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Great Engineers & Scientists
In 1676, Sir Isaac Newton wrote "If I have seen further it is by standing on ye shoulders of Giants." In this blog, we take Newton's words to heart, and recognize the many great engineers and scientists upon whose shoulders we stand.
So who do you think of when you hear "Great Engineer"? Let us know! Submit a few paragraphs about that person and we'll add him or her to the pantheon. Please provide a citation for the material that you submit so that we can verify it. Please note - it has to be original material. We cannot publish copywritten material or bulk text taken from books or other sites (including Wikipedia).
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Posted July 05, 2008 12:01 AM
by Moose
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They're as American as haggis and Scotch, Gouda and bloedworst, or coq au vin and champagne. Robert Erskine, Simeon DeWitt, and Louis
Duportail may not be household names, but their contributions to the American
Revolution burn as brightly as fireworks on the Fourth of July. Here are three
more engineering heroes your high school history teacher never told you about.
Editor's Note: Click here for Part 1 of this two-part series.
Robert Erskine
Robert Erskine was a Scottish-born inventor, New Jersey ironworks
owner, and skilled cartographer who prepared over 275 maps of the northern
theater of war. A graduate of the University
of Edinburgh, Erskine
invented a hydraulic engine, a steam pump, and a device called a "platometer" –
probably a planimeter, an instrument for measuring the area of an arbitrary
two-dimensional shape. His greatest accomplishments, however, came during the
American Revolution.
In 1777, General George Washington named Robert Erskine
Geographer and Surveyor General of the Continental Army. In this important
role, Erskine drew up detailed maps with buildings, roads and other details
to aid Washington's
army. While continuing to supply his fellow soldiers with critical munitions
and materials, the ironworks owner also built what could have been his greatest
creation – a spiked, tetrahedron-shaped, metal barrier to block British warships from
sailing up the Hudson.
Although this underwater cheval de frise
was never deployed, Erskine's maps have long been a part of the New York
Historical Society's collections.
Simeon DeWitt
Simeon DeWitt was a native of Wawarsing, New York
who served as an assistant to Robert Erskine before himself becoming Geographer
and Surveyor General of the Continental Army, after Erskine died of pneumonia in
October 1780. One of 14 children, DeWitt was trained as a surveyor by his uncle,
James Clinton, a future major-general in the Continental Army and husband of
Mary DeWitt, the daughter of a prominent Dutch family. A graduate of Queen's
College (Rutgers) in New Brunswick, New Jersey, Simeon DeWitt later served as Surveyor
General of New York
State.
Louis Duportail
Louis Duportail was a French military officer who served as
Chief Engineer of the Continental Army. Sent secretly to America in 1777, Duportail planned
fortifications from Boston, Massachusetts
to Charleston, South Carolina. He also directed the
building of siege works at the Battle of Yorktown, the last major battle of the
Revolutionary War and the Continental victory which prompted the British to sue
for peace.
On September 28, 1781, forces led by American General George
Washington and French General Comte de Rochambeau pinned-down a British
contingent led by General Charles Cornwallis at Yorktown, Virginia. While the French
and American fighters blasted Yorktown with
heavy fire, Louis Duportail supervised the construction of a formidable siege
line. In less than three weeks, Duportail's engineers positioned 375 guns that
fired an average of 1.2 shells or bombs every minute, or 1,728 per day. By the
time the first siege ended, Yorktown had been
battered with some 36,288 shots.
The second siege line that Louis Duportail built at Yorktown blasted
Britain's
defensive works. On October 11, 1781, the Americans and their French allies
started a new siege line just 400 yards away from Cornwallis' encampment. Three
days later, French and American forces captured two major British positions.
Faced with a naval blockade that prevented the arrival of much-needed food and
ammunition, General Charles Cornwallis surrendered unconditionally
October 19, 1781 while British drummers played "The World Turned Upside Down".
Resources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Erskine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simeon_DeWitt
http://www.nysm.nysed.gov/albany/bios/d/sdewitt.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevaux-de-Frise
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Leb%C3%A8que_Duportail
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Yorktown_%281781%29
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Posted July 04, 2008 12:01 AM
by Moose
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They're as American as kielbasa and cabbage, lobster and
baked beans. Thaddeus Kosciusko, Richard Gridley, and Rufus Putnam may not be
household names, but their contributions to the American Revolution burn as
brightly as fireworks on the Fourth of July. Here are three engineering heroes
your high school history teacher never told you about.
Thaddeus Kosciusko
Thaddeus Kosciuszko was the chief engineer for George
Washington's Continental Army. Born in Poland,
Kosciuszko built fortifications that blocked the British approach to Philadelphia at Fort Mercer,
planned American defenses at the pivotal battle of Saratoga,
and built an "American Gibraltar" at West Point along the Hudson
River.
In October 1777, American forces at Fort Mercer
repelled an attack by 2,000 Hessian mercenaries. Although the British would
later capture this Kosciusko-designed fortification on the New Jersey
side of the Delaware River, the tide of war
had already turned - thanks in part to Kosciusko himself.
In September 1777, the Continental Army had won the Battle of
Freeman's Farm, the first of two contests at the Battle of Saratoga in upstate New York. Following
orders from General Horatio Gates, Thaddeus Kosciuszko fortified the high
ground west of the Hudson River, denying the
British access to the valley below and funneling the invaders towards the
Continentals' main fortifications. There, during the Battle of Bemis Heights,
the Americans halted the British and forced General John Burgoyne's ill-fated
withdrawal.
The eventual surrender of Burgoyne's Army protected the Northeast
and New England from future invasions, and convinced France to aid the Americans in
their war for independence. In 1783, in recognition of his dedicated service, Thaddeus Kosciuszko was promoted to the rank of Brigadier General and became a naturalized citizen of the United States.
Richard Gridley
Richard Gridley was a Boston-born military engineer who
planned American defenses at Breed's Hill and
was wounded at the Battle of Bunker Hill while manning a cannon. He was also Chief Engineer in the New
England Provincial Army. Until he retired in 1781 at the age of 70, Gridley continued his labors for the Continental Army. Even today, a monument to this colorful figure bears a quote from General Washington: "I know of no man better fitted to be Chief Engineer than General Gridley."
Gridley's finest hour came during the Battle of Breed's Hill, a contest more commonly known as the Battle of Bunker Hill. On the night of June 16, 1775, General Israel Putnam marched
1,500 Continentals to the Charlestown Peninsula, a narrow isthmus with a commanding view of
British-controlled Boston.
There, a combative Richard Gridley built fortifications first on Bunker
Hill and then on Breed's Hill. Because the
latter height was more defensible, the Americans located their primary redoubt
there.
Using Gridley's plans, soldiers dug ditches 160-ft. long and 80-ft. wide
with earthen walls. Just before dawn, the HMS
Somerset sighted the earthworks, but could not elevate its 128 guns high
enough to reach General Putnam's position. Hours later, British infantry
mounted the first of two bloody assaults, suffering their greatest losses of
the war. Although the colonists would loose this early battle of the American
Revolution, they would ultimately win the war.
Rufus Putnam
Rufus Putnam was a millwright who enlisted in the
Continental Army after the Battle of Lexington on April 19, 1775. Though
commissioned as an officer of the line, Putnam was later named Chief of
Engineers of the Works of New York after the fortifications he built at
Dorchester helped drive the British out of Boston.
Putnam's fortifications also helped the Continental Army secure important
victories at Sewall's Point, Providence, New Port,
Long Island, and West Point.
Putnam's fortifications at Dorchester Heights
(or "Dorchester Neck", as Bostonians called the place) were some of his finest.
There, the former millwright was joined
by military engineer Richard Gridley and four thousand Continental soldiers.
Working day and night, the Americans dug enough earth to built a parapet some
12-ft. thick and 6-ft. tall. Packed with gravel and covered in rawhide, the
earthworks housed heavy guns and mortars which threatened nearby British ships.
As Thomas W. Clarke wrote in The New
England Magazine (April 1898), British General William Howe then concluded
that "the harbor would be untenable for the fleet the day the Dorchester
batteries opened". As Howe himself said, the Continentals "have done more in a
night than my army could have done in a month. It must have been the employment
of 12,000 men."
Resources:
http://www.polishamericancenter.org/Kosciuszko.htm
http://www.nps.gov/crossroads/chrono.htm
http://www.wpi.edu/Academics/Depts/MilSci/Resources/sarfield.html
http://www.hq.usace.army.mil/history/coe.htm#1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Bunker_Hill
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rufus_Putnam
http://www.hq.usace.army.mil/history/coe.htm#2
http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/AMERICAN-REVOLUTION/2002-08/1029549463
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Posted June 05, 2008 12:00 AM
by Sharkles
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Dr. Fredric J. Baur was an American chemist and food storage
technician who specialized in research and development (R&D) and quality
control for Proctor & Gamble. His most notable invention was the design and
patent of the Pringles potato crisps packaging: a distinctive can. Baur
received a patent for the packing of the curved, stacked chips in 1970 – three
years after he first filed for it. Other notable accomplishments of Baur's
include the development of frying oils and freeze-dried ice cream.
Dr. Fredric Baur was born on June 14, 1918. He received a
Bachelor's degree from the University
of Toledo, and a Master's degree and a
Ph.D. from Ohio State University.
During World War II, Fredric served in the United States Navy as an aviation
physiologist stationed in San Diego.
During this time, aviation physiologists conducted research on the medical
aspects of flight. He started working for Proctor & Gamble in the late
1940s.
Later in life, Baur became a compliance specialist for
Proctor & Gamble. "He had a worldwide reputation in plant sanitation and
traveled all over the world inspecting plants," said his daughter, Linda
L. Baur, of Diamondhead, Miss. Outside of work, Baur also lectured
and wrote books, publications, and articles.
Of all of his accomplishments, the Pringles can was his
proudest achievement. The can – a tube-shaped container to hold the curved,
stackable snack - distinguishes Pringles from other types of chips even today.
Baur was so proud of his design that he asked to be buried in one when he died.
On May 4, 2008, Dr. Fredric Baur died at the age of 89. His children honored
his request, and part of his remains were buried in a Pringles can at the Arlington Memorial
Gardens in Cincinnati, Ohio.
The other half of his remains are in an urn.
Resources:
http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080531/NEWS0104/805310357/1060/NEWS01?fever_for_the_flavor_os_a_pringle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Baur
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/06/02/pringles.burial.ap/index.html
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Posted February 27, 2008 9:00 AM
by Moose
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In the months before Pearl Harbor, Thomas Francis, Jr.
joined the new School of Public Health at the University
of Michigan in Ann Arbor. There, he built a Department of
Epidemiology that studied a host of infectious diseases. Francis also mentored
Jonas Salk, a research fellow and postgraduate student who would later develop
the polio vaccine. According to the University
of Michigan, Francis taught Salk "the
methodology of vaccine development" and recruited him for America's war on influenza.
Flu Vaccine Trials
As Director of the U.S. Army Epidemiological Board's Commission
on Influenza, Thomas Francis was tasked with establishing hygienic and
environmental controls, as well as evaluating bacteriological, viral, and
pathological variables. The flu commission's first-year budget, the modest sum
of $159, 600 (USD), helped lay the groundwork for preliminary vaccine trials on
200 psychiatric patients at Ypsilanti
State Hospital,
a now-defunct facility where "bodily treatments", according to The Michigan Daily, ranged "from the benign to the bizarre".
In June 1943, Thomas Francis, Jr. and the U.S. Army's
Commission on Influenza were authorized to conduct large-scale vaccine trials
at universities and military installations. Of the 12,500 people who were
vaccinated, half were injected with small amounts of a chemically-inactivated
flu virus. The other half, a control group, were given what Time magazine later called "a phony
material."
During the fall of 1943, the largest influenza epidemic
since 1918 – 1919 put Thomas Francis' flu vaccine to the test. As Allied armies
battled their way across Italy,
the U.S. Army's Commission on Influenza claimed victory. Out of every five test
subjects who had contracted the flu, only one had been vaccinated. Although the
flu virus in California
showed evidence of antigenic change, Francis reported that "a number of
factors" were responsible for statistical anomalies there.
Preventing Polio
During the 1950s, Thomas Francis, Jr. was asked to design, supervise and analyze
the field trials of Jonas Salk's poliomyelitis vaccine. A highly-contagious
viral infection, polio had infected almost 60,000 Americans at the height of an
epidemic in 1952. Insisting upon a double-blind method of statistical analysis,
Francis staged a massive trial of approximately 1.8 million children from 217
areas of the United States, Canada and Finland. Finally, on April 12,
1955, he announced that Jonas Salk's polio vaccine was "safe, effective, and
potent."
The Atomic Bomb Casualty
Commission
Towards the end of 1955, Thomas Francis visited Japan to evaluate the troubled Atomic
Bomb Casualty Commission (ABCC). Established by President Harry S. Truman in
1946, the ABCC was charged with the long-term study of the survivors of the
atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Budgetary and
organizational problems plagued the ABCC's work, however, and the commission
was nearly disbanded in 1953. The result of Thomas Francis's work, a document
known as the Francis Report, led to the creation of a comprehensive epidemiological
study called the "Unified Study
Program". Today, the study of A-bomb survivors is the world's longest
continuing health survey.
The Tecumseh Study
The last major project of Thomas Francis' career, the Tecumseh Study of
respiratory illnesses, deepened science's understanding of the epidemiology of
chronic disease. In establishing a laboratory in the town of Tecumseh,
Michigan,
Francis hoped to assess the role of factors such as community history,
geography, and culture. During the first 190 weeks of the Tecumseh
study, a total of 11,308 respiratory illnesses were reported.
Participation in the study was strong, with 86% of
recruited families remaining through a one-year program.
Thomas Francis, Jr. died on October 1, 1969.
Editor's Note: Click here for Part 1 of this biography.
Resources
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=33857
http://www.salk.edu/jonas/jonas_about.php
http://media.www.michigandaily.com/media/storage/paper851/news/2005/09/29/TheStatement/Opening.Its.Doors.Again-1431670.shtml
http://www.kidshealth.org/parent/infections/bacterial_viral/polio.html
http://www7.nationalacademies.org/archives/ABCC_1945-1982.html
http://www.polio.umich.edu/history/francis.html
http://www.medaloffreedom.com/ThomasFrancis.htm
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,850443,00.html?promoid=googlep
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Posted February 26, 2008 8:16 AM
by Moose
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Thomas Francis, Jr. was
the first American scientist to isolate the human flu virus. He played a
prominent role in the development of the first influenza vaccine, and in the
testing and analysis of Jonas Salk's poliomyelitis vaccine. Francis'
contributions as a physician, virologist and epidemiologist earned him a U.S.
Medal of Freedom, as well as accolades from Time
magazine, which once described him as the "No. 1 U.S. influenza man".
Early Life and
Education
Thomas Francis, Jr. was born in Gas City, Indiana
on July 15, 1900. The son of a steelworker, his family later moved to western Pennsylvania, where Francis earned a scholarship to
attend Allegheny College
in Meadville.
Upon graduation in 1921, he enrolled at the Yale University School of Medicine
in New Haven, Connecticut. There, Thomas Francis studied
under Dr. Francis Blake, an expert in infectious diseases such as measles.
The Rockefeller
Institute for Medical Research and the NYU College
of Medicine
After graduating from Yale in 1925, Thomas Francis, Jr. went
to work for Rufus I. Cole, chief of hospital at New York City's Rockefeller Institute for
Medical Research. As part of an elite research team, Francis helped prepare
vaccines against bacterial pneumonia, an infection which causes congestion and
swelling in the lungs. Later, Francis extended his study of infectious diseases
to influenza, a highly-contagious virus which had killed more people in 1918 –
1919 than had died in all of World War I.
In 1935, Thomas Francis, Jr. became the first American
virologist and epidemiologist to isolate the flu virus. He also characterized
the virus' complex antigenic shifts, the process by which two different strains
combine to form a new subtype with a mixture of surface antigens from the two
original strains. Three years later, Francis was named professor of
bacteriology and department chair at the New York University College of Medicine,
where he remained during the rest of the 1930s.
The U.S. Army Epidemiological
Board
In 1941, the year in which the United States entered World War II,
Thomas Francis was appointed director of the Commission on Influenza of the U.S.
Army Epidemiological Board. As the nation increased the size of its armed
forces for a possible conflict with the Axis powers, military planners worried
about how a flu pandemic like the one of 1918 – 1919 would undermine troop
strength. Indeed, as the American Medical Association (AMA) had noted about
World War I and the ensuing influenza pandemic, "Medical science for four and one-half years devoted itself to putting
men on the firing line and keeping them there. Now it must turn with its whole
might to combating the greatest enemy of all - infectious disease".
Editor's Note: Click here for Part 2 of this biography.
Resources
http://www.polio.umich.edu/history/francis.html
http://www.medaloffreedom.com/ThomasFrancis.htm
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,850443,00.html?promoid=googlep
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockefeller_University
http://www.allegheny.edu/
http://virus.stanford.edu/uda/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antigenic_shift
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/pagerender.fcgi?artid=1529354&pageindex=1
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