Engineering

There was a time when traveling from the East Coast to the West Coast meant riding for months in a horse-drawn wagon or stagecoach, or sailing southward to Panama and then crossing the Isthmus to board another ship for a journey up the other coast. But that all changed on May 10, ...read more

The 1.7-mile-long Golden Gate Bridge, an icon of the San Francisco Bay region, connects the city of San Francisco to Marin County, California. At its completion in 1937, the suspension bridge was considered an engineering marvel—the longest main suspension bridge span in the ...read more

The Statue of Liberty, which towers 305 feet, six inches over New York Harbor, is one of the most instantly recognizable symbols of America. It has inspired countless souvenir replicas and been referenced in everything from posters for war bonds to the final scene of the 1968 ...read more

They toiled through back-breaking labor during both frigid winters and blazing summers. Hundreds died from explosions, landslides, accidents and disease. And even though they made major contributions to the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad, these 15,000 to 20,000 ...read more

The Erie Canal is a 363-mile waterway that connects the Great Lakes with the Atlantic Ocean via the Hudson River in upstate New York. The channel, which traverses New York state from Albany to Buffalo on Lake Erie, was considered an engineering marvel when it first opened in ...read more

Pick any day in the Piazza del Duomo in the Italian city of Pisa, and you will undoubtedly spot a bunch of tourists posing for the same photo: hands outstretched towards the cathedral’s conspicuously tilting bell tower, as if they are supporting it with their sheer strength. The ...read more

1. The dam’s name was a source of controversy. Surveyors originally recommended the dam be constructed at Boulder Canyon, leading the initiative to be called the Boulder Canyon Dam Project. Even when Black Canyon later was deemed a better location for the new structure, it ...read more

1. The idea for a canal across Panama dates back to the 16th century. In 1513, Spanish explorer Vasco Nunez de Balboa became the first European to discover that the Isthmus of Panama was just a slim land bridge separating the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Balboa’s discovery ...read more

History contains many references to ancient concrete, including in the writings of the famous Roman scholar Pliny the Elder, who lived in the 1st century A.D. and died in the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in A.D. 79. Pliny wrote that the best maritime concrete was made from volcanic ...read more

The military wanted the Golden Gate Bridge to be painted in stripes. The U.S. War Department initially objected to the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge because it feared that Navy ships could be trapped in San Francisco Bay if the span was bombed or collapsed. The military ...read more

From the time it was founded as a small settlement in the late 18th century, Los Angeles depended on its own river for water, building a system of reservoirs and open ditches as well as canals to irrigate nearby fields. As the city grew, however, it became clear that this supply ...read more

After a yellow fever epidemic swept through Memphis, Tennessee in 1878, the newly created National Board of Health sent engineer and Civil War veteran George A. Waring Jr. to design and implement a better sewage drainage system for the city. His success there made Waring’s ...read more

In the early 20th century, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation devised plans for a massive dam on the Arizona-Nevada border to tame the Colorado River and provide water and hydroelectric power for the developing Southwest. Construction within the strict timeframe proved an immense ...read more

After 11 years of construction, the Aswan High Dam across the Nile River in Egypt is completed on July 21, 1970. More than two miles long at its crest, the massive $1 billion dam ended the cycle of flood and drought in the Nile River region, and exploited a tremendous source of ...read more