Lincoln Bush was an American civil engineer. He is remembered as an inventor known for his work with railroads.
Background
Lincoln Bush was born on December 14, 1860 in a log cabin on a pioneer farm in Palos Township, Cook County, Illinois. His parents, Lewis and Mary (Ritchey) Bush, had moved to Illinois from Vermont and Ohio, respectively. With his birth occurring only a few weeks after the election of 1860, they named him Abraham Lincoln Bush, but he later dropped the Abraham, explaining with characteristic modesty that he felt unable to live up to the implications of such a great name.
Education
Expecting to become a teacher, young Bush studied in the Cook County Normal School (the teachers' training school for Chicago), from which he graduated about 1880. After several years of teaching in the public schools, however, he decided upon engineering as a career and enrolled in the University of Illinois at Urbana, receiving the B. S. degree in civil engineering in 1888. Sixteen years later the university rewarded his engineering achievements with an honorary engineering doctorate.
Career
Bush's early experience was on railroad and structural engineering in the West. It included several years with the Wyoming Division of the Union Pacific and with the Pacific Short Line Railroad in Wyoming and Utah, a year in the bridge engineering office of Morison and Corthell in Chicago, five years as chief draftsman and office engineer in the Chicago office of the Pittsburgh Bridge Company, three years on masonry design for the bridges of the Chicago Sanitary District, and a period as assistant bridge engineer and acting division engineer for the Chicago and North Western Railway Company.
In January 1900 Bush went east to join the headquarters staff of the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad Company at Hoboken, New Jersey, as bridge engineer. The railroad was just entering what proved to be an era of tremendous expansion, and in his nine years of service with it Bush directed an extensive program of building new structures and improving line, shop, and terminal facilities.
For six years he was chief engineer. He resigned in 1909 to establish a consulting engineering practice in New York City, specializing in railroad and bridge work. As member and chief engineer of several large construction contracting companies, Bush also became prominent in the building field.
He was vice-president and chief engineer of the F. M. Talbot Company, contractors, 1910-17; president and chief engineer of the Talbot Construction Company, 1911-13; president, chief engineer, and treasurer of Flickwir and Bush, Inc. , 1912-16; and president of the Bush, Roberts and Schaefer Company, 1920-25.
During his connection with Flickwir and Bush he was instrumental in the building of the famous Tunkhannock Viaduct for the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western. This massive double-track structure, rising 240 feet above the bed of Tunkhannock Creek near Scranton, Pennsylvania, and consisting of ten 180-foot and two 100-foot concrete masonry arches, was one of the outstanding masonry bridge structures built up to that time.
During World War I, as a lieutenant colonel in the construction division of the army Quartermaster Corps, Bush served as executive engineering officer in charge of the design and plans for the operation of seven terminal ports, fourteen interior warehouses, three arsenals, and various miscellaneous projects.
Despite the claims of his career, Bush found time for numerous inventions. Among these were the Bush train shed (1904), widely used here and abroad, a low-roofed, open-sided shed with cast-iron columns and a roof of reinforced concrete slabs on a wrought steel framework, more economical and admitting more light than conventional train sheds; and Bush track construction (1908), a method of laying tracks in subways, tunnels, etc. , consisting of a concrete bed with recesses or pockets for wooden blocks to which the rails are attached by clips and screw spikes.
Bush died of the infirmities of old age, four days before his eightieth birthday, in East Orange, New Jersey, where he had made his home for many years.
(Lot of historic pictures and interesting information.)
Religion
Bush contributed technical papers to the journals of the professional societies in which he was active--principally the American Society of Civil Engineers and the American Railway Engineering Association.
Membership
Lincoln Bush was a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers and of the American Railway Engineering Association. He was also a member and President of the Engineers' Club while in the University of Illinois. he also served as a member in the following organizations: the University of Illinois Alumni Association of New York, the American Society of Civil Engineers, the Western Society of Engineers, and the American Railway Engineering Association.
Connections
On October 17, 1890, Bush married Alma Rosetta Greene of Colfax, Illinois. They had two sons, Cedric Lincoln and Denzil Sidney.