Newsletter February 2007

The "Famous Engineers" Series

The "Crackpot" Who Changed The World

The year is 1927. Jobless and penniless, a young man stands at the banks of Lake Michigan. After losing his business and suffering the loss of his beloved daughter to polio and spinal meningitis, he is on the verge of suicide.

But the 32 year old man decides instead at that defining moment in his life to embark on an experiment, to find what a single man could do to change the world and benefit all of humanity through effective engineering and design.

Among his accomplishments: He conceived a "4D" automated family dwelling built around a pole, which could be mass produced and dropped into place. He designed and built a prefabricated bathroom manufactured from a single surface form containing a bath, toilet and sink that could be assembled on site in minutes. He designed and built three teardrop shaped cars capable of turning on a dime, seating up to 10 people and achieving speeds of 120 mph.

But, each of these ventures failed, primarily because the designs were years ahead of their time. In the case of the pre-built house, the American Institute of Architects established itself on record as "opposed to any peas-in-a-pod reproducible designs".

Finally, in 1949, he completed the project that would make him famous and revolutionize engineers' thinking about the efficiency of structures. In that year, he constructed the world's first geodesic dome building that could sustain its own weight with no practical limitations.

Today, there are more than 500,000 geodesic domes around the world, including the Epcot Center at Disney World in Florida. The geodesic dome - hailed as the hope for humanity's future housing needs - is a complex series of tetrahedrons in which all structural members contribute equally to the whole, and grow stronger as they grow larger.

This Nobel prize nominee was the pioneer of whole systems design and he was one of the earliest proponents of renewable energy sources. He popularized the terms "synergy", "ecology" and "do more with less". In his later years, he would ask engineers and architects how much their structures weighed. If the structure was too heavy or if they didn't know the answer, he would scold them for wasting material .

Hailed by some as a genius and labeled by others as a "hopeless utopian" (or worse, a "crackpot"), this visionary man was brilliant, controversial and eccentric. Perhaps sensing his own potential for greatness, he documented every 15 minutes of his life in a journal from 1915 to 1983. It is believed that his is the most documented human life in history.

Who was this extraordinary engineer, architect, environmentalist, and futurist?

Engineering Feat of the Month

Monthly profile of America's greatest engineering achievements.

The Mightiest Dam in the Country

This dam is the largest concrete structure in the U.S. and was the first structure in the world to exceed the volume of the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt. There's enough concrete in the dam to build a standard six-foot sidewalk around the world at the equator.

Initial excavation of the dam site began in December, 1933 and the dam was completed in 1941. Construction of the dam was funded by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as one of the Great Depression Public Works Administration projects. At the time of construction, it was considered the world's greatest construction project.

The primary goal of the dam was to provide irrigation of desert areas. However, irrigation was deferred for several years after completion because electricity from the dam was required to support manufacturing during World War II.

The dam is 550 feet high and 5,223 feet long. Its volume is 12 million cubic yards and it creates a reservoir 150 miles long. The dam irrigates 1.2 million acres of land and can generate more than 6.5 million kilowatts of electrical power.

More than 80 workers lost their lives while building the dam.

What was this modern engineering marvel?

Upcoming PDH Deadlines

2/28

FL	8 PDH	All Engineers
IL	30 PDH	All Structural Engineers
NH	30 PDH	Based on Engineer's Birthdate
NY	36 PDH	Based on Engineer's Birthdate
OK	30 PDH	Based on Date of Licensure
SD	30 PDH	Based on Date of Licensure
TN	24 PDH	Based on Date of Licensure

Check Your State's Requirements

Engineer Humor

A manager and an engineer go on a fishing trip. They rent all the equipment: the reels, the rods, the wading suits, the rowboat, the car, and even a cabin in the woods. They spend a fortune.

The first day they go fishing, but they don't catch anything. The same thing happens on the second day, and on the third day. It goes on like this until finally, on the last day of their vacation, the engineer catches a fish.