A tiny village on the Rio Grande River in northern New Mexico became the training center for the first American hydrographers and provided the first stream-gauging operations of the U.S. Geological Survey. To plan any water system, it is necessary to know the amount of water flowing in the stream or river at all times - including low, normal, and flood conditions.
USA
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Image Credit:
Courtesy Wikicommons/Chris English (CC BY-SA 3.0)
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Near Velarde, NM: U.S. Geological Survey Rio Grande Embudo Gaging Station, 2011
Era_date_from:
1888
1973
El Camino Real (literally, "the royal road") is the oldest and longest historical trail in the Western Hemisphere. The transportation link has, through the centuries, been called various names, including El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro (literally, "the road to the interior" because the U.S. frontier was seen as the country interior to Mexico), the King's Highway and the Royal Highway. It became a transportation lifeline that helped integrate Spanish and European culture in the Southwestern U.S.
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Image Credit:
Courtesy Wikipedia/National Park Service
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El Camino Real (literally, "the royal road") is the oldest and longest historical trail in the Western Hemisphere.
Era_date_from:
1519
1986
The East Maui Irrigation System is Hawaii's most dramatic water story. It began with the construction of the Old Hamakua Ditch built between 1876 and 1878. This privately financed, constructed and managed irrigation system was one of the largest in the United States. It eventually included 50 miles of tunnels; 24 miles of open ditches, inverted siphons and flumes; incorporates approximately 400 intakes and 8 reservoirs.
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Image Credit:
Courtesy Flickr/Will Scullin (CC BY 2.0)
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East Maui Irrigation Ditch
Era_date_from:
1876
2002
"Eads had to succeed in the face of conventional wisdom which doomed him to disaster. Entrenched authorities not only completely dismissed his theories, but pointed to the indifferent European experiences with what he proposed."
- ASCE Landmark Nomination Proposal, 1982
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Era_date_from:
1875
1982
The City Plan of Philadelphia is a seminal creation in American city planning in that it was the first American City Plan to provide open public squares for the free enjoyment of the community and a gridiron street pattern featuring streets of varying widths: wide main streets and narrower side streets. In addition this plan was the first city plan in the United States to provide for long-term urban growth. These features inspired the planners of many cities to adopt the Philadelphia Plan as a model.
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Image Credit:
Courtesy Wikipedia/Dogears
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The City Plan of Philadelphia pioneered many features of American city planning.
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1682
1996
Constructed to provide a safe, potable water supply for the citizens of Chicago, Ellis Chesbrough's Chicago Water Supply System was the first major system to utilize offshore intake systems. The system includes the landmark Chicago Water Tower and the Chicago Avenue Pumping Station. Its subaqueous tunnel was a pioneering effort in American civil engineering.
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Image Credit:
Courtesy Wikipedia/Wickdrew
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Ellis Chesbrough's Chicago Water Supply System was the first major system to utilize offshore intake systems.
Era_date_from:
1864
1972
Designed by William A. Truesdell, a railroad engineer, the Seventh Street Improvement Arches celebrates the engineering application of mathematics to improve living conditions.
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Image Credit:
Courtesy Wikipedia/Elkman (CC BY-SA 3.0)
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Designed by William A. Truesdell, a railroad engineer, the Seventh Street Improvement Arches celebrates the engineering application of mathematics to improve living conditions.
Era_date_from:
1883
2000
Between 1825 and 1847 the State of Ohio constructed 1,000 miles of canals and feeder canals, 33,000 acres of reservoir surface area, 29 dams across streams, 294 lift locks, 44 aqueducts and many smaller structures at a cost of about 16 million dollars. The network of navigable canals provided a system of economical transportation where none had previously existed; the young state, with its isolated frontier lifestyle, was transformed almost overnight into a thriving segment of the nation's economy.
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Image Credit:
Courtesy Wikipedia
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A part of the Ohio Canal System in 1902.
Era_date_from:
1825
1983
Chartered in 1825, the Louisville and Portland Canal Company was authorized to construct a canal around the rapids called the "Falls of the Ohio." Construction started on March 1, 1826. The canal and first generation of locks were completed in 1830. As originally constructed, the canal was 1.9 miles long, 64 feet wide, and terminated at its lower end with a three-flight lock system with a total lift of 26 feet. Each lock chamber was 198 feet long between miter posts, with available length for vessels of 183 feet, width of 52 feet, and a lift at low stages of 8.5 feet.
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Image Credit:
public domain
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The Louisville and Portland Canal was completed in 1830.
Era_date_from:
1830
2002
On Colorado Blvd in Pasadena in 1942, the Aerojet Engineering Company founded the first manufacturing facility for the production of rocket propulsion systems. This site was selected to be honored by AIAA because of its significance as one of the first production sites for rocket motors, laying part of the foundation for the rocket business. Production was done under the leadership of Aerojet's first president, Dr. Theodore von Karman, world-renowned scientist and engineer from the California Institute of Technology. The plant remained here until 1945.
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The original Aerojet manufacturing facility no longer exists. Early rockets produced by Aerojet included the Aerobee Hi rocket, flown in 1946 to an altitude of 37 miles. It is on display and test fired the first complete Aerobee from the White Sands Proving Grounds in New Mexico in 1947. It reached an altitude of 34.7 miles.
Era_date_from:
2000
Designed to connect the Shenandoah National Park in Virginia and the Great Smokey Mountains National Park in North Carolina, the Blue Ridge Parkway was planned to provide pleasant motoring and to conserve and interpret the unique natural and cultural resources of the Southern Highlands. It was…
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Beginning with the blacksmith shop of German immigrant Meinrad Rumely (1823-1904), this successive family of firms invented and produced a line of agricultural equipment that played a vital role in the evolution of farming based on the muscle of humans and animals to one based on the power of…
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Ever since the Gold Rush days of the 1850s, San Francisco Bay area residents and businesses had lobbied for a bridge joining San Francisco and Oakland. Early studies indicated that the bridge was impractical and infeasible; but in October 1929, President Herbert Hoover (himself an engineer) and… Read More
The San Jacinto Monument commemorates the decisive 1836 battle near the banks of the Buffalo Bayou and the San Jacinto River that allowed Texas to win independence from Mexico. It is the world's tallest monument, rising 15 feet higher than the Washington Monument.
In 1936, Daughters and…
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Located at the northern tip of Michigan where Lake Superior, Lake Michigan, and Lake Huron join together, the Sault Ste. Marie Hydroelectric Power Complex was built to harness the hydroelectric potential of the 20-foot falls at the headwaters of the St. Marys (sic) River, the sole outlet of…
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The Savannah city plan, whose execution began in 1733, is distinguished from those of previous colonial towns by the repeated pattern of connected neighborhoods, multiple squares, streets, and designed expansion into lands held by the city. It is unique in the history of urban planning in a…
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The Second Street Bridge is a simply ornamented, wrought-iron structure. It is 18 feet wide and spans 225 feet over the Kalamazoo River. It was built to replace a dilapidated wooden bridge that had served the area for nearly 50 years.
The bridge is anchored to fieldstone abutments on…
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Sewall's Bridge is a singular example of an era when wooden trestle bridges carried highway traffic across New England waterways. It is the earliest pile-trestle bridge for which an authentic construction record exists, and the oldest for which builder's drawings survive. Spanning the York River…
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The first commercial central electric-generating station in the United States to use nuclear energy was the Shippingport Atomic Power Station of the Department of Energy and the Duquesne Light Company. In a dramatic high-tech display, ground was broken in 1954 during dedication ceremonies by…
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The Stanford Linear Accelerator Center was renamed in 2009 to the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.
Notable for: unique electromechanical devices and systems in the longest accelerator in the world
The Stanford two-mile accelerator, the longest in the world,…
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The basic research tool at SLAC is an intense beam of electrons that have been accelerated by an electric field equivalent to 30 billion volts, making this the most powerful electron beam in the world.
The two-mile linear accelerator produces this field using high-power microwaves…
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Three rivers - the Allegheny, Monongahela, and Ohio - join in Pittsburgh, making the city a natural site for the building of bridges. But the Smithfield Street Bridge stands apart from other Pittsburgh bridges for several reasons: it replaced structures by two well-known bridge engineers, Lewis…
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This was one of the first power facilities to demonstrate the feasibility of long distance electric power transmission. Through an elaborate switchboard at the main station, tied to similar boards at substations, a complete circuit was created to drive an electric motor 153 miles from the…
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This highly diverse facility has pioneered the development of solar energy applications worldwide. The Solar Energy and Energy Conversion Laboratory (SEECL) was unique in developing practical solar energy devices based on established principles of thermodynamics, heat transfer, and fluid…
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George Washington's concern over standardization of rifles for the Continental Army led to the formation of national armory and to his selection of Springfield as its site. Completed in 1794, it was the first national armory in the United States. Like the Robbins and Lawrence Armory, the…
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The SS Jeremiah O'Brien, an emergency cargo vessel of the type EC2-S-C1 better known as Liberty Ships, is one of two operative survivors of 2,751 ships, the largest fleet of single class ever built. The other is the SS John W. Brown, now in Baltimore (not operative at the time of the landmark…
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The two 3,500-hp steeple compound Unaflow steam engines powering the S.S. Badger represent one of the last types of reciprocating marine steam engines. Built by the Skinner Engine Company, most Unaflow engines are single expansion. These feature tandem high- and low-pressure cylinders separated…
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The St. Charles Avenue Streetcar Line is the oldest surviving interurban-urban passenger rail transportation system in the United States. Originally incorporated as the New Orleans Carrollton Rail Road in 1833, service began in 1835. A variety of motive power had been used including horses,…
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"On 20 March 1886 William Stanley provided alternating current electrification to offices and stores on Main Street in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. He thus demonstrated the first practical system for providing electrical illumination using alternating current with transformers to adjust voltage… Read More
The Starrucca Viaduct of the Erie Railroad Company crosses Starrucca Creek in Lanesboro, Pennsylvania. It is one of the oldest and one of the longest railroad bridges in Pennsylvania. Its 18 slender, semicircular stone arches each span 50 feet and the structure rises 110 feet above the creek.…
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