Land Transportation

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.

Significant Engineers in America’s Rise to Industrial Prominence

This chapter is entirely biographical, focusing on engineers active in the period in which the United States was transformed from a minor industrial power to the world’s leading industrial power, i.e., in the century between 1840 and 1940. The bulk of the biographical sketches in this chapter were written by Fritz Hirschfeld. They were commissioned by ASME as part of the commemoration of the Society’s 100th anniversary and appeared in Mechanical Engineering between November 1979 and March 1981.

Boiler and Pressure Vessel Safety

A variety of factors prompted Leavitt, Thurston, Sweet, Worthington, and the other founders of ASME to promote the creation of a new professional engineering society in 1880: need for a forum to discuss technical problems and share views, desire to promote mechanical engineering as a profession, a means of guiding the next generation. One of the primary factors that prompted the formation of ASME, however, was a desire to establishment of codes and standards relevant to the field. Not surprisingly, codes and standards were topics that occupied considerable attention in the early volumes of the Transactions of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

The Emergence of ASME

American industrialization grew on the foundations laid by early American mechanical innovators like Samuel Slater, Robert Fulton, and Eli Whitney. By the 1830s water-powered industrial complexes at Lowell and Lawrence, Massachusetts, using machinery introduced into America by Slater and processing cotton produced by Whitney’s gins, were equal to or surpassed anything found in Europe. American-produced steamboats plied the Ohio and Mississippi and a host of other rivers in large numbers. And by 1840 the number of miles of railroad laid down in America far surpassed that of any nation in Europe.

Engineering Other Aspects of Human Life

The preceding chapters have focused on broad areas in which mechanical engineers have made significant contributions—energy production, aeronautics and aerospace, and land transportation. Mechanical engineers, however, have historically made contributions in a significant number of other fields. This chapter provides episodic coverage of some of them.

Energy Production and Conversion

In many ways, energy production and its conversion from one form to another is the heart of mechanical engineering. The history of energy is vast, beginning with efforts to make the energy produced by human muscle more effective through the use of lubricants or the application of the so-called six simple machines in pre-history. By the end of Classical antiquity, inventors and engineers had harnessed the power of wind to move ships and water to grind flour. In the eighteenth century the first practical heat engines opened the era of fossil fuels, utilizing the expansive power of steam to convert thermal energy to mechanical energy.

Back Matter

This back matter contains the Appendix: Current and Past Members of ASME’S History and Heritage Committee 1917-2021, References and Index.

Aviation and Aerospace

Aviation and aerospace technology includes the engineering, science, and economic developments required to fly in the Earth’s atmosphere (aeronautics/aviation) and surrounding space (astronautics/ aerospace). Aeronautics and astronautics are combined in aerospace engineering.

A Sense of the Past: Historical Publications of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers

The American Society of Mechanical Engineers has both a tradition and a solid record of encouraging and supporting historical publications, particularly in the field of biography but also in the history of technical achievements. The numerous books, articles, and commemorative brochures that have been published under Society auspices or with the encouragement of the Society provide a great deal of historical information, much of which would not be otherwise available. These publications make collectively a substantial and tangible witness to the sense of the past that has inspired and, in some measure, informed a surprisingly large number of prominent individuals who are or have been members of the Society.

Engineering in the New Nation

One of the central facts about the early years of the United States is that the so-called industrial revolution was occurring in Britain at about the same time the thirteen colonies revolted against British rule and declared their independence. When the American Revolution ended in 1783, the new nation was, at it had been in the colonial period, overwhelmingly agrarian. Britain, meanwhile, was rapidly evolving into an industrial society. Many prominent figures in the new nation feared that while America had achieved political independence, it would become economically dependent on its former colonial master. It was in this context that early American mechanical innovators labored.