Engineering History (Essay Sample)

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Engineering History
Engineering history is filled with great individuals who have advanced the study and practice of engineering. The field of engineering that interests me is civil engineering. It is a field of engineering that focuses on the construction, designing, building and maintenance of infrastructure. Civil engineering incorporates various disciplines for the development of structures for transportation, mining, geology and environment improvement. Civil engineering interests me because it is a constructive industry that is aimed at achieving stability in the form of infrastructure developments that are the basic framework for development.
There are various individuals who have made remarkable contributions to the field of civil engineering. Eugene Figg is an internationally acclaimed and globally respected structural engineer. He is known for the construction of bridges. He is the designer of numerous award-winning bridges in the US and around the world (Ensley, 28). Using his excellent design and engineering skills, he successfully completed the building of bridges using concrete and cables to develop firm structures. He has developed record-setting projects such as the Sunshine Skyway Bridge across Tampa Bay in Florida, the Natchez Trace Parkway Arches in Tennessee and the Hanging Lake Viaduct in Glenwood Canyon, Colorado.
Higg was born in South Carolina, on august 4, 1936. In his childhood, he had the passion of building scale models of all forms such as ships and planes. His career was highly influenced by hisfather who was a civil engineer. He attended Charleston high school where he was a dedicated student and an active football player. He decided to become a civil engineer like his father while in Citadel where he graduated in 1928.
He participated in digging ditches for foundations and his university days as a cadet he learned the art of business and learned the evaluation of time, leadership and discipline; skills that have contributed into the success of his firm. In 1958,Figg married his wife Ann Ruth West and they have four daughters. Her youngest daughter has taken his fathers footsteps by venturing into civil engineering and working alongside her father in his firm. When her father died in March 2002, she became the president and CEO of the firm.
Figg has worked for the Florida department of transportation alongside the renowned engineer William Bill who was his mentor. Figg rose to become the firm’s chief bridge engineer in 1958. In 1964 he became a structural engineer partner in Tallahassee based engineering firm (Ensley, 26). In 1978 Figg worked with a Paris based partner Muller a leading specialist in concrete construction. Together they developed the precast concrete segmental technology in the US to build strong bridges. In all the companies he worked Figg developed high quality bridges and won the admiration of many engine...