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Born in Oakland, California at the end of Reconstruction, Lillie Moller was one of the first women engineers to earn a doctorate. She entered the first grade at age nine, and in less than ten years graduated high school. Although her father didn’t approve of a young woman going to college, he finally allowed her

The morning of April 2, 2021 brought devastating news for luxury brand Valentino: a fire had ravaged one of their shoe plants. Thankfully, no lives were lost. However, the structure and contents of the building were not so lucky. With 90% destruction, Valentino Shoes Labs was nearly a complete loss, including over 38,000 pairs of

Sending a working rover to Mars is a remarkable feat.  Keeping the rover working longer than expected is even more remarkable.  When the rover, Curiosity, landed on Mars on August 6th, 2012, the mission was planned to last 90 sols (Martian days), equivalent to approximately 92.73 Earth days. To this day, Curiosity has been in

Note-taking apps on smartphones have made capturing ideas as easy as speaking them into the air. But for engineers, nothing beats putting pen to paper and sketching them out by hand. One day in 1980, Burt and Dick Rutan imagined an airplane that could make it around the world and never stop for fuel. By

You are strapped into your seat, the roller coaster cart slowly crawling forward when you see a hill approaching up ahead. You start to get nervously excited as the cart ascends, knowing that you will shortly be subjected to massive amounts of force and speed. Once the cart reaches the top, you take a quick

From the dawn of time, society has continuously looked for ways to improve the efficiency of how we complete tasks. While our own hands can be incredible tools, we can benefit from the use of additional machines. An example of this can be seen in the task of mixing—evenly blending large batches of ingredients is

We were asked to design, build, and install a two-part gas-to-liquid catalyst dispensing system in 2008. We created, set up, and tested it entirely at the CPS factory in Missouri, before packing and shipping it to Ras Laffan, Qatar. A country with fewer residents than expatriates, the State of Qatar sits on the western shore

As the 3D craze hit movies like The Creature from the Black Lagoon and Hitchcock’s Dial M for Murder, inventors Alfred Fielding and Marc Chavannes were banking on all of us living in homes with 3D wallpaper. Their company, Sealed Air Corporation, was formed to make a wall covering made of two sheets of plastic

Humans have been seeking cures for their ailments since the dawn of time. Plant-based treatments can be tracked all the way back to the 28th century BC, when the legendary emperor of China, Shennong, is said to have written an herbal compendium—a catalog listing 365 different plant species that he believed could be used for

Sarah Guppy was paid £40,000 by the British Government for a way to keep barnacles off boats. That’s about $4.5 million today. In 1811, she created a way to make safe piling for bridges. This important invention was employed right away by a Scottish civil engineer. This time, Guppy refused money for her creation. She

The Incas developed an accounting system, brain surgery, and freeze drying.  They were also brilliant metalsmiths, and are likely the source of a technique still used today:  Powder Metallurgy. As it has evolved over the years, it has produced unique materials like tungsten carbide, and reduced the need to use metal removal processes. It began

Roughly, 12,500 years ago near present day Tucson, a small group used their collective talents and brought down a mastodon. Their efforts were rewarded with a feast that would last for weeks. With that, the premous of the mass food industry was born. The Start of Feeding in Mass At its most basic, the food

In the countryside of Connecticut lies a property called Pepperidge Farm, the place where Margaret Rudkin founded her now nationally-known bakery brand of the same name. What began as a mother experimenting with baking healthful bread at home for her family has become a company which sells over $2 billion worth of bread, cookies, snacks,

Just when you think you’ve seen it all, something new comes along.  One that made our Denise McIntosh say, “What is that?  That’s the strangest looking machine I’ve ever seen!” It’s another innovation from the smart minds in our engineering department. The challenge they encountered was a customer who needed to get product from one room

If you’ve ever tugged a knotted rope with a puppy, you can be sure that you’ll get tired long before the puppy. And the puppy already knows it. In the article “Embrace the Grind” by Jacob Kaplan-Moss, he goes into the detail (and determination) involved in pulling off a magic trick. Magic and good engineering have