Professional Association

Othmar Hermann Ammann, partner of the firm Ammann & Whitney, Consulting Engineers, New York, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering, died at his home in Rye, New York, on September 22, 1965, at the age of eighty-six. His passing brought to a close an active, sixty-three-year engineering career during which he came to be known as the "master bridge builder of our time."

By 1881, he had established an engineering practice in Pittsburgh, where he built several bridges, including the Smithfield Street Bridge, a stunning example of the lenticular truss. Lindenthal also worked on a variety of railroad projects, including surveying and estimating for rail lines in Pennsylvania and the reconstruction of bridges on what is now the Erie Railroad. In 1885, officials with the Pennsylvania Railroad approached him with a project thtat, although he never got to build it, would fascinate him the rest of his life—a bridge across the Hudson River to link New York City with New Jersey.

Alexander Lawson's engraving, "Architectural Plan and Elevation of the Schuylkill P. Bridge," illustrates A Statistical Account of the Schuylkill Permanent Bridge, Communicated to the Philadelphia Society of Agriculture, 1806 (Philadelphia: Printed by Jane Aitken, 1807), which was bound with the first volume of the Society's Memoirs. The Society's interest in such a structure acknowledges its importance to the development of the Philadelphia region, both agriculturally and commercially.

Founded in 1852, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) represents more than 123,000 members of the civil engineering profession worldwide, and is America's oldest national engineering society. ASCE's vision is to position engineers as global leaders building a better quality of life.

Our heritage enables us to benefit from the experience of those who have preceded us. This is the value of history in any field of endeavor. Our heritage also enables us to enjoy the receive inspiration from the accomplishments of the past, great and small, and gives us a stronger tie with the people who created them.

On June 23 1794, Robert Baldry and Richard Randall drew up an agreement for the building of "a new and substantial Bridge of brickwork over the River or Rivulet dividing the parishes of Ubbeston and Heveningham at and for the sum of seventy-six pounds". The two men were the Surveyors of Ubbeston, responsible for the supervision of all buildings within the village, and Robert Baldry was especially well placed to oversee this particular work since he had built the present Old Rectory for his own use eighteen years before (his initials can still be see on the chimney stack).

For the Millennium Challenge, ASCE canvassed its members in late 1999 to determine the 10 civil engineering achievements that had the greatest positive impact on life in the 20th century. Rather than individual projects, they chose to recognize broad categories of achievements.

ASCE's members ranked the 10 greatest civil engineering achievements as:

Airport Design And Development
Dams
The Interstate Highway System
Long-Span Bridges
Rail Transportation
Sanitary Landfills/Solid Waste Disposal
Skyscrapers
Wastewater Treatment
Water Supply and Distribution
Water Transportation

   iCivilEngineer.com is a knowledge portal specially designed for civil engineering professionals and students. It has two goals in mind: 1) collect and catalog valuable civil engineering relevant Internet resources so that people can find information fast; 2) explore how to take advantage of Internet technology to serve the civil engineering community.
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The two greatest misconceptions about medicine arise primarily from our modern attempts at interpreting the medical system of the Middle Ages. The first misconception is to see medicine in the Middle Ages as an unsophisticated system. Early scholars of medieval medicine found medieval doctors' theories ridiculous when compared to modern ones. Charles Singer, for example, found medieval medicine demonstrative of "the wilting mind of the Dark Ages." <1> Singer also believed that medieval medicine, specifically the Anglo-Saxon herbals, "lacked any rational element which might mark the beginnings of scientific advance."<2> But recently, historians like M.L. Cameron in Anglo-Saxon Medicineand John Riddle in Contraception and Abortion from the Ancient World to the Renaissance attempt to validate medieval medicine in light of modern medicine. By analyzing common herbals, both Cameron and Riddle have found a few recipes that have therapeutic merit.

Moments of Discovery tells the story of two scientific discoveries in the scientists' own words. (You can read the text or hear their actual voices.) The discovery of nuclear fission was a momentous and complex sequence of events where many famous scientists interacted with each other and the world at large. The detection of the first optical pulsar shows the work of a few scientists on a much finer, more personal scale, following moment by moment as an important discovery unfolded. Teachers' guides offer supplementary materials and ideas for classroom use.

This site provides background information on clean air legislation and related efforts to enforce a reduction of pollutants in our atmosphere. It also serves as an introduction to a threaded discussion group on this subject that is being conducted by the American Meteorological Society.