Essays on the History of Transportation and Technology

Emory Kemp is the founder and director of the Institute for the History of Technology and Industrial Archaeology at West Virginia University, where he also served as a chair and professor of civil engineering and a professor of history. This collection of essays encompasses over fifty years of his research in the field of the history of technology.

Within these twelve essays, Kemp describes and analyzes nineteenth century improvements in building materials such as iron, steel, and cement; roads and bridges, especially the evolution of the suspension bridge; canals and navigable rivers, including the Ohio River and its tributaries; and water supply systems. As one of the few practicing American engineers who also researches and writes as an academic, Kemp adds an important historical context to his work by focusing not only on the construction of a structure but also on the analytical science that heralds a structure’s design and development.

Emory Kemp has been a practicing engineer for more than half a century, as both a chartered civil engineer and structural engineer in Great Britain, and elected a distinguished engineer in the American Society of Civil Engineers. He is the founder and director of the Institute for the History of Technology and Industrial Archaeology at West Virginia University, where he was also chair and professor of civil engineering in the College of Engineering, and a professor of history in the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences. He has served as president of the Public Works Historical Society, is a codirector of the Smithsonian Institution/West Virginia University Joint Project for the History of Technology, and has presented numerous papers and published many articles on industrial archeology, engineering, the history of technology, structural mechanics, and public works in journals such as the Journal of the Society for Industrial Archaeology, Public Historian, Essays in Public Works History, Public Works Magazine, and Canal History and Technology Proceedings. He lives in Morgantown, WV.