SMITH, Charles Shaler,
engineer, born in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, 16 January, 1836; died in St. Louis,
Missouri, 19 December, 1886. He attended a private school in Pitts-burg, but at
the age of sixteen entered on the study of his profession by securing an
appointment as rodman on the Mine Hill and Schuylkill Haven railroad.
After various services he became in 1856 engineer in charge
of the Tennessee division of the Louisville and Nashville railroad. Subsequently
he became chief engineer of bridges and buildings of the Wilmington, Charlotte,
and Rutherford railroad in North Carolina, where he remained until the beginning
of the civil war.
He then entered the Confederate army as captain of
engineers, and continued so until 1865, during which time, as chief engineer of
government works in the Augusta district, he constructed the Confederate states
powder-works, with a daily capacity of 17,000 pounds of powder, and one of the
largest that had then been built. Mr. Smith continued in the south as engineer
of bridges, and constructed the Catawba and Congaree bridges on the Charlotte
and South Carolina railroad.
In 1866, with Benjamin H. Latrobe, he organized the
engineering firm of Smith, Latrobe and Co., which in 1869 became the Baltimore
bridge company, with Mr. Smith as president and chief engineer. This company
continued in business until 1877, and did a large amount of work.
He removed to St. Charles, Missouri, in 1868, to take
charge of the railroad bridge then just begun across Missouri river, and in 1871
he went to St. Louis, where he remained until the end of his life, mainly
occupied as a consulting engineer. His name will ever be connected with the
great bridges that were built under his supervision. They are hundreds in number
and include four over the Mississippi, one over the Missouri, and one over the
St. Lawrence.
His most important work was the practical demonstration of
the uses and value of the cantilever, beginning in 1869 with the 300-foot
draw-span over Salt river on the line of the Elizabeth and Paducah railroad, and
including the Kentucky river bridge on the Cincinnati Southern railroad, that
over the Mississippi near St. Paul, and finally his last great bridge across the
St. Lawrence river a short distance above the Lachine rapids.
Mr. Smith was elected a member of the American society of
civil engineers in 1873, and was a director of that organization in 1877-'8. His
publications are confined to a few professional papers, notably "A Comparative
Analysis of the Fink, Murphy, Bollman, and Triangular Trusses" (1865)"
"Proportions of Eyebars, Heads, and Pins as determined by Experiment" (1877);
and "Wind-Pressure upon Bridges " (1880).
