1870-1879

First Tower Silo Designated A Historic Landmark Of  Agricultural Engineering. The First Tower Silo In America Was Erected Near This Site On The Hatch Farm, One Half-Mile East Of Spring Grove, Illinois. Fred L. Hatch And His Father, Lewis Hatch, Erected This Silo In October 1873, After Fred Graduated From The Illinois Industrial University. (Now The University Of Illinois). Textbooks On Agriculture Were Scarce, And Professor Willard F. Bliss Translated French And German Pamphlets On Silage Production Wherein The Entire Corn Plant Was Buried In Pits, And This Inspired Young Hatch.

Designated a Historic Landmark of Agricultural Engineering at Oakland Manor In 1876 Francis Morris Built Brick Silos in His Barn and Introduced the Practice of Making Corn Silage in the United States. His Further Experiments Developed the Use of Earthen Trenches and Thereby Significantly Contributed to the Development of American Agriculture Dedicated by Amercan Society of Agricultural Engineers 1976

The Zoroaster, commissioned and completed in 1878, is widely considered to be the world's first successful oil tanker. It was designed by Ludvig Nobel, who notably refused to patent any part of it, leading to the design being widely studied and duplicated around the world. The tanker was built in Gothemburg, Sweden and was intended to navigate the Caspian Sea, running between Baku, Azerbaijan and Astrakhan, Russia.

The American Chemical Society, the world’s largest scientific society, celebrated its 125th anniversary in 2001. Founded in 1876 in New York City, the Society now has 186 local sections in all 50 states, international chapters, and 32 technical divisions that bring together scientists with interests ranging from small business to environmental protection.

The text of the plaque commemorating the landmark reads:

The first transmission of intelligible speech over electrical wires took place on 10 March 1876. Inventor Alexander Graham Bell called out to his assistant Thomas Watson, “Mr. Watson, come here! I want to see you.” This transmission took place in their attic laboratory located in a near here at 5 Exeter Place. A pioneer in the field of telecommunications, Alexander Graham Bell was born in 1847 in Edinburgh, Scotland. He moved to Ontario, and then to the United States, settling in Boston, before beginning his career as an inventor.

On 10 August 1876, Alexander Graham Bell demonstrated on this site that the human voice could be transmitted electrically over distance. While family members spoke into a transmitter in Brantford, 13 km away, Bell was able to hear them at a receiver located in Paris. This test convinced Bell that his invention could be used for communication between towns and could compete successfully with the telegraph.  

The East Maui Irrigation System is Hawaii's most dramatic water story. It began with the construction of the Old Hamakua Ditch built between 1876 and 1878. This privately financed, constructed and managed irrigation system was one of the largest in the United States. It eventually included 50 miles of tunnels; 24 miles of open ditches, inverted siphons and flumes; incorporates approximately 400 intakes and 8 reservoirs.

"Eads had to succeed in the face of conventional wisdom which doomed him to disaster. Entrenched authorities not only completely dismissed his theories, but pointed to the indifferent European experiences with what he proposed."  
 - ASCE Landmark Nomination Proposal, 1982   

It is a large, imposing structure (over a dozen rooms and spacious halls) dominated by a four-story octagonal tower at one corner and a second shorter square tower at another corner containing tanks for potable and fire-fighting water supply.

The Tehachapi Pass Railroad Line was cut through solid and decomposed granite by about 3,000 Chinese laborers using nothing more than picks, shovels, horse drawn carts, and blasting powder. This line, which rises from the San Joaquin Valley and through the Tehachapi Mountains, originally included 18 tunnels, ten bridges and several water towers to accommodate the steam locomotives. Completed in less than two years, it was part of the final line of the first railroad to connect San Francisco with Los Angeles.