Background
Asa Billings was born on February 8, 1876, in Omaha, Nebraska, United States, the son of Albert Stearns Billings and Abbie (Park) Billings, both natives of New England.
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Asa White Kenney Billings
Edit ProfileEducation
By 1887, when Asa was eleven, alternating-current generators had begun to make long-distance power transmission feasible, trolley cars were appearing, and to an avid reader like young Billings, the electric light must have been a dazzling symbol of a new frontier. When he entered Omaha high school that year, he was already set on being an electrical engineer. At fifteen he entered Harvard as a physics major; and though the youngest member of the class of 1895, he tied for first place at graduation, going on to receive his master's degree in 1896.
Career
While at the university Billings had worked for electrical companies, and in his spare time he had learned Spanish. This background enabled him to get a job in street railway and steam power plant construction in Pittsburgh and then, in 1899, an assignment to electrify a streetcar system in Havana. He continued in Cuban electric transit and steam power construction until 1909, when he joined a New York engineering firm. In 1911, F. S. Pearson, a leading New York consulting engineer and entrepreneur of power projects, persuaded him to supervise a Texas irrigation project requiring a massive concrete dam. His careful study of the composition and mixing of concrete for this project served him well then and thereafter. In 1912 he took charge of another of Pearson's far-flung projects, Talarn Dam in Spain. When it was finished in 1916, it was the highest dam in Europe.
By then Billings had drawn plans for a still higher one, Camarasa Dam, also in Spain. In 1917 he joined the U. S. Navy Corps of Civil Engineers, building airplane and dirigible bases in Europe and rising to the rank of commander. After the war he served as consultant on Camarasa Dam until its completion in 1920.
Pearson died in 1915 aboard the Lusitania, but Billings remained associated with Pearson's congeries of Spanish, Mexican, and Brazilian power companies. In 1921 he became construction manager of a Canadian company that served the group in design and purchasing. After getting a Mexican power project under way, he investigated a Brazilian enterprise, the largest electric company in Brazil, operated by a Canadian corporation, named the Brazilian Traction, Light and Power Company, and known to Brazilians as "The Light. " There, in 1922, he found the opportunity that absorbed the remaining quarter-century of his career as a pioneer in hydroelectricity. Brazil, though poor in coal and oil, was the world's fourth-richest nation in potential hydroelectric power. Along 1, 300 miles of coast from the southern border to Espiritu Santo, an escarpment called the Serra do Mar rises 1, 000 to 2, 500 feet from a tropical shore to a temperate, healthy, fertile plateau, well-suited for cattle and grain.
The nineteenth-century coffee boom and a railroad to the port of Santos had turned the plateau town of Paulo into a fast-growing city. Lack of power hampered Paulo's manufacturing development. But the advent of hydroelectricity had already suggested to more than one engineer that the Serra do Mar might be a bulwark as well as a barrier, that inland-flowing rivers, rising near its edge and fed by extraordinarily heavy rainfall, might be diverted to flow over it and generate enormous power. Billings' first Brazilian triumphs demonstrated the engineering courage and resourcefulness needed for such a project. Ninety miles north of power-starved Rio de Janeiro, at Ilho dos Pombos, F. S. Hyde, a company reconnaissance engineer, had discerned a promising site for a "run-of-river" power plant (i. e. , one without a storage reservoir). Billings revitalized the stalled project in 1922, meeting the government's insistence on a minimum downstream flow with three of the largest concrete sector gates ever built. Ilho dos Pombos power began lighting Rio in 1924. In that year, Billings became vice-president of The Light.
Hyde had also proposed diverting water from the inland-flowing Rio Grande to a reservoir that would supply water for a drop of 2, 350 feet from the crest of the Serra, near Sao Paulo. Sophisticated in the ways of financiers and governments, Billings at first hesitated. Then he committed himself to the project. He won over officials by pointing out the dividends of flood control that would open new land for Sao Paulo's expansion, and especially of cheaper transport through a canal, locks, and inclined rails. Undeterred by a local revolutionary outbreak and a drought, Billings brought the first two generators into operation in 1927 and then began creating the largest artificial lake in South America. The worldwide depression stopped work from 1931 to 1934, but the Serra project was completed in 1937. Billings at once began a project to divert flow from a second large reservoir into the Serra system. During the 1930's and 1940's he also significantly enlarged the capacity of the Rio de Janeiro system, but he regarded the Serra development as his crowning achievement.
With notable success, he organized antimalaria studies and programs. Hoping to anticipate long-range trends in rainfall, he initiated and directed hydrological and meteorological studies of the region. Meanwhile, during the 1930's, Billings contended with Brazilian governmental hostility toward foreign utility companies, dramatized by the Water Act of 1934, which prohibited further power concessions to the foreign companies and limited their profits so much as to dry up investment. After a six-year campaign, pleading his cause before organizations and officials as being that not only of The Light but also of Brazil, Billings obtained modifications that, with some engineering ingenuity, permitted expansion of existing projects. Billings and his wife planned to settle in La Jolla, California, but he died there of a heart attack in a hotel room a few weeks after arriving. He was buried in New York City. His work had been vital in advancing S030 Paulo's role as the largest city and leading industrial center of Brazil.
Achievements
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Asa Billings was a pioneer of the electrification of Brazil. During his career, Billings added half a million kilowatts to Brazil's power supply, more than a third of the total; and projects that he had under way or planned in 1946 eventually added another million. He is best remembered today for the Represa Billings (Billings Reservoir), the largest urban reservoir in São Paulo, Brazil. In 1946 Billings was awarded the National Order of the Southern Cross, Brazil's highest civilian decoration. For his work on Camarasa Dam in Spain, he received the U. S. Distinguished Service Cross and was made a chevalier of the French Legion of Honor.
Membership
Asa Billings was an honorary member of the American Society of Civil Engineers.
Personality
Billings was a friendly, modest man whose full, clean-shaven face conveyed both good humor and quiet forcefulness. This aspect, along with his capacity for details and sustained work (often seven days a week), won the respect and liking of employees, although he asked much of them.
Connections
Billings married Edna Peabody in New York City on December 17, 1900, and their son Asa White Kenney Billings, Jr. was born on September 20, 1901. Later in life he was married to Josephine J. Billings. They had two children, Mary Warner and John J.
