Future Infrastructure Part 1

Recently you may have seen that the American Society of Civil Engineers published their 2017 Infrastructure Report Card, something they publish every 4 years, giving US infrastructure a D+ grade for the second time since 2013. The group estimates the cost for the US...

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Twin Bridges of the Trinity River

Nearly 20 years ago the city of Dallas began to enact a project to not only beautify, cleanup, and help protect the shoreline of the Trinity River from flooding. Called the Trinity River Project, the project includes around 10,000 acres worth of sports fields, trails,...

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Engineering of the Dead

After the 1830s places of rest began to become more park-like, and started to reflect the romantic notion of nature as molded by man. Plots were uniformly spaced out, with land being set aside for future lots; grounds were kept immaculate with walkways added to...

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Computer Aided Design – History in Digital Engineering

If CAD were a person its parents would have been Patrick Hanratty and Ivan Sutherland. Hanratty was a computer scientist working for GE in 1957 when he helped develop Pronto (Program for Numerical Tooling Operations), the first commercial CNC programming system. CNC...

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The Father of Tubular Design – Fazlur Rahman Khan

Born in 1929 in Dhaka, Bangladesh, in what was then British India, Fazlur Rahman was a structural and architect and noted father of “tubular” design. As a young man in India Khan studied civil engineering at Bengal Engineering College and gained a Bachelor of Civil...

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Engineering Nature: Zoo Habitat Design Part 2

The Challenges of Engineering Nature One of the main challenges for civil engineers in the zoo industry is how to create structures that make up close engagement between humans and animals possible while keeping both parties safe and comfortable. There are many...

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Engineering Nature: Zoo Habitat Design

Part 1: The History of Engineering Natural Habitats Throughout human history our interactions with animals have been mostly ones of confrontation, either as hunter and prey or master and beast of burden. While menageries have existed since around 3500 BCE as rare...

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Petroglyph National Monument

Rising to the west of Albuquerque, the New Mexico Petroglyph National Monument spans 17 miles along the west mesa. The Eastern boundary of the mesa is defined by an escarpment bordering the Rio Grande floodplain and continues up into the area of the National monument....

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The Road to Roswell

Amidst the dusty southwestern plains of New Mexico lies the city of Roswell, NM – home to roughly 50,000 residents, not all of them aliens. In the 1850s the area within the Pecos Valley was settled by Mexican farmers with the first non-indigenous and...

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Hadrian’s Wall

Constructed at the Northernmost reaches of the Roman province of Britannia, on the outskirts of the empire, Hadrian’s Wall was built to defend Roman military and civilian settlements from the local Celtic tribes. The tribes occupied the territory in the North of the...

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