一百年前, when two engineering journals merged to form Engineering News-Record, the engineering profession and the construction industry were much different than today. In 1917 in the U.S., there were few engineering journals, and the fields of municipal and sanitary engineering were almost entirely un-developed. But some issues of the past are still on the critical list today.
Almost all the early editors had civil engineering degrees. Henry C. Meyer, a manufacturer of plumbing supplies, founded Engineering Record in 1877. Public-spirited, he launched the publication “to share news of methods of conserving public health.” George H. Frost, a land surveyor, started Engineering News in 1874. Leadership transitioned to Arthur M. Wellington, who began the tradition of investigating and reporting lessons from accidents in engineered structures.
这两个期刊的所有权已经过渡了几年，几十年来，这两个领先的期刊都合并了这两个领先的期刊，从而为行业新闻报道带来了一个单一的统一声音。在1917年4月5日（左）的第一期中，新出版商詹姆斯·H·麦格劳（James H.他写道：“论文必须高于个性。”“这一定是一个机构。它的原则必须以真实的方式为基础，以至于无法改变……它的传统与读者的利益纠缠在一起，以至于没有不可思议的冲击与他们的服务相关。”
—Scott Lewis
Different Century, Same Workforce Management Issues
With industrial production booming as World War I raged in Europe and the U.S. was about to enter into combat, ENR’s April 1917 editorial pages termed domestic construction labor shortages as “the greatest difficulty engineers have to face in planning work for the coming season.”
军事服务将很快消耗劳动力d the industry could not depend on farm labor, said ENR on April 12, 1917, so it urged cities to make “very material reductions” in public works and other projects. It cited New York City’s “acute” situation, which forced Mayor John Mitchel to enlist municipal engineers to help decide which projects to delay but said work should continue on the city’s subway system, “regardless of high prices for labor and material” since revenue was urgent to recoup the $150 million invested. But predicting “that, sooner or later, the pendulum will swing in the other direction,” ENR said delaying projects was a better alternative for predicted construction unemployment than “soup kitchens and bread-line distribution.” Twelve years later, the stock market crash heralded the Great Depression.
On April 5, 1917, ENR urged engineers to help create the U.S.“fighting machine” by enlisting in the Reserve corps, citing the “absolute necessity of efficient engineer troops in modern military operations.” With recruiting funds tight, it was engineers’ “patriotic duty” to volunteer, said the editorial. “Superintendents, foremen and gang bosses will make good noncommissioned officers.”
But ENR also waxed about America’s post-war future and the role of engineers in helping America confront the social impacts of the era’s technological innovations by understanding “human problems that [their] material discoveries have created.”
Despite the industry’s traditionally male makeup, the publication ironically noted that the women who replaced skilled men in England in war factories had doubled the country’s munitions production.
—Debra K. Rubin
Current Concrete Spillway's Failure Issues Echo the Past
While dam construction techniques have evolved over the past century, it’s still relevant that “construction details of apparently minor importance may become vital, in time, in the maintenance and safety of concrete spillway dams,” as Eugene Lauchli wrote in Engineering News-Record 100 years ago this month. His words reverberate today as, for example, engineers in California determine the cause of the Oroville Dam spillway damage and formulate a fix.
In February, heavy water flows opened up a 500-ft-long, 300-ft-wide and 45-ft-deep crater on Oroville’s concrete-lined controlled spillway at the site of earlier patchwork to the concrete, leading to severe damage to the 770-ft-tall dam’s unlined emergency spillway.
In his April 5, 1917, article highlighting the causes of concrete spillway damage in several dams completed at that time, Lauchli, an civil and hydraulic engineer in New York City, wrote, “The question arises among engineers as to the advisability of facing the downstream, or spillway, side of concrete dams with a material less subject to wear and tear under severe duty than is ordinary cement concrete.”
Today, engineers are calling for replacing the Oroville spillway with thicker concrete, more rebar and secure anchors to underlying rock, compared to what was originally built in the 1960s. Cavitation—high-pressure shock waves caused by high-velocity water—may be a contibuting factor in Oroville’s failure and was also a major concern among dams built in the 1910s. Back then, Lauchli wrote that some dam builders around the U.S. and abroad were using “an apron or shield of stone or artificial masonry blocks,” while others were using obstacles in the path of the flow to increase friction and decrease water velocity, a strategy that continues today.
At present, the average age of dams in the U.S. is 56 years, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers. Nearly 15,500 have high-hazard potential.
- 斯科特·布莱尔（Scott Blair）
Covering Industry Workplace Safety for a Century
A December 1916 explosion and fire killed 26 people and destroyed nine buildings, comprising most of the Quaker Oats plant in Peterborough, Ontario. The cost of the damage was put at $2 million, which would be $46.9 million in 2017 dollars. Only 10 days earlier, Canada was reeling from a much greater tragedy: A French cargo ship loaded with high explosives and bound for Bordeaux collided with a Norwegian vessel in Halifax Harbor. The cargo on the SS Mont Blanc ignited, and the resulting explosion killed approximately 2,000 people and injured 9,000.
1917年4月，ENR发表了有新利18备用关工厂爆炸的详细说明，该爆炸是由多伦多建筑官员和加拿大消防承销商协会的调查得出的。广泛的说法详细介绍了火灾的破坏性路径，并通过超过2,200°F的温度对混凝土和钢施加的损害。
ENR’s report on the Peterborough fire compares the damage to another industrial conflagration two years earlier—a spectacular blaze in West Orange, N.J., which destroyed 10 buildings of Thomas Edison’s laboratory complex. As he watched the flames, Edison said to his 24-year-old son Charles: “Go get your mother and all her friends. They’ll never see a fire like this again.” The inventor and businessman told The New York Times, “Although I am 67 years old, I’ll start all over again tomorrow.”
新利18备用Enr对Quaker Oats爆炸和火灾的透彻覆盖范围为止，该杂志始于至今：报告从工程和建筑灾难中学到的教训。在最近的问题中，该杂志研究了匹兹堡的自由桥大火以及亚特兰大85号州际公路的崩溃。在加拿大灾难发生后的一个世纪之后，2010年在得克萨斯州米德尔敦（Middletown）的克莱恩（Kleen）能源系统动力植物的覆盖范围（例如在得克萨斯州德克萨斯州的一家炼油厂）以及在康涅狄格州米德尔敦的Kleen Energy Systems Power-wither的报道。材料现在可能会更好，事故发生率可能已经下降，但是事件表明仍有改进的余地。
—Andrew G. Wright
早期的水和污水进度认可
Municipal sewage disposal was in its infancy when Engineering News and Engineering Record were founded in the 1870s. Chlorination presented challenges as dosages had to be adjusted, depending on the amounts of soluble and suspended organic matter, which were not easily measured. Underdosing would fail to destroy bacteria, while overdosing would result in objectionable taste and odors. This wide-ranging appraisal of U.S. sewage-treatment methodology addressed the limits of chlorination as a cure-all for improving water quality.
之前大部分的环境法规place, an April 5, 1917, ENR article sheds light on the inadequate attention being paid to sewage treatment facilities, citing a study which found that only 60% of the country’s plants included laboratories. It also highlights some cities’ costly construction efforts to pipe untreated sewage out of range of water-supply reservoirs.
The article delves into the demands faced by local officials attempting to take advantage of their local streams for multiple, conflicting purposes. It concludes, “Local problems of sewage disposal must be solved, if solved wisely, by adjustment to a wide range of local factors and conditions.”
The preeminent sanitary engineer of that era, author George W. Fuller was trained in bacteriology and chemistry. He designed and built the first modern water filtration plant as well as the first chlorination system, which disinfected a drinking-water supply in the U.S.
ENR continues to provide a wide-ranging appraisal of the construction industry as it strives to solve engineering problems that heavily impact public health.
- 斯科特·刘易斯（Scott Lewis）
