The 16-story Ingalls Building, still in use today, was the world's first reinforced concrete skyscraper. Its success led to the acceptance of high-rise concrete construction in the United States.
Melville E. Ingalls, for whom the building is named, spent two years convincing city officials to issue a building permit. Skepticism was high, because the existing height record for a concrete building was only six stories.
In operation since 1944, the Icing Research Tunnel is the oldest and largest refrigerated icing wind tunnel in the world. Technology developed there enables aircraft to fly safely through icing clouds. Two firsts include the unique heat exchanger and the spray system that simulates a natural icing cloud of tiny droplets.
A variety of mechanical feeders, including drag-chain conveyors and rotary pocket feeders, historically have been used to volumetrically control the flow of fuel to coal pulverizers on power generators. Most power generation in the United States has relied on burning fossil fuels in steam boilers, with coal as the fuel of choice. By the 1920s, pulverized-firing (the burning in suspension of finely ground coal particles) evolved as means to more complete fuel combustion and higher system efficiencies and facilitated the use of larger boilers.
Wind dynamics were a major consideration in building such a huge structure. When winds blow against the building, they are deflected up over the roof, creating a partial vacuum that can draw the roof up with a force several times greater than the direct force of the wind. Wind tunnel testing on a model helped designers decide that a semi-parabolic shape would best resolve air current concerns.
These engines, built by Cooper & Co., of Mount Vernon are among the oldest surviving agricultural steam engines to show the evolution from the portable, skid-mounted engine (ca. 1860) to the horse-drawn engine (1875), through the self-propelled but horse-guided engine (1875) and finally to the self-propelled, self-steered traction engine (1883). Such engines powered the conversion to mechanized farming, which was a great hallmark of the Industrial Revolution.
This compressor was a product of the combined technology and design heritage of both the C. & G. Cooper Company of Mount Vernon and the Bessemer Gas Engine Company of Pennsylvania, which had merged in 1929. Ralph L. Boyer, the chief architect of the GMV, worked for Cooper-Bessemer from 1926 through 1965.
"This is the first Portland cement concrete street built in the United States ... Here started the better roads movement which has given our citizens from coast to coast swift and sure transportation."
- Historic marker, Bellefontaine, Ohio, celebrating the 50th anniversary of America's first concrete pavement, 1941
Constructed on 1,040 acres just 10 miles southwest of the city center, the Cleveland Hopkins Airport was the first major airport in the world to provide an integrated system of paved landing surfaces, lighted runways, and a terminal complex consisting of hangars and operating facilities. Overseen by city manager William Hopkins and Major "Jack" Berry - an engineer on loan from the U.S. postal service who eventually became the city's first Airport Commissioner - the project at first was called "Major Berry's Folly" by local residents because of its outlying location.
The Cincinnati Observatory, founded by Ormsby MacKnight Mitchel in 1842, is America’s oldest public/professional observatory. The observatory was situated on Mt. Adams, east of the current downtown Cincinnati; the hill was named for former President John Quincy Adams when he laid the observatory’s cornerstone. In 1873 the observatory was relocated to Mt. Lookout when it became a component of the University of Cincinnati (UC). From 1870s until 1930s the stellar proper motion studies reigned as the observatory’s principal activity.
During the post-Civil War era, efforts to cultivate the land for higher crop yields resulted in the digging of thousands of miles of ditches to improve land drainage. Accurately graded ditches were needed for open drainage, pipeline trenches and placement of underground agricultural drainage tile. Teams of skilled workers laid out the direction and gradient of a ditch and dug it out with pick and shovel. The Black Swamp area, where Lake Erie drains into northwest Ohio and southeast Michigan, was the center of much of the U.S. ditching activity.
