Land Transportation

Author(s):  
Thomas H. Fehring ◽  
Terry S. Reynolds

The engineering involved in transportation provided one of the points from which the modern mechanical engineering profession in the United States emerged. The shops that produced the steam engines for river boats and the locomotives for railroads had, by the 1840s, become a leading training ground for the first generation of professional mechanical engineers. As railroads became the primary means of long-distance transport for goods in the late nineteenth century, they also became a leading employer of mechanical engineers. Not surprisingly, the Rail Transportation Division was one of the original eight divisions created when ASME in 1920 adopted a divisional organization; it remains among that organization’s most active divisions. Unfortunately, despite the rail industry’s importance to American history and to the history of mechanical engineering, few articles dealing with the history of this form of land transportation have appeared in Mechanical Engineering magazine over the past fifty years. None were selected for this volume.

Author(s):  
Arna Bontemps

This chapter looks at the history of Provident Hospital, which had been started by Negro doctors in the late nineteenth century to address the poor health conditions among Negroes in Chicago, with particular emphasis on its role in addressing the high mortality rates due to tuberculosis on the South Side during the period. It begins with an overview of Provident Hospital, which opened in 1891 with thirteen beds and the first training school for Negro nurses in the United States, and considers some of its doctors, led by Dr. Daniel Williams. It then discusses Provident's alliance with the University of Chicago that established the hospital as a recognized educational center, along with its affiliation with the city's important social agencies through its Social Services Department. It also describes Provident's initiative to solve the problem of proper hospitalization of tuberculosis patients in Chicago through its Department of Medicine in collaboration with white physicians and social workers.


Geologos ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 141-155
Author(s):  
Piotr Migoń ◽  
Krzysztof Parzóch

Abstract Among sites of geomorphological interest in the tableland of the Stołowe Mountains, consisting of clastic sedimentary rocks of Late Cretaceous age, are enigmatic occurrences and clusters of sandstone boulders within plateau levels that are underlain by mudstones and marls. These boulders are allochthonous, having been derived from the quartz sandstone beds that support the upper plateau level and stratigraphically are in excess of 50 m above the altitudinal position of the boulders. Topographic conditions preclude long-distance transport from the escarpment slopes; boulders are hypothesised to be the last remnants of completely degraded outliers (mesas) of the upper plateau. Their present-day altitudinal position is explained by passive ‘settling’ following disintegration of caprock and denudation of the underlying weaker rocks. Two localities are here presented in detail, Łężyckie Skałki and Pustelnik, along with adjacent boulder trains in the valleys incised into the plateau. It is argued that both localities have considerable geoheritage value and both play the role of geosites, although on-site facilities are so far limited. However, the complex history of boulders sets a series of challenges for successful geo-interpretation.


2020 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 150-173
Author(s):  
Kevin Van Bladel

This article sketches the early history of Islamic civilization from its genesis in the late nineteenth century to its institutionalization in the twentieth. Key moments include its enshrinement in journals and a monumental encyclopedia and the flight of European Semitists to the United States. Its institutionalization in the undergraduate curriculum at the University of Chicago in 1956 created a successful model for the subsequent dissemination of Islamic civilization. Working in a committee on general education (the core curriculum) in the social sciences at the University of Chicago, Marshall Hodgson inaugurated Islamic civilization as a subject of university study that was not just for specialists but available to American college students as fulfilling a basic requirement in a liberal arts education. Many other universities followed this practice. Since then, Islamic civilization has come to be shared by the educated public. Today it is an internationally accepted and wellfunded entity that confers contested social power but still lacks analytical power. 


2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-66
Author(s):  
Samuel Avery-Quinn

In the late nineteenth century, camp meeting towns were a common feature of the American landscape. The boards of Methodist ministers and laity overseeing these towns adopted management and planning strategies drawn from movements for romantic suburbs, sanitary reform, and urban parks. The strategies these Methodists adopted represent a practice of vernacular planning crafted decades before the professionalization of the discipline in the United States. Analysis of the planning history of two sites—Ocean Grove, NJ, and Round Lake, NY—reveals factors shaping this development of Methodistic town planning.


Author(s):  
Duncan Bell

This chapter sketches a synoptic intellectual history of the attempt to unify the constituent elements of the “Anglo-world” into a single globe-spanning community, and to harness its purported world-historical potential as an agent of order and justice. Since the late nineteenth century numerous commentators have preached the benefits of unity, though they have often disagreed on the institutional form it should assume. These are projects for the creation of a new Anglo century. The first two sections of the chapter explore overlapping elements of the fin de siècle Anglo-world discourse. The third section traces the echoes of debates over the future relationship between the empire and the United States through the twentieth century, discussing the interlacing articulation of imperial-commonwealth, Anglo-American, democratic unionist, and world federalist projects. The final section discusses contemporary accounts of Anglo-world supremacy.


Transfers ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 95-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward J.M. Rhoads

Introduced into China in the late nineteenth century, the bicycle had to compete with a variety of alternative modes of personal transportation that for a number of years limited its appeal and utility. Thus, during the 1920s and 1930s it took a back seat to the hand-pulled rickshaw and during the 1940s to the pedicab (cycle rickshaw). It was only in the 1950s that the bicycle became the primary means of transportation for most urban Chinese. For the next four decades, as its use spread from the city to the countryside, China was the iconic “bicycle kingdom.“ Since the 1990s, however, the pedal-powered bicycle has been overtaken by the automobile (and motorcycle). Nevertheless, with the recent appearance and growing popularity of the e-bike, the bicycle may yet play an important role in China's transport modal mix. This overview history of the bicycle in China is based on a wide range of textual sources in English and Chinese as well as pictorial images.


2008 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 591-601
Author(s):  
Christopher Beauchamp

This dissertation summary introduces a new perspective on the legal and economic history of patents in the late nineteenth century. Through a case study of the early telephone industry in Britain and the United States, the dissertation explores interactions between business strategies and national legal regimes, and proposes a revised view of the multi-layered relationship between patents and industrial organization.


1976 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 417-447 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucy Carroll

The temperance/prohibition agitation represents a fascinating chapter in the social and political history of India which has been largely ignored. If any notice is taken of this movement, it is generally dismissed (or elevated) as an example of the uniquely Indian process of ‘sanskritization’ or as an equally unique component of ‘Gandhianism’—in spite of the fact that the liquor question has not been without political importance in the history either of England or of the United States. And in spite of the fact that the temperance agitation in India in the late nineteenth century and well into the twentieth century was intimately connected with temperance agitation in England. Indeed the temperance movement in India was organized, patronized, and instructed by English temperance agitators.


2006 ◽  
Vol 96 (9) ◽  
pp. 1021-1026 ◽  
Author(s):  
David G. Schmale III ◽  
John F. Leslie ◽  
Kurt A. Zeller ◽  
Amgad A. Saleh ◽  
Elson J. Shields ◽  
...  

Gibberella zeae, causal agent of Fusarium head blight (FHB) of wheat and barley and Gibberella ear rot (GER) of corn, may be transported over long distances in the atmosphere. Epidemics of FHB and GER may be initiated by regional atmospheric sources of inoculum of G. zeae; however, little is known about the origin of inoculum for these epidemics. We tested the hypothesis that atmospheric populations of G. zeae are genetically diverse by determining the genetic structure of New York atmospheric populations (NYAPs) of G. zeae, and comparing them with populations of G. zeae collected from seven different states in the northern United States. Viable, airborne spores of G. zeae were collected in rotational (lacking any apparent within-field inoculum sources of G. zeae) wheat and corn fields in Aurora, NY in May through August over 3 years (2002 to 2004). We evaluated 23 amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) loci in 780 isolates of G. zeae. Normalized genotypic diversity was high (ranging from 0.91 to 1.0) in NYAPs of G. zeae, and nearly all of the isolates in each of the populations represented unique AFLP haplotypes. Pairwise calculations of Nei's unbiased genetic identity were uniformly high (>0.99) for all of the possible NYAP comparisons. Although the NYAPs were genotypically diverse, they were genetically similar and potentially part of a large, interbreeding population of G. zeae in North America. Estimates of the fixation index (GST) and the effective migration rate (Nm) for the NYAPs indicated significant genetic exchange among populations. Relatively low levels of linkage disequilibrium in the NYAPs suggest that outcrossing is common and that the populations are not a result of a recent bottleneck or invasion. When NYAPs were compared with those collected across the United States, the observed genetic identities between the populations ranged from 0.92 to 0.99. However, there was a significant negative correlation (R = -0.59, P < 0.001) between genetic identity and geographic distance, suggesting that some genetic isolation may occur on a continental scale. The contribution of long-distance transport of G. zeae to regional epidemics of FHB and GER remains unclear, but the diverse atmospheric populations of G. zeae suggest that inoculum may originate from multiple locations over large geographic distances. Practically, the long-distance transport of G. zeae suggests that management of inoculum sources on a local scale, unless performed over extensive production areas, will not be completely effective for the management of FHB and GER.


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