Charles Whiting Baker, chief editor of Engineering News, was vacationing in Vermont in August 1907 when word reached him that the Quebec Bridge, under construction near Quebec City across the border in Canada, had collapsed.
This 1926 cover shows a wooden stave pipe under construction in northern California. The 16-ft-dia, 1,318-ft-long conduit connected two concrete-lined tunnels at a hydroelectric plant on the Klamath River.
Engineering News in its early years was more of a civil engineering journal than its later incarnations (including Engineering News-Record), with numerous articles contributed by engineers.
Access to water played a critical role in the development of Los Angeles into one of the country’s largest cities. In 1900, it covered 61 square miles and had 102,000 residents.
This 1919 cover shows dozens of workers erecting wooden forms for various concrete pours for segments of Dry Dock No. 4 at the Norfolk Navy Yard in Portsmouth, Virginia.
During the 19th century, Chicago’s sewage got dumped into the Chicago River and flowed into Lake Michigan. Because the city’s drinking water was, and still is, drawn from the lake via two mile-long tunnels, officials feared that the sewage would endanger the water supply.
This 1927 cover depicts the tallest timber bridge in the world. Standing 204.5 ft high and 893 ft long, it was part of a rail line that hauled logs for the Pacific States Lumber Co. from its mill at Selleck, Wash., to Tacoma.
