This 1944 cover image is one of the first photos to be published of a Bailey Bridge, a piece of equipment that proved invaluable to the Allies in World War II, and has since gone into wide use globally.
With German forces having heavily fortified the French coast and every French port by the middle of 1944 during World War II, the Allies faced the difficult problem of how to unload all the troops, weapons, ammunition, fuel and other supplies on the Normandy beachheads.
One of the most notable reporting trips by an ENR editor took place in 1962 when ENR Editor-in-Chief Waldo G. Bowman attended the 29th Executive Meeting of the International Commission on Large Dams—held in Moscow—as a member of the U.S. delegation.
During the 1950s and 60s, engineers and scientists sought ways to use nuclear weapons for major construction projects such as harbors, roads and even alternative routes for the Panama Canal.
Forensic engineering has come a long way since Wiss Janney Elstner Associates was featured on the cover of ENR in 1972. For its 150th anniversary, ENR looks back at how problem-solving and investigations by that forensics firm and others have better informed the engineering knowledge base.
A 1972 ENR cover story said of Wiss Janney Elstner Associates in Northbrook, Ill., “It exists largely by looking for trouble, both before and after the fact of structural distress and failure.”
The Center for Oral History at Columbia University, founded in 1948, is an archive of thousands of recordings of interviews with a wide range of public figures.