Great Engineers & Scientists

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

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

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

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

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