Chapter 4: 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 100^th anniversary and appeared in Mechanical Engineering between November 1979 and March 1981.