The foundation of our modern society is the design, development and maintenance of civil

engineers — our roads and bridges, water and energy supply systems, maritime ports and airports, and
cleaner environment infrastructure, etc. If not for the pioneers of civil engineering who have changed the
world for always with their inventions, civil engineers' work today will be much more complicated. All of
these world-famous civil engineers made remarkable contributions to and beyond the Industrial
Revolution through their discovery and explanation of the most basic concepts of the discipline.

JOHN SMEATON

John Smeaton was an English engineer and a physicist known as "Father of Civil Engineering,"
born in Leeds in June 8, 1724 and became a mathematical tool
manufacturer after a brief career in law. He was a master and an eminent
forerunner of his profession, a self-proclaimed civil engineer. By reading
and attending the meetings of the Royal Society of London he received
much of his training and his scientific knowledge. In addition to his work
in mechanical engineering, he designed bridges, canals and harbours.
While the building materials were used or the techniques used to increase
the rigidity of the object, he created a new way of construction. His every
project emerged as a masterpiece, a thrilling work of art through his
determination and sincere efforts. In the course of testing and designing mechanisms in architectural
practice, he converted the practice of engineering, which was considered a masterpiece.

John Smeaton built (1756–59) the third Eddystone Lighthouse entirely of interlocking stone, on a
plan that revolutionized the construction of such towers. It stood until it was replaced in 1882 by the
present structure, which rises 133 feet (40 metres) above the water and was designed by Sir James N.
Douglass. Smeaton also constructed the Forth and Clyde Canal in Scotland, which opened a waterway
between the Atlantic and the North Sea; built bridges at Perth, Banff, and Coldstream, Scot.; and
completed the harbour at Ramsgate, Kent.

He was the first person to use the word "civil engineers" and created the world's first engineering
firm. His genuine work inspires all; to fear the choices in life they make and to work with devotion to
achieving their dreams.
JOHN AUGUST ROEBLING

John August Roebling was born in Prussia in 1806 and was a

lecturer in engineering and architecture and interested in the
difficulties of the suspension bridge for first time in the Royal
Building Academy in Berlin. He was long rejected in his demands for
construction of a suspension bridge and moved into America in 1837,
where he became one of the Saxonburg Pennsylvania's founding
father. Roebling finally realized his dream in 1844 by building a
suspension bridge in Pittsburgh and becoming America's leading
suspension bridge expert. beginning his career with the Pennsylvania
Canal system.

The Brooklyn Bridge of New York City, which was completed in 1883 under the leadership of
his eldest son, Washington Augustus, and daughter-in-law, Emily Warren Roebling, is his most famous
work. This was the beginning of an industrial complex that finally was capable of producing everything
from wire cloth to enormous suspension bridge cables 36 inches (91 cm) in diameter. It remained a
family-owned business until 1952, carried on by three generations of Roeblings.

GUSTAVO EIFFEL

Eiffel, an engineer by training, has created and built a metal construction business with the Eiffel
Tower as a cornerstone. His experimental study committed him the last
thirty years of his life. Born in 1832 in Dijon and graduated 1855, the
same year Paris hosted the first World's Fair, from the Centrale des Arts
et Manufactures academy. He spent several years in southwestern France
where he oversaw the function of Bordeaux 's main railway bridge and
subsequently set up as a 'constructor,' i.e. as a metal building firm, in
1864. In 1876, he worked on the Porto viaduct over the river Douro, on
the Garabit viaduct in 1884, on the Hungary Pest Railway Station and on
the Dome of the Observatory of Nice, and on the ingenious structure of
the Statue of Liberty. He was also a constructionist and an excellent
constructionist. The Eiffel Tower ended in 1889. This is the end of his entrepreneurial career.
SQUIRE WHIPPLE

Squire Whipple was born in Hardwick, Massachusetts, and

graduated from the New York College of Private Unions. He is
known as the " Father of Iron Bridge Building. He soon became
known as a highly skilled builder of bridge, and in 1841 he was
particularly known for the bowstring arch truss design. There are
several still existing Squire bridges, many of which are still in use,
and in Albany, New York, one can find an especially beautiful
example. The first important attempt to provide analytical means
to measure stresses instead of rule-of-thumb methods is, after all,
his "Work on Bridge Building." The book, enlarged and printed
personally in 1869, titled “An Elementary and Practical Treatise
on Bridge Building, made it possible for iron worked and cast to be
used rationally and was widely applied throughout decades in the railway industry.

Isambard Kingdom Brunel

Isambard Kingdom Brunel was born in 1806 in Portsmouth, England, and became one of the
greatest contributors to the Industrial Revolution, known as one of the
most ingenious and prolific figures in the history of engineering. Brunel
is best known for his work on the Great Western Railway, which was
completed in 1838 and linked the Midlands with London, and it was
possible to find much of Wales and its bridges and tunnels all over the
UK. With its 3 ships, the Great Western (1837), Britain (1843) and the
Great Eastern (originally Leviathan; 1858), Brunel made outstanding
contributions to marine engineers, both of which were the largest in the
world at the time of launch. The Great Western was the first steamship
to have regular transatlantic service, a wooden paddle ship. The first
large vessel powered by a screw propeller was the iron-hull steamship in
the UK. Both a paddle and a screw powered the Great East and was the first vessel to use a double erect
hull. The Great East was not finished for 40 years as a passenger ship, but it was renowned by the
development of the first successful transatlantic cable.
Structures and Achievements of 5 Famous Civil Engineers
Engineers in Other Fields
NIKOLA TESLA
Nikola Tesla, (born July 9/10, 1856, Smiljan, Austrian Empire [now in Croatia] —died January 7,
1943, New York, New York, U.S.), Serbian American inventor and
engineer who discovered and patented the rotating magnetic field, the
basis of most alternating-current machinery. He also developed the
three-phase system of electric power transmission. He immigrated to
the United States in 1884 and sold the patent rights to his system of
alternating-current dynamos, transformers, and motors to George
Westinghouse. In 1891 he invented the Tesla coil, an induction coil
widely used in radio technology. Tesla soon established his own
laboratory, where his inventive mind could be given free rein. He
experimented with shadowgraphs similar to those that later were to be
used by Wilhelm Röntgen when he discovered X-rays in 1895. Tesla ’s countless experiments included
work on a carbon button lamp, on the power of electrical resonance, and on various types of lighting.

DR. LEON CHUA

Dr. Chua is an electrical engineer and computer scientist and graduated in Manila, Philippines
from Mapua Institute of Technology, in 1959. He studied at
Massachusetts Institute of Technology for about one year in his
Alma Mater, where his master's degree was in 1961. He moved to
the U.S. His study is continued under a scholarship. He then gained
his doctorate from Illinois University in 1964 and received eight
honorary doctorates in the following years.

Dr. Chua is considered to be the father of the CNN theory of

nonlinear circuits. CNN architecture is the only solution for ultra-
speed pattern recognition and image processing in a functional, fully
programmable chip. He also developed a five-element circuit to
generate chaotic signals, called the Chua Circuit, which many
researchers use to develop stable, chaos-based communications systems.
GREGORY ZARA

Born in Lipa City, Batangas, Dr Gregorio Zara is one of the Philippine's most famous scientists
and engineers. In 1926, he received his diploma in Mechanical
Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
He graduated from the University of Michigan in Aeronautical
Engineering in 1927 and from Sorbonne University in physics
in 1930. He began to work on numerous projects including the
successful testing and flown aircraft engine on the 30
September 1954 at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport.
Dr. Zaras important achievements included the creation of
two-way TV, an electric kinetic resistance known as the Zara
effect, and the solar energy. he invented two-way TV phones.
He received a Merit and Distinguished Service Medal in 1959
for his pioneering work and achievements in solar energy,
aeronautics and televisions. In 1966 he received a Presidential Gold Medal and Honorary Honor for
Science and Research. Dr. Zara has a record of 40 research projects and 20 excellent scientific
achievements at the height of his career.
Inventions or Works of Engineers in Other Fields