ABSTRACT
EDDY 29.04. 1870 Millbury MA/USA 15.06. 1937 Montreal/CA Harrison Prescott Eddy was educated at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, graduating in 1891 with a BS in chemistry. He then was employed in the sewer department of Worcester City, remaining there for sixteen years. During this time he designed over hundred miles of sewers and drains, enlarged the chemical treatment plant, and added intermittent sand filters to the disposal scheme. In parallel he studied sewage treatment and stream pollution. During this period of the pioneering stage of sewage treatment Eddy was appointed in 1906 to the board of engineers preparing the expansion of the sewage system of Louisville KY, marking his first activity as a consultant. In 1907 Eddy joined the firm of Leonard Metcalf (1870-1926), a civil engineer known in the field of water supply, which proved to be a long and fruitful partnership. With headquarters at Boston MA, they specialized in water supply, sewage treatment and disposal. Metcalf & Eddy began their practice at a time when few communities in the USA provided purified water, and still fewer treated sewage, a time when typhoid fever annually took 35,000 lives. During the next three decades the firm was retained by more than 125 cities, including Fitchburg MA, where Eddy designed one of the first Imhoff trickling filter systems, as proposed by Karl Imhoff (1876-1965) in Germany. Eddy was co-author of the standard three volumes American Sewerage Practice, and of the widely used text Sewerage. He was further an author of technical papers, two of which winning awards, namely the 1913 Desmond Fitzgerald Medal of the Boston Society of Civil Engineers, and the 1925 Normal Medal of ASCE. As member of the ASCE Committee on Public Works, Eddy also played an important role in helping to secure enactment of the Federal Emergency Relief Act. He was further instrumental in setting up ASCE’s journal Civil Engineering in 1931. Eddy was fatally stricken during his trip to Montreal, where he should receive Honorary Membership of the Engineering Institute of Canada. Anonymous (1926). Harrison P. Eddy. Engineering News-Record 96(3): 132. P Anonymous (1937). Eddy dies in Montreal. Engineering News-Record 118(Jun.17): 895. P Anonymous (1939). Harrison Prescott Eddy. Trans. ASCE 104: 1867-1871. Anonymous (1958). Eddy, Harrison Prescott. Dictionary of American biography 22: 169-170. Scribner’s: New York. Metcalf, L., Eddy, H.P. (1915). American sewerage practice. McGraw-Hill: New York. Metcalf, L., Eddy, H.P. (1922). Sewerage and sewage disposal. McGraw-Hill: New York.
