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| b. Materials and Construction |
| 1800 |
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| Pioneer suspension bridge, hung by iron chains, built by James Finley (c. 1762–1828) in Pennsylvania; wire suspension employed by Marc Seguin (1786–1875) in bridge near Lyons (1825). An American, Ithiel Town (1784–1844), patented his truss bridge (1820). | 1 |
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| 1817–25 |
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| Building of the Erie Canal, the first great American civil engineering work. | 2 |
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| 1818 |
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| The Institute of Civil Engineers (London), the first professional engineering society, founded. | 3 |
| Marc Isambard Brunel (1769–1849) patented the cast iron tunnel shield; Thomas Cochrane (1830) used this shield to construct foundations on marshy ground. | 4 |
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| 1824 |
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| Joseph Aspdin (1779–1855) patented Portland cement, a hydraulic cement (impervious to water) as durable as that employed by the Romans. | 5 |
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| 1827 |
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| Gay-Lussac tower introduced in manufacture of sulfuric acid, largely replacing John Roebuck's lead-chamber process (1746). Herman Frasch (1851–1914) developed process (1891) for mining sulfur (by superheated water and pumping to the surface). | 6 |
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| 1836 |
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| Galvanized iron introduced by Sorel in France. Galvanized fencing and barbed wire (c. 1880) helped to fence off large tracts of cattle land in the American West during the latter part of the 19th century. | 7 |
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| 1839 |
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| Charles Goodyear (1800–60) vulcanized rubber. Although introduced into Europe in 1615, rubber had not been commercially successful until a solvent for the latex was found (1765); bonding of rubber to cloth to produce raincoats (macintoshes) had been developed (1824) by Charles Macintosh (1766–1843). | 8 |
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| 1855 |
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| John A. Roebling (1806–69) completed wire cable bridge at Niagara, N.Y.; Roebling utilized this same method for the Brooklyn Bridge (completed by his son, W. A. Roebling, in 1883), and it became standard construction technique for all great suspension bridges. | 9 |
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| 1856 |
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| Henry Bessemer (1813–98) perfected the technique (Bessemer process) for converting pig iron into steel by directing an air blast upon the molten metal. | 10 |
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| 1856 |
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| Mauve, first of the aniline (coal-tar) dyes, discovered by William H. Perkin (1838–1907). Beginning of the synthetic dye industry, which was to develop greatly in Germany. | 11 |
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| 1861 |
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| Ernest Solvay (1838–1922) patented the Solvay ammonia process for the manufacture of soda. | 12 |
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