The Brooklyn Bridge, the transcontinental railroad, the Panama Canal -- the Victorian and Gilded Age engineers who built the modern world were celebrated in spectacular technical illustrations, engravings, and photographs that are now among the most visually striking public domain images in existence.
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The Collection
Between 1869 and 1901, a generation of engineers transformed the physical world at a scale never seen before. The golden spike driven at Promontory Summit. The caissons sunk beneath the East River for Roebling's bridge. The locks and cuts of De Lesseps's Panama Canal. Each project was documented by the finest illustrators and photographers of the day, their work published in Harper's Weekly, Scientific American, and the great technical journals of the era.
This collection gathers the most striking of those images: cross-section drawings that reveal engineering hidden from view, dramatic perspectives that capture scale and ambition, portraits of the great builders, and photographs of the moment when the impossible became real.
Collection Highlights
Brooklyn Bridge
Construction photographs and Roebling's original cross-section drawings
Transcontinental Railroad
The golden spike ceremony and the great tunnels through the Sierra Nevada
The Iron Bridge Makers
Victorian railway viaducts, iron bridges, and the engineers who designed them
Steam and Industry
Corliss engines, ironworks, and the machinery that powered the age
The Great Canals
Suez, Panama, and the engineering triumphs that connected the world's oceans
The Builders
Portraits of Brunel, Roebling, Eiffel, and the engineers of the age