Blog Posts by Subject: Engineering

In celebration of its anniversary, a current case exhibit on the third floor of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts highlights materials related to 9 Evenings.

He registered nearly 60 patents—ranging from the development of the telephone to the multiplex telegraph.

There are 2,000 images from the Science, Industry and Business collection in the recent public domain release. Here is some of what you can find.

Beach Pneumatic Transit Company built 312 feet of tunnel under Broadway from Warren Street to Murray Street. It closed in 1873 and the tunnel was used for a while as a shooting gallery, but even that did not pay, and for years the tunnel was neglected and the entrance was closed by an iron grating. Read more about the subway that could have been.

Looking for an encyclopedia of bugs you can get at home, or an idea for a chemistry experiment for a middle-schooler, or a citation to a research article in astrophysics or news of the latest trends in biotechnology? You can find most of this and more right at your local branch of The New York Public Library, or sometimes even at home.

Scientifically minded kids have some great new nonfiction titles to choose from when they’re looking for a summer read.

Genetic concepts and terminology can readily be found in today’s headlines and conversation. These phrases and concepts are often used interchangeably, but have distinctive meanings and emphasis.

"Everybody in New York wants rapid transit, but, strange to say, the moment that anybody sets to work with a definite plan for its realization, they are vigorously opposed and the work prevented." Looking at some of the early proposed (and sometimes partially built) railways for New York City for which the Science, Industry and Business Library has visual materials.

Founded in 1987 with the Bnai Zion Foundation, a non-profit, non partisan organization dedicated to assisting those in need both in America and in Israel, The Cooper Union's Immigrant Retraining Program offers approximately 20 introductory and high technology courses designed to help immigrant engineers learn computer and business skills necessary to secure professional employment in the United States.

Books for kids and teens that tie into STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) are all the rage nowadays. Here is a list of books for kids and teens that are related to those subjects but which you’ll find in some unexpected areas of the library -- fiction, graphic novels, and poetry!

Is there anybody out there who does not like trains? OK, perhaps more than a few people are fed up with their daily commute. Also, trains do sometimes fail us. It was very unfortunate that during the March Snowstorm of 1888 about seventy-five miles of the Long Island Railroad system was blockaded by the snow and that the street railroad system of Brooklyn became useless.

The NYS STEM Incentive Program provides a full SUNY or CUNY tuition scholarship for the top 10 percent of students in each New York State high school if they pursue a STEM degree in an associates or bachelor degree program and agree to work in a STEM field in New York State for 5 years after graduation.

The New York Public Library offers a tremendous amount of material in e-format. We have been purchasing e-books for years including e-text, e-audio, e-music, and e-video. E-books include both fiction and non-fiction. Among the latter is Christian Wolmar's The Great Railroad Revolution.

Gustave Eiffel who was born 15 December 1832 in Dijon, Côte-d'Or, France was much more than “just” the creator of the Eiffel Tower. A man of many passions and accomplishments, Eiffel attended high school at Lycee Royal where he studied engineering, history and literature. He graduated with a degree in both science and humanities. He first studied at the École Polytechnique but later transferred to the École Centrale des Arts et Manufactures in Paris, graduating in 1855 with a diploma in …chemistry. He was interested in construction from an early age and a couple of years after 

First they invented the automobile. Then... marketing: How are we going to sell these things?

One marketing tool was the catalog. And that gives a good opening to briefly talk about NYPL's extensive collection of historical automobile catalogs, which can be found at SIBL.

First, let me mention two existing resources on the NYPL website for automobile catalogs:

From the Digital Gallery:

As President Obama is leading our nation in an education reform to Race to the Top and Educate to Innovate, Mayor Bloomberg of the Big Apple is following suit in raising the education standards of K-12 school students by implementing more effective teaching and learning programs. Fortifying STEM education with a focus on the knowledge and skills for the jobs of the future is also an important aspect on the agenda of Bloomberg's 

Art can be found in many places: on the walls at home, in museums and galleries. We walk through New York City and cities around the world looking at buildings, parks and street life, rarely looking down. But there is also art underfoot! Take a look at manhole covers. Manhole covers have intricate designs and other uses. Manhole covers may be a lost forgotten art.

Manhole covers protect people from falling down below, but manholes serve as a vital passageway to subterranean conduits for water pipes, telephone communications, electrical power and other 

The U.S. Department of Commerce Economics and Statistics Administration recently released a report, STEM: Good Jobs Now and for the Future (PDF), that profiles U.S. employment in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields.

This report is based on analysis to date from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey and Current 

Extraction:  ... 3. a. The action or process of obtaining (the constituent elements, juices, etc.) from any substance by heat, pressure, etc. (Oxford English Dictionary - available online with a NYPL library card.)

Under the Surface: Fracking, Fortunes and the Fate of the Marcellus Shale, by Tom