Between its opening in 1888 and the mid-1920s, Georgia Tech took a leading role in transforming mechanical engineering education from a shop-based, vocational program to a professional one built on rigorous academic and analytical methods.
Led by John Saylor Coon (1854-1938), a founding member of ASME, this curriculum merged theoretical understanding with practical experience. By bringing Coon on board so soon after the school's founding, Tech began this transition almost from day one, even though it took three decades to completely effect it.
ASME
Term Image
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Image Credit: Public Domain (Copyright Expired)Image Caption: On Left: Georgia Tech's shop building2000
On Right: Tech Tower
Photo circa 1899Era_date_from: 1888
The Garfield Thomas Water Tunnel is a unique experimental facility for hydrodynamic research and testing. The 48-inch (1.2-meter) diameter water tunnel enables the research staff to conduct basic and applied investigations in the fields of cavitation, hydroacoustics, turbulence, transition, hydrodynamic drag, and hydraulic and subsonic turbomachinery. Instrumentation and testing methods have been developed to study noise, vibration, vehicle dynamics, and the interaction between the propulsor and vehicle body.
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Image Credit: Courtesy WikiCommons/CyberXRef (CC BY-SA 3.0)Image Caption: Entrance to the Garfield Thomas Water TunnelEra_date_from: 1949
1996
This fusion-welded drum, tested during 1930, was the first in a series tested at Combustion Engineering Inc. that led to the industrial acceptance of welding for the fabrication of boiler drums. Replacing riveting for steam power plants, electric arc fusion welding permitted increased efficiencies through higher working pressures and temperatures and fabrication of larger units of improved safety. Welding was then rapidly extended to fabrication using optimum alloys for pressure vessel and structural application.
Papers published by A. J.
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Image Credit: Image source: Engrailhistory.infoImage Caption: Fusion-welded Test Boiler DrumEra_date_from: 1930
1980
The Fresno scraper established the basis for the modern earthmoving scraper, being able to scrape and move a load of soil, then discharge it at a controlled depth. It quadrupled the productivity of manual labor, replacing hand shoveling of earth into horse carts.
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Image Credit: Courtesy Flickr/Alisha Vargas (CC BY 2.0)Image Caption: Fresno ScraperEra_date_from: 1883
1991
The historic Folsom Power House #1 marks one of the first successful uses of hydroelectric power in the world and the first successful transmission of power long distance (twenty-two miles to Sacramento). The old Folsom Power House still shelters the machinery generated to drive streetcars and illuminate the city of Sacramento.
Squeezing an orange for juice is part of the concept of this machine, only on a much larger scale. The extractor revolutionized the juice industry. The twenty-four head rotary action simultaneously extracts juice from the interior of the fruit and citrus oil from the peel surface. The first unit was operated experimentally on grapefruit at the Sunkist Exchange plant in Tempe, Arizona, during late May of 1946. Tests on citrus fruits continued in California, Texas, and Florida.
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Image Credit: Courtesy ASMEImage Caption: FMC Citrus Juice ExtractorEra_date_from: 1947
1983
The F&CH Cable Railway, which opened in 1887, was designed and built by civil engineer Howard C. Holmes (1852-1921). The line is an amalgamation of the Powell Street Railway and the Park and Cliff House Railway. It was one of the most complicated cable-car systems to run from a single station and had been under construction two years prior to its opening.
Andrew Hallidie, a wire rope manufacturer, devised the first operating cable car in the United States in 1873, which ran on Clay Street hill.
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Image Credit: Courtesy Wikipedia/Caroline Culler (CC BY-SA 3.0)Image Caption: Ferries & Cliffhouse Cable Railway Power HouseEra_date_from: 1887
1973
At a time when steam power was finding its first uses in America, Philadelphia opened two steam pumping stations, January 1801, to lift water from the Schuylkill River and distribute it through the city's wooden pipes and mains. By 1811 a new water power works was begun on the river near Morris Hill, and the Fairmount Water Works opened September 7, 1815. These water works represented the first large-scale application of steam pumping to water service in the country.
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Image Credit: Public Domain (National Park Service)Image Caption: Fairmount Waterworks, East bank of Schuylkill River, Aquarium Drive, Philadelphia, Philadelphia County, PA View looking northeast at waterworks from across Schuylkill River. Photo taken December, 1984.1977
Era_date_from: 1815
This outboard motor, designed and built by Ole Evinrude (1877-1934) at the Evinrude Motor Company in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was quickly accepted by the boating public of the United States. Bess Evinrude called the prototype a "coffee grinder," but it moved a boat through water better than the huge steam- or foot-driven motors available in 1907. She encouraged him to build and sell ten, then twenty, soon resulting in the redirection of their automotive equipment business to outboard motors.
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Image Credit: Courtesy Flickr/Mr. T in DC (CC BY-ND 2.0)Image Caption: Evinrude Outboard MotorEra_date_from: 1909
1981
The Advanced Engine Test Facility was built in 1964, three years after President John F. Kennedy committed the United States to world leadership in aeronautical science. Conceived and designed by Wernher von Braun, the first director of the Marshall Space Flight Center, this facility was used to perform static tests on the booster of the Saturn V rocket, which launched Apollo 11 to the moon on July 16, 1969.
The stand has four concrete legs, each four feet thick and rising 144 feet to a steel superstructure supporting a 200-ton crane.
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Image Credit: Courtesy ASMEImage Caption: Saturn V Rocket being lifted onto the A-2 Test Stand at NASA's John C. Stennis Space CenterEra_date_from: 1964
1993
Innovations
