Bridges and More

Angie Klink

Description

Bridges and More takes the reader from the early years of Civil Engineering when Purdue's campus consisted of a smattering of red brick buildings surrounded by grassy meadows and roads flanked by white, wooden fences to today's state-of-the-art facilities such as the Bowen Laboratory for Large-Scale Civil Engineering Research and the online hub for the Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES).The highly illustrated book touches on major milestones in Purdue Civil Engineering history from Road School, to the Ross Summer Surveying Camp, to Purdue's involvement in world landmarks such as the Panama Canal, Hoover Dam, the Golden Gate Bridge and the Tower of Pisa. Often, Purdue Civil Engineers are public servants, evolving research that helps to prevent disasters like building collapses and bridge failures. Bridges and More honors Purdue's School of Civil Engineering with historic images and an appealing account of 125 years of education, research and a profession that is, as the title suggests, about so much more than bridges.
Introduction

Chapter 1: The Progress of Mankind

Chapter 2: Summer Surveying Camp

Chapter 3: Transportation and Road Safety

Chapter 4: Specialization and World Impact

Chapter 5: Building a Legacy

Acknowledgement

Sujets

• Sciences et techniques
• List of industrial processes
• Technology
• Engineering
• Agriculture
• Technologie
• Civil

Informations

• Publié par: Purdue University Press
• Date de parution: 15 juillet 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781557539113
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 25 Mo

Extrait

need permission and high res

Cover Photo Charles Ellis designed the Golden Gate Bridge. Yet, he was credited only recently despite designing, in his words, “every nut and bolt on the darn thing.” Ellis became a Purdue professor of structural engineering in 1934. Few knew of Ellis’s groundbreaking work on the bridge that spans 1.2 miles of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Strait until a series of books and documentaries brought the controversy to light in the early twentyfirst century. When the first design was rejected in 1929 by the board of engineers overseeing the project, chief engineer Joseph Strauss gave Ellis the task of incorporating a new theory of suspension bridge design. Today, the Golden Gate Bridge is seen as a crowning achievement for American civil engineering, prompting the American Society of Civil Engineers to deem it one of the “Seven Wonders of the Modern World.” The Golden Gate Bridge celebrates its 75th anniversary in 2012.

A N G I E K L I N K

© 2012 Purdue University Cataloging in Publication Data available All images are copyright of and used with permission of Purdue University. Any duplication without permission is forbidden. ISBN | 9781557536389

A flood caused damage in Bartholomew County, Indiana, in 1933.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1 | The Progress of Mankind

Chapter 2 | Summer Surveying Camp

Chapter 3 | Transportation and Road Safety

Chapter 4 | Specialization and World Impact

Chapter 5 | Building a Legacy

Acknowledgements

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The Granddaddy of All Purdue Engineering

In the fall of 1874, Civil Engineering was anticipated to be one of the major courses of study in John Purdue’s new university. Roads, bridges, railroads, and buildings of all kinds were matters of crucial importance for everyday life. Civil Engineering had separated from its predecessor, Military Engineering, and had won status as a profession. When just six red brick buildings nestled to form a university in what had been fields and pastures, Purdue University announced a fouryear course in Civil Engineering, but it would be more than a decade before the curriculum would flourish. During that time, a report by Purdue’s second president Abraham C. Shortridge reflected on the future:

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Students in surveying and civil engineering will be required to become proficient in the use of engineering instruments in running our ideal railroad lines, laying out curves, determining amounts of excavation and embankment, drafting bridges, calculating materials and costs, and writing specifications, etc.

A Profession of Progress Civil Engineering at Purdue embarked on its road to greatness in September 1887 with 39 students registered. By 1906, the discipline had its own ruddy brick Civil Engineering Building. Today more than 550 undergraduate students and 420 graduate students specialize in architectural engineering, environment, construction, geotech, geomatics, hydraulics and hydrology, materials, structures and transportation. Facilities include more than 20 research and undergraduate teaching laboratories, two large computer laboratories and numerous classrooms. Purdue Civil Engineering may have started small in 1887, but over the years the faculty and students have excelled in their

In the early 1900s, Purdue’s campus was simple and understated with its few stately buildings rising from the grassy, open spaces. The Civil Engineering Building is on the far right.

endeavors giving the school its current prominent status in the U.S. and the world. Purdue’s School of Civil Engineering ranks among the nation’s top programs, with an undergraduate ranking of 5th and a graduate ranking of 6th as reported byU.S. News & World Reportin 2012. Today, if the skin of the modern city were peeled away, the arteries of water, waste, power and communication would be revealed. The world’s citizens experience these “lifelines” with nary a thought. It is possible to cross a bridge or climb to the top of a skyscraper because a civil engineer had a hand in the design.

The story of Purdue engineering is a great one, loaded with drama, historical importance, and a tremendous cast of characters. Nowhere else did the mechanic arts of the Morrill Act flourish as they flourished at Purdue. Near the little village of Chauncey, now West Lafayette, Indiana, a university began to take shape in 1874 … some determined, imaginative, and talented men (and a few women*) had raised it to national stature in engineering. H.B. Knoll The Story of Purdue Engineering, 1963 *author note

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From early on, civil engineering has been about structures, roads, and public service.

Chapter 1

The Progress of Mankind

Civil Engineering is considered to be one of the oldest of all engineering disciplines. In a 19001901 Purdue School of Civil Engineering Announcement of Coursesbooklet, it states how, early in the course of history, Civil Engineers influenced the world:

The ruins of aqueducts and other useful engineering works of ancient times tell us that the civil engineer has long borne an important relation to the progress of mankind. The civil engineer led in the industrial awakening in England about the middle of the eighteenth century, and it was then that the profession had its first distinct recognition.

Beginning around 1900, Civil students took four courses in railroading — Railway Curves, Construction, Location, and Maintenance.

Much of what was written in the course leaflet more than one hundred years ago still rings true. (Although, women would be included in the verbiage today.) The booklet continues:

In the earlier days when there was little chance to secure a technical education, a good share of the leading civil engineers were selfmade men. … More recently, … the young man who desires some assurance of success in any of the engineering professions must secure a preliminary training at a good technical school.

Purdue University has won an international reputation because of the close relation that it sustains to the engineering world. … Purdue University offers superior advantages in its material equipment, its teaching force, its location, and in all the elements and conditions which go to make up the firstclass engineering school.

The last sentence can be said of the school today. In 2012, the Purdue School of Civil Engineering boasts an outstanding international reputation with superior advantages in facilities, teaching, governmental partnerships, world impact, and evolving research.

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William King Eldridgewas the first engineering student to graduate from Purdue. He was persuaded by Professor David G. Herron to specialize in Civil Engineering. Thus, Eldridge received his degree in Civil Engineering in June 1878, before the School of Civil Engineering was officially established. Eldridge worked first for a Chicago railroad company on the design and construction of bridges. In 1894, he returned to Lafayette, Indiana, his native city, and was made City Engineer. After 1901, he lived in Indianapolis and worked as an architect and engineer in the construction field.

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The story of Purdue University began in 1862 when Abraham Lincoln signed the LandGrant Act that gave each state public lands to sell and use as an endowment to start a university to teach agriculture and mechanic arts. In 1869, John Purdue gave land and additional funds to found the university that bears his name.

Although one degree in Civil Engineering had been awarded in 1878, the School itself was not officially a part of the University until nearly ten years later. Lt. Albert W. Stahl, Head of Mechanical Engineering, had placed the earlier Civil curriculum under Mechanical due to a lack of students. Mechanical and Civil students worked side by side in Mechanics Hall and later Heavilon Hall, taking several of the same courses.

President James H. Smart appointed a committee early in 1887 to “have jurisdiction over” the establishment of a course in Civil Engineering. At long last, with 29 students, Civil Engineering was born.

Students work on the testing machine in the Busting Lab.

Busting Lab Two events had significant impact on the future of the School of Civil Engineering. First, in 1883, before Civil Engineering began, Lt. Albert W. Stahl recommended that a materials testing laboratory be created and housed in Mechanics Hall. “Its chief glory was an Olsen machine of 50,000 lb. capacity.” This was the start of the “Busting Lab,” and its successors played a significant role in the Civil Engineering Extension.

John Spooner and others examine a model of the Ohio River near St. Louis, Missouri.

Hydraulics Laboratory The second significant early event that influenced the future of Civil Engineering at Purdue was the addition of a hydraulics laboratory in 1891. Located in the original Heavilon Hall, the lab’s equipment included a Pelton Water Motor and a Leffel Turbine water wheel. To some extent, this new equipment evoked a sense of mystery and wonder for the innocence of the time. Students were nearly awestruck as they stood at the gateway of a new world of learning.

Jacques Delleur works with a student in the old Hydraulics Lab in 1963.

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