Charles Ellet, Jr.
| Charles Ellet Jr. | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born |
January 1, 1810 Bucks County, Pennsylvania |
| Died | June 21, 1862 (aged 52) Battle of Memphis |
| Occupation | Engineer |
| Known for | Championing suspension bridges and other engineering endeavors in United States |
Charles Ellet Jr. (1 January 1810 – 21 June 1862) was a civil engineer and a colonel during the American Civil War, mortally wounded at the Battle of Memphis.
Ellet was born in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, son of Charles Ellet Sr. and Mary Israel, and brother of Alfred W. Ellet, also a civil engineer and a brigadier general in the Union Army during the war.
He worked as a rodman, measuring for the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, making drawings. Benjamin Wright promoted him to Assistant Engineer of the Fifth Residency, but in 1830, he resigned to continue his studies in Paris.
Charles studied civil engineering at École nationale des Ponts et Chaussées in Paris, France, and in 1832 submitted proposals for a suspension bridge across the Potomac River. In 1842, he designed and built the first major wire-cable suspension bridge in the United States, spanning 358 feet over the Schuylkill River at Fairmount, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He designed the record-breaking Wheeling suspension bridge over the Ohio River at Wheeling, West Virginia in 1848, and a 770-foot suspension footbridge at Niagara Falls at the same time.
His other civil engineering accomplishments include supervising both the James River and Kanawha Canal in Virginia and the Schuylkill Navigation improvements in Pennsylvania (1846–47), and also constructing railroads in those states. Ellet developed theories for improving flood control and navigation of mid-western rivers. In 1849 he had advocated the use of reservoirs, built in the upper reaches of drainage basins, to retain water from the wet season that could be released during periods of low water to improve navigation; to some degree this also would tend to lessen the level of flooding during high flow. In 1850, the Secretary of War, conforming to an Act of Congress, directed Ellet to make surveys and reports on the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers with a view to the preparation of adequate plans for flood prevention and navigation improvement. His report was very complete, and it exercised considerable influence on later engineering thought and navigation improvements.
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