ABSTRACT

CROZET 01.01. 1790 Villefrance/F 28.01. 1864 Richmond VA/USA Claude Crozet was born in France, where he was educated at Ecole Polytechnique, Paris until 1807, and then received the engineering education at Metz Military Academy until 1809. Crozet served then in Germany and Holland in Napoleon’s headquarters until the latter’s defeat at Waterloo in 1815. In 1816 he moved to the young United States becoming at Point West assistant professor at the US Military Academy. He was appointed in 1823 state engineer of Virginia State, served there until 1832, and being in 1837 reappointed. In between he was Louisiana State engineer. In Virginia he was in charge of the Board of Public Works and dealt with turnpike projects; later he was involved in railway construction, including the 1.2 km long Blue Ridge Tunnel which at the time was the longest in North America. He also worked on the James River and Kanawha Canal survey in the 1830s. Crozet was a founding member of the Virginia Military Institute, where he introduced the study of descriptive geometry, a subject greatly developed by his former colleague Jean-Victor Poncelet (1788-1867) at Metz. He left VMI in 1845 serving then for the erection of the Washington Aqueduct from 1857 to 1859, from when he was until his death the principal of the Richmond Academy. Besides having largely contributed to the road network of Virginia State, which was stated to be the best of the country, Crozet was an outstanding civil engineer of America in the first half of the 19th century. The 1989 book on Crozet is described a beautiful piece of scholarship, offering a view of a capable engineer plying his profession in the young USA from the canal to the railroad era. It brings together information from a vast array of sources on an early engineer of the United States. Anonymous (1972). Crozet, Claude (Claudius). A biographical dictionary of American civil engineers: 30-31. ASCE: New York. P Couper, W. (1936). Claudius Crozet: Soldier, sailor, educator, engineer. Historical Publication: Charlottesville. P Crozet, C. (1821). Treatise of descriptive geometry for the use of the cadets of the US Military Academy. West Point. Hunter, R.F., Dooley, Jr., E.L. (1989). Claudius Crozet: French engineer in America 1790-1864. University of Virginia Press: Charlottesville. https://www.wvencyclopedia.org/articles/1682 P

CURTIS 29.09. 1894 Berlin MD/USA 11.06. 1961 Denver CO/USA Howard Gray Curtis graduated from the University of Colorado, Boulder CO, with the BSc degree in civil engineering in 1917. From then until 1926 he worked for the water works facility of Nitro VA, a number of irrigation districts, municipal water works, and with consulting engineers, as well as for the St. Paul, Chicago, and Milwaukee Railroad Co. Curtis began his career with the US Bureau of Reclamation USBR in 1926. An authority on pipeline design, he supervised the extensive USBR irrigation systems, including those of the Central Valley Project, and of the All-American Canal System in California. He eventually rose to the Head, the Canals and Pipelines Section, Canals Branch, the Office of the Assistant Commissioner and chief engineer of USBR, Denver CO. Curtis was a member of the American Society for Testing Material, and the American Concrete Agricultural Pipe Association. He was a registered professional engineer of Colorado State. He was further a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers ASCE from 1950, and ASCE Fellow from 1959. He was posthumously awarded in 1962 the highest degree of the Department of the Interior, the Distinguished Service Award. Curtis was mainly a hydraulic engineer dealing with the design and the construction of large pipeline systems. In addition, he was also involved in the construction of water supply, wastewater, and irrigation systems. Once with the USBR he took charge of canal structures for the Kittitas, Owyhee, and Vale dam schemes, including the design of intake towers, spillways, power plant substructures until 1933. From 1934 he had immediate supervision of the design of canal structures and automatic radial gates. He for instance developed the articulation of large reinforced concrete sections for the AllAmerican, and the Gila Canals. Anonymous (1917). Howard G. Curtis. Coloradoan yearbook: 82. Boulder CO. P Anonymous (1948). Curtis, Howard G. Who’s who in engineering 6: 445. Lewis: New York. Anonymous (1963). Howard G. Curtis. Trans. ASCE 128(5): 121. Curtis, H.G. (1937). Progress on All-American Canal. Engineer’s Bulletin 21(3): 8-10. Curtis, H.G. (1950). The Bureau of Reclamation and concrete pipe. USBR: Denver. Curtis, H.G. (1952). The design of concrete pipe irrigation systems. USBR: Denver. Slater, W.R., Curtis, H.G., Oliver, P.A. (1950). Flood control works: All-American Canal, Coachella Branch, Boulder Canyon Project. Joint Summer Convention of ASCE and EIC Toronto: 1-27.