Book Description

Annotation This book presents biographical details of nearly 800 leading practitioners of the Victorian era, including many that have never been written about until now. It outlines the lives of these engineers and lists the works for which they were responsible, and provides indexes of names and places. The engineers covered in this volume were responsible for most of the infrastructure of the United Kingdom and the former `British Empire¿ during the Victorian era ¿ a time of unprecedented expansion. In addition to the designers of railways, docks, harbours and public utilities, this volume reveals information about the contractors who built them, the scientists who contributed to the development of civil engineering knowledge and the technical authors who disseminated best practice. This volume of work enables clients, engineers and architects with an interest in engineering history or involvement in conservation to access a lot of information that is not published anywhere else. It allows the reader to assess the relative importance of civil engineering works, and also to make comparisons of the relative contributions made by individuals to the huge expansion of infrastructure during 1830-1890. The social and economic contexts in which the individuals worked are also dealt with.