ENGINEERING PROGRESS IN THE UNITED STATES. 335. 
over this bright ringing metal would settle the question for every one so doing. 
Whatever may be the pavement of the future in our city, even though it be of 
solid gold, it may as well be determined that cleaning is absolutely necessary to 
keep down mud in wet, and dust in windy weather. 
INTERLAKEN, Switzerland, 
Aug. 23d, 1880. 
ENGINEERING PROGRESS IN THE UNITED STATES. 
BY OCTAVE CHANUTE, V. P. 
Annual Address Read at the Twelfth Annual Convention of the Society of American Civil Engineers, held 
at St. Louis, Mo., May 25th, 1880. 
EXTRACTS. 
*K *k * *K *K * * sk * 
The first works in America for the supply of water to towns, were con- 
structed by Hans Christopher Christiansen, and put in operation on June 2oth, 
1754, at the Moravian settlement of Bethlehem, in Pennsylvania. 
The water from a spring, which is still used for the supply, was forced by a 
pump of lignum-vite of five inches bore, through hemlock logs into a wooden 
reservoir. 
The same ingenious Dane, eight years later, replaced this rude pump by 
three iron pumps of four inches bore and eighteen inches stroke, which for many 
years were the only machinery for water supply on the Continent, and for sev- 
enty years furnished the water for Bethlehem. 
Among the oldest, if not the very next in date to Bethlehem, is the Morris- 
town, N. J., Water Company, which was incorporated in 1791, and has ever 
since furnished the town with water collected from the neighboring hills. 
The first application of steam to pumping was in Philadelphia, in 1800, 
when the third steam engine of any considerable size in the United States was 
erected on the banks of the Schuylkill. It is believed that these works were the. 
first constructed by a municipality. The first cast iron water pipes were laid in 
Philadelphia in 1804. | 
New York was first supplied by a company which erected a small pumping 
engine about 1800. 
During the first thirty years of the century several small works were con- 
structed, among others, at Cincinnati, in 1817; at Detroit, in 1827; at Lynch- 
burgh, in 1828; Syracuse, in 1829; and Richmond, in 1830. Few of these 
works exhibited any great advance in engineering. The enlarged works for the 
supply of Philadelphia. by water power, constructed at Fairmount, in 1822, 
showed, however, a marked advance, and were for many years regarded as a 
model of efficient and economical works. The design and execution of the grav- 
