Maryland Society of
Professional Engineers

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Early Engineering in Maryland

Mason-Dixon Line
MARYLAND HISTORTCAL SOCIETY PRESENTS "Mason and Dixon and the Defining of America"

Tom Thumb

Thomas Viaduct , B&O Railroad America's first Railroad

C & O Canal

Thomas Point Lighthouse
Thomas Point Lighthouse Keepers By Janice Gary for The Capital Newspaper

Utica Bridge

Casselman Bridge

Berliner Helicopter

BERLINER HELICOPTER
Emile Berliner was an inventor and aviation enthusiast. In 1907 he began to experiment with vertical flight. In 1920,
his son, Henry, came to College Park to conduct tests on an experimental helicopter. A number of experiments were conducted
with different designs until on February 24, 1924 the first successful controlled helicopter flight took place at College Park. Henry Berliner
was able to reach and maintain an altitude of 15 feet for 90 seconds and was able to maneuver the helicopter at a speed of 40 mph
in a radius of approximately 150 feet.

Photograph and writeup courtesy College Park Aviation Museum

FIRST TELEGRAPH, TELEGRAPH LINE
Samuel F.B. Morse reportedly received the first telegraph message in Bladensburg, in 1844, before his famous "What Hath God Wrought" message between Baltimore and Washington. His telegraph wire had been strung along the railroad right of way. Ezra Cornell, founder of Cornell University, lived in Bladensburg and is said to have invented the telegraph pole.

MARYLAND STATE HOUSE
Largest and oldest wodden dome in the US.
Built without nails in 1794.

BENJAMAN FRANKLIN LIGHTNING ROD
The lightning rod which tops the dome is a story in itself. It is a "Franklin" rod,
constructed and grounded to Benjamin Franklin's specifications. In some respects,
the use of this type of lightning rod was also a political statement,
expressing support for Franklin's theories on protection of public buildings from
lightning strikes and the rejection of the opposing theories supported by
King George III. The pointed lightning rod atop such an important new
public building was a powerful symbol of the independence and ingenuity of the young nation.

Modern Engineering in Maryland

Solar House

Chesapeake Bay Bridge

Chalk Point Generating Station

Merrill Center

Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant

Hubble Space Telescope

Egg Raw Image:
University of Maryland research in the fluid dynamics of chicken embryos. Caption: A chicken egg with an exposed embryo, along with a pulsed-Doppler ultrasound probe and the microscope used to obtain the images.
Related Text: Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering Ken Kiger spent the fall of 2003 at the J.M. Burgers Center at the
Technical University of Delft performing research for the development of improved Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) techniques for in
vivo flow measurement. The goal of the research was to try and adapt quantitative imaging techniques commonly used in
engineering fluid mechanics research for use in measurement within living systems. For this specific example, his research group
wanted to be able to measure the flow profiles and the hydrodynamic shear stresses applied to the walls of an embryonic avian heart.
The biomedical colleagues working with Kiger's group have previously conducted experiments using chicken embryos as a model,
which indicate that altering the flow pattern through the primitive tube-shaped heart of very young embryos typically results in
significant defects within an adult four-chambered heart. They have speculated that this is a result of the change in shear stress
patterns caused by the flow alteration, but until now, they did not have the means to quantify specifically how the shear stress
in the heart was altered.

MDSPE
19 Hamill Rd., Unit E
Baltimore, MD 21210
Phone 410-675-8967 Fax 410-522-6947
E-Mail robertlmead@verizon.net
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