Biography & Autobiography / Science & Technology

A Deeper Understanding of the Work and Character of the Great Eighteenth-Century Engineer

Combining biographical and institutional history, Thomas C. Lassman examines the professional career of theoretical physicist Edward Condon at Princeton University, Pittsburgh’s Westinghouse Electric Company and Manufacturing Company, and the National Bureau of Standards to illuminate contested visions of the usefulness of science that played out during The Great Depression, the Second World War, and the early Cold War.

The inspiring story of a man whose avocation as a stargazer and vocation as a millwright led to his development of lenses, mirrors and other astronomical apparatus. John A. Brashear’s technological advances were later employed by astronomers in the United States and Europe. Brashear also attracted the friendship and financial support of astronomer Samuel Lagley, railroad magnate William Thaw, Henry Clay Frick, and Andrew Carnegie, who gave him $20,000 for the construction of Allegheny Observatory in Pittsburgh.