Talk:Loammi Baldwin

Adding more.

I believe Loammi Baldwin, Jr. has been called the father of American Civil Engineering not his father Loammi Baldwin. It was the son(s) who traveled in Europe, collected a large engineering library (now at MIT, I think) and trained his/their assistants. Also Loammi's sons James, Loammi, and George wrote and published their engineering reports on various projects. These reports on canal, railroad, and water works were the earliest American publications of this kind and appear to have been the templates of other reports and works by other engineers. Loammi Baldwin the father would better be described as the grandfather of American Civil Engineering, since he trained his sons as he learned the skill of civil engineering. The father was originally trained as a cabinet maker and merchant. The father Loammi had to learn on the job often by trial and error since there were no American Civil Engineers at that time. The only professional advice he got was from William Weston the English canal builder who was working in Pennsylvania at that time.

If no one else does so before I do, I will eventually improve these Baldwin entries. DavidBlackwell (talk) 05:55, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Benjamin Wright has been recognized as the father of American civil engineering by the American Society of Civil Engineering. I plan to re-write the article accordingly. Cheers Risk Engineer (talk) 19:37, 21 May 2020 (UTC).