish authorities on the coast to enforce the terms of the Nootka Sound Convention of 1790.
USA
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Image Credit: Courtesy Wikipedia/RobbotImage Caption: A view of Mount Rainier from Captain Vancouver's voyage.Era_date_from: 1791
2009
In 1915, a tropical storm dropped nearly 11 inches of rain on St. Louis in just 17 hours, causing a devastating flood. Claiming 11 lives and the homes of 1,025 families, the flood focused public and government attention onto the problems of the river.
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Image Credit: Courtesy Wikipedia/MillbrookyImage Caption: Today, the River Des Peres Sewage & Drainage Works provides the backbone for the 110-square-mile St. Louis drainage basin.Era_date_from: 1924
1988
The Chamberlain is the only surviving bridge of the original five. The others were replaced as the river rose due to flood control dams put in place over time.
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Image Caption: Members of the South Dakota Army National Guard’s 200th Engineer Company guide a raft on the Missouri River during a river crossing operation on June 11, 2016. The Chamberlain in the background is the only surviving bridge of the five. The others were replaced as the river expanded due to flood control dams.Era_date_from: 1920
1994
The 1.5 mile Lacey V. Murrow Bridge was the largest floating structure in the world and the first to be built of reinforced concrete when completed in 1940. The bridge consisted of typically 300-foot long pontoons floated to site and rigidly connected to form a continuous structure and incorporated a unique floating concrete draw-span to allow for passage of marine traffic. The original floating structure, constructed by Pontoon Bridge Builders, was accidentally sunk in 1990 during a major renovation effort and was replaced by 1993.
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Image Credit: Courtesy Wikipedia/Walter SiegmundImage Caption: The bridge and tunnel project were key in improving eastern access to Seattle, a major commercial port on the eastern rim of the Pacific Ocean. Era_date_from: 1940
2008
"Who in Europe, or in America for that matter, knows that Kansas City is one of the loveliest cities on earth? [...] the residential section is a masterpiece of city planning [...]; Few cities have been built with so much regard for beauty."
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Image Credit: Courtesy Wikipedia/CharvexImage Caption: The park system encouraged planned land use, raised real estate values, and provided incentives for quality residential developments.Era_date_from: 1915
1974
The tower was designed to rest on a continuous reinforced concrete mat, 4 feet thick, with the base of the slab 24 feet below street level.
What makes the Texas Commerce Bank Building revolutionary in the civil engineering world is not so much the building itself, but its foundation. Initial studies for the type of foundation to be used began in the fall of 1927. William E. Simpson, the building's chief structural engineer, suggested using a mat foundation, something new for Houston's multistory buildings.
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Image Credit: Courtesy Wikipedia/Reagan Rothenberger Image Caption: The Texas Commerce Bank Building, now called the JP Morgan Chase Building, had a reinforced concrete mat foundation that was revolutionary at the time.Era_date_from: 1929
1997
In the years following the Civil War, the land west of the Mississippi River was being settled and the Pacific Northwest explored. There remained, however, a large portion of Montana, Idaho, and Washington that contained enormous quantities of timber and minerals, but was not accessible by rail. By far the most grueling stretch was the Stevens Pass area in the Cascade Mountains.
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Image Credit: Courtesy Wikipedia/SeattleretroImage Caption: Railroad development in Stevens Pass made accessible a timber and mineral rich region of Montana, Idaho, and Washington.Era_date_from: 1900
1993
San Antonio's River Walk, a catalyst for abundant commercial and tourism enterprise, is generally regarded by cities and urban planners throughout the world as a prototype for the development of urban riverfront sites. The River Walk's success, however, would not have been possible without a series of flood-control and architecture projects completed in the first half of the 20th century that relied heavily on civil-engineering expertise.
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Image Credit: Courtesy Flickr/Tim Pearce (CC BY 2.0) Image Caption: San antonio texas river walk 2011 riverwalkEra_date_from: 1929
1996
After more than 50 years of contention and debate, dredging began in 1911 on an eight-mile channel connecting Puget Sound, Seattle's gateway to the Pacific, to two inland freshwater lakes, Lake Washington and Lake Union. With the completion of the Lake Washington ship channel and Chittenden locks, coal and logs from the interior had a dedicated water route to the ocean, and the city's 4 1/2 miles of coastal harbor burgeoned into 100 miles of commercial, industrial and recreational piers and wharves.
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Image Credit: Courtesy Flickr/gb_packards (CC BY-ND 2.0)Image Caption: Lake Washington ship channel and Chittenden locks allowed for the transport of coal and logs and revitalized the coastal harbor.Era_date_from: 1917
1997
"May God continue the unity of our Country as this Railroad unites the two great Oceans of the world."
- Inscription on the ceremonial Golden Spike
The symbolic Golden Spike, staked in Promontory, Utah in 1869, marked the completion of the first transcontinental railroad, joining the Union Pacific Railroad from the East and the Central Pacific Railroad from the west.
Innovations
The Port Washington Power Plant of the Wisconsin Electric Company was the most thermally efficient steam power plant in the world for many years following its opening in 1935. Its design reflected the cumulative experience of the utility's engineers in burning pulverized coal at the Oneida…
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The Portland Observatory was built in 1807 by Captain Lemuel Moody to serve as a communication station for Portland Harbor. Portland Observatory was one of the earliest marine signal stations in the United States, and it is the last known to survive. The Observatory's location on Munjoy Hill…
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The Portland Head Light was the first lighthouse to be constructed in Maine and the first one completed and put into service by the Federal government under the Lighthouse Act of 1789, which moved to place all lighthouses under federal control. While work had begun on the lighthouse in 1787 by…
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These canals and locks are a part of the first extensive system of canal and river navigation works undertaken in the United States. The idea for the canal was proposed by George Washington, when, as an engineer, surveyor and military emissary for Virginia, he saw the need for a trade route west…
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A bridge across the Hudson at or near Poughkeepsie was planned starting in the early 1870s to primarily carry coal from the coalfields of northeastern Pennsylvania to New England. At the time there were no bridges between Albany and New York Harbor. Horatio Allen, soon to be President of the…
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Read More"Electricity produced here in the spring of 1891 was transmitted 2.6 miles over rugged and at times inaccessible terrain to provide power for operating the motor-driven mill at the Gold King Mine. This pioneering demonstration of the practical value of transmitting electrical power…
Steam and the inexpensive electricity it could produce brought about dramatic technical growth in the United States. Developed during the last century, reliable and efficient steam engines were the forerunners of today's massive generating facilities. A rare survivor of the period, the Pratt…
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In fulfilling a contract for 25,000 U.S. Army rifles (Model 1841) and a like quantity for the British government, Robbins and Lawrence were the first to achieve interchangeability of parts on a fully practical level, contributing greatly to all subsequent mass production of machine products. This… Read More
When opened in 1909, the Queensboro Bridge had the two longest steel cantilever spans in the world - 1,182 feet from Manhattan to Blackwell's Island and 984 feet from Blackwell's Island to Queens. These would remain the world's longest cantilever spans until the completion of the Quebec Bridge…
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"The Alexanderson radio alternator was a high-power, radio-frequency source which provided reliable transoceanic radiotelegraph communication during and after World War I. Ernst F.W. Alexanderson (1878-1975), a General Electric engineer, designed radio alternators with a frequency range to 100 kHz… Read More
This mechanism allowed the manual closing of a well, saved lives and prevented surface oil accumulation at drilling sites, quickly becoming an industry standard. In the early days of oilfield operations, there was no way to control the underground pressures encountered during drilling. When an oil… Read More
Conceived in the early years of World War II as a plan to bury four fuel containers horizontally in a hillside at the U.S. Navy facility at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, the Red Hill Underground Fuel Storage Facility ultimately encompassed the design and construction of 20 vertical storage tanks - each…
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The first authenticated discovery of gold in the U.S. occurred on the Cabarrus County farm of John Reed in 1799, sparking the nation's first gold rush. During its peak years, more than a million dollars of gold was recovered a year, making North Carolina a leader in gold production until 1848.…
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This collection includes many examples of advances in mechanical refrigeration for residential and commercial applications, dating from about 1890 to 1960. Such devices dramatically improved food storage safety and convenience and set high standards for mechanical reliability. The RRM collection…
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Alvord Lake Bridge, along with many of Ernest Ransome's reinforced concrete buildings, survived the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and several subsequent tremblers with no damage. Built in 1889 by Ernest L Ransome of New York, this reinforced concrete arch bridge in San Francisco's Golden Gate…
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Installed alongside an Epping Carpenter pump that was later scrapped, this water pump was built by Allis-Chalmers, which for many years had Edwin Reynolds as its chief engineer. Driven by a Corliss steam engine, these large city water pumps were installed in Jacksonville's water supply…
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The third bridge built on the same site to carry railroad tracks across the Susquehanna River just north of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the Rockville Stone Arch Bridge, at 3,820 feet long and 52 feet wide, is believed to be the longest and widest stone-arch railroad bridge in the world. A central…
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Designed to connect the Shenandoah National Park in Virginia and the Great Smokey Mountains National Park in North Carolina, the Blue Ridge Parkway was planned to provide pleasant motoring and to conserve and interpret the unique natural and cultural resources of the Southern Highlands. It was…
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Beginning with the blacksmith shop of German immigrant Meinrad Rumely (1823-1904), this successive family of firms invented and produced a line of agricultural equipment that played a vital role in the evolution of farming based on the muscle of humans and animals to one based on the power of…
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Ever since the Gold Rush days of the 1850s, San Francisco Bay area residents and businesses had lobbied for a bridge joining San Francisco and Oakland. Early studies indicated that the bridge was impractical and infeasible; but in October 1929, President Herbert Hoover (himself an engineer) and… Read More
