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Schedule including this lecture.
Goddard Space Flight Center Engineering Colloquium
Date: Monday, May 8, 2000
Two alternate forms of transportation began construction on the same day (July 4, 1828) to cross the Allegheny Mountains from eastern ports and reach the Ohio River valley for the lucrative trade route. One eventually made it; the other never did. The railroad succeeded beyond anyone's wildest dreams, connecting the east coast not only to the Ohio/Mississippi valley but eventually the west coast, thus opening up the entire interior of the country. This presentation is about the loser -- the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal (C&O). It was initially a fair bet for success, replacing an operating but inferior canal on the Virginia side, which was really just the river itself, unusable in periods of low water, with locks built around the worst rapids. The new canal would be primarily a ditch beside the river, with a series of eight dams on the river to supply adequate water, although the river pool itself was used where the gorge was too narrow to allow any construction. Even George Washington championed its cause. This talk goes over the C&O history, covering many of the things that went wrong, from engineering failures to social misreadings.
Arthur "Art" Delagrange received a B.S. and M.S. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1962 and a PhD. from the University of Maryland in 1974, all in Electrical Engineering. He worked at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Silver Spring, MD (now closed) from 1959-1994. Since retiring, he has done consulting, both free-lance and for Advanced Technology & Research, Burtonsville, MD. He is an author on 68 U.S. Government reports, 22 articles in trade magazines, and one chapter in "The Art and Science of Analog Design" edited by Jim Williams (Butterworth-Heinemann). He holds nine patents. His hobbies include electronics, audio, music, cars, water-skiing, and cycling. (He has cycled the entire length of the canal towpath.) He lives in Mt. Airy, MD with his wife, Janice, and their cat, Clumsy.
Colloquium Committee Sponsor: Dr. Jan Kalshoven
Engineering Colloquium home page: https://ecolloq.gsfc.nasa.gov