The major engineering pioneers whose works transformed America into the world's leading modern power, from Robert Fulton and his inventions of the steamboat to Thomas Edison's construction of the first electrical power network. Introduces each of the major figures and explains how they came up with their ideas and how their works tranformed commerce, industry, and society.
DAVID P. BILLINGTON, Professor of Civil Engineering at Princeton University, is the author of The Tower and the Bridge and Robert Maillart's Bridges: The Art of Engineering, winner of the 1979 Dexter Prize as the outstanding book on the history of technology.