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America's Railroads and Skyscrapers Indebted to Civil Engineer Squire Whipple

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 11/08/2007 - 20:22.
  • Engineering
  • Modern (18th-20th Century)
  • Personal
  • Secondary Source
URL: 

http://www.whipple.org/blaine/squire.html

Author: 
Blaine Whipple
Excerpt: 

Squire and Anna lived in Utica, N.Y., where, as a well-known civil engineer, inventor, and theoretician, he developed the first scientifically based rules for bridge construction. After graduating from Union College in Schenectady, N.Y., in 1830, he did survey work for several railroads and canal projects and made surveying instruments. In 1840 he invented a lock to weight canal boats.

The invention of the steam engine required bridges which could support heavy live loads and this motivated Squire to turn his attention to bridges. At the start of the 18th century, iron as a structural material was unknown, but as the century evolved, cast iron came into general use and wrought iron was in commercial use by century end. He invented two new truss designs and in 1853 completed a 146-foot span iron railroad bridge near West Troy (now Watervliet), N.Y.

Annotation: 

Essay on Whipple's development of the first scientifically based rules for bridge construction.

River Severn Bridge Builders

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 11/08/2007 - 20:22.
  • Biographical
  • Engineering
  • Modern (18th-20th Century)
  • Personal
  • Secondary Source
URL: 

http://www.severnbore.ndirect.co.uk/design.htm

Author: 
Chris Witts, River Severn Productions
Excerpt: 

Thomas Telford was born in Eskdale, Dumfrieshire to the son of a shepherd. Sadly his father had died three months before he was born.

On leaving school he was articled as a stone mason, working first in Edinburgh and then at Somerset House, London. There he came to the attention of William Pulteney, the wealthy MP for Shrewsbury and was soon appointed County Surveyor of Public Works for Shropshire in 1787. He set about a radical improvement of roads and bridges, later devising a new form of chipped stone road surface, but it was in canal construction that he excelled. He constructed a canal bridge on the Shrewsbury canal in the form of an iron trough which became the prototype for his magnificent Pontcysllte viaduct over the Dee Valley on the Llangollen canal. Telford's philosophy was to build on a grand scale, cutting through contours rather than going around them as did many of his predecessors. Such a approach was more costly, but yielded a more direct route and a more lasting structure.

The WWW Virtual Library

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 11/08/2007 - 20:22.
  • Ancient (BCE-40 CE)
  • Aviation/Space Exploration
  • Computers/Information Technology
  • Consumer Technology
  • Contemporary (Post-WWII)
  • Early Modern (15th-18th Century)
  • Earth Sciences
  • Engineering
  • Industrial/Military Technology
  • Life Sciences
  • Links
  • Mathematics
  • Medicine/Behavioral Science
  • Middle Ages (5th-15th Century)
  • Modern (18th-20th Century)
  • Personal
  • Philosophy of Science
  • Physical Sciences
  • Primary Source
  • Secondary Source
URL: 

http://vlib.org/

Excerpt: 

The VL is the oldest catalog of the web, started by Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of html and the web itself. Unlike commercial catalogs, it is run by a loose confederation of volunteers, who compile pages of key links for particular areas in which they are expert; even though it isn't the biggest index of the web, the VL pages are widely recognised as being amongst the highest-quality guides to particular sections of the web.

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 11/08/2007 - 20:22.
  • Computers/Information Technology
  • Consumer Technology
  • Contemporary (Post-WWII)
  • Links
  • Personal
  • Secondary Source
URL: 

http://www.technocapitalism.com/

Author: 
Prof. L. Suarez-Villa
Excerpt: 

Technocapitalism is a new form of market capitalism that is rooted in technological invention and innovation.  It can be considered an emerging era, now in its early stage, that is supported by such intangibles as creativity and knowledge.

Before the Web

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 11/08/2007 - 20:22.
  • Computers/Information Technology
  • Consumer Technology
  • Contemporary (Post-WWII)
  • Personal
  • Primary Source
URL: 

http://www.beforetheweb.org/

Author: 
Taylor Walsh
Excerpt: 

"Before the Web" is an online research project designed for the practitioners of the online services industry and its era. It is an interactive, digital variation of the oral history, the most common traditional technique used to collect the first-hand accounts from people who witnessed or took part in important events and eras.

History of Engineering

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 11/08/2007 - 20:22.
  • Ancient (BCE-40 CE)
  • Computers/Information Technology
  • Consumer Technology
  • Contemporary (Post-WWII)
  • Early Modern (15th-18th Century)
  • Engineering
  • Industrial/Military Technology
  • Middle Ages (5th-15th Century)
  • Modern (18th-20th Century)
  • Personal
URL: 

http://www.creatingtechnology.org/history.htm

Author: 
Sunny Y. Auyang
Excerpt: 

The history of engineering can be roughly divided into four overlapping phases, each marked by a revolution:

Pre-scientific revolution: The prehistory of modern engineering features ancient master builders and Renaissance engineers such as Leonardo da Vinci.

Industrial revolution: From the eighteenth through early nineteenth century, civil and mechanical engineers changed from practical artists to scientific professionals.

Second industrial revolution: In the century before World War II, chemical, electrical, and other science-based engineering branches developed electricity, telecommunications, cars, airplanes, and mass production.

Information revolution: As engineering science matured after the war, microelectronics, computers, and telecommunications jointly produced information technology.

History of Science in the United States

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 11/08/2007 - 20:22.
  • Aviation/Space Exploration
  • Computers/Information Technology
  • Consumer Technology
  • Earth Sciences
  • Engineering
  • Industrial/Military Technology
  • Life Sciences
  • Medicine/Behavioral Science
  • Modern (18th-20th Century)
  • Personal
  • Philosophy of Science
  • Physical Sciences
  • Secondary Source
URL: 

http://home.earthlink.net/~claelliott/

Author: 
Clark A. Elliot
Excerpt: 

Research Aids for the Nineteenth Century

Frequently Asked Questions about Calendars

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 11/08/2007 - 20:22.
  • Ancient (BCE-40 CE)
  • Contemporary (Post-WWII)
  • Early Modern (15th-18th Century)
  • Earth Sciences
  • Educational
  • Middle Ages (5th-15th Century)
  • Modern (18th-20th Century)
  • Personal
URL: 

http://www.tondering.dk/claus/calendar.html

Author: 
Claus Tondering
Excerpt: 

This is the calendar FAQ. Its purpose is to give an overview of the Christian, Hebrew, Persian, and Islamic calendars in common use. It will provide a historical background for the Christian calendar, plus an overview of the French Revolutionary calendar, the Maya calendar, and the Chinese calendar.

Doug Engelbart's INVISIBLE REVOLUTION

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 11/08/2007 - 20:22.
  • Computers/Information Technology
  • Contemporary (Post-WWII)
  • Links
  • Personal
  • Primary Source
  • Secondary Source
  • Video
URL: 

http://www.invisiblerevolution.net/

Excerpt: 

Welcome to the Invisible Revolution, the story of Doug Engelbart, the man who invented much of the computer environment we live in today - and still few know his name. This is his story, and the story of his fellow dreamers, thinkers, doers - revolutionaries - who changed our lives forever.

Annotation: 

This site represents a documentary film project produced by Frode Hegland, Fleur Klijnsma and others. The vision for the documentary is to present the story of how Doug Engelbart invented the mouse and began a revolution in information processing by popularizing the graphical and interactive, nonlinear
format that dominates computer technology today. The materials here include "a casual, rough and ready series of interviews, links to his seminal papers, and a cheat-sheet-like timeline." Although the site is essentially a companion to a film, the sections on Engelbart's life, vision, papers, and timeline can be very useful to historians. The site also has a list of the interviewees who contributed to the documentary's story with short bios that could link important personalities and establish new leads for researchers. The film clips might also be helpful or interesting to historians who want to explore documentary film or other visual modes of recording and conveying history.

Florentino Ameghino (1854-1911)

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 11/08/2007 - 20:22.
  • Images
  • Life Sciences
  • Links
  • Modern (18th-20th Century)
  • Personal
URL: 

http://homepage.mac.com/ilja/intro_ameghino.html

Author: 
Ilja Nieuwland
Excerpt: 

This page is dedicated to the life and work of the Argentinian anthropologist and paleontologist Florentino Ameghino. Alhough he has become most widely known through his anthropological work, I will focus primarily on the work Ameghino has performed on Phorusrhacids, a group of flightless carnivorous birds from the Cenozoic.

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