Invention Timeline - David Stanhope Bates, American Engineer; Designed and Superintended the First Aqueduct at Rochester
b. June 10, 1777 and d. November 24, 1839
American engineer. In 1818-1824 he was an engineer of the Erie Canal; the first aqueduct at Rochester was designed and superintended by him; 1825-1829 he was engineer of the canal system of Ohio and chief engineer of the Louisville and Portland Canal; in 1829 he was chief engineer of the surveys and location of the Chenango Canal from Utica to Binghamton; in 1830 was commissioned to survey the Genesee Valley Canal and in 1834 made surveys for the Erie and Kalamazoo Railroad in Michigan.
Things of the noblest kind his genius drew,
And look’d through nature at a single view;
A loose he gave to his unbounded soul,
And taught new lands to rise, new seas to roll;
Call’d into being scenes unknown before,
And, passing nature’s bounds, was something more.
—Rosciad: Churchill
Suppose they did construct substantial works of
masonry. The Cloaca maxima attests it. But what,
think you, would a Roman engineer have said of
putting a seven-mile bore, entirely through an
Alpine barrier of solid rock, and of taking Pompey’s
legions through it beneath the avalanche, from
flank to flank, as quick as he could swallow a
dish of Lucrine oysters?
1808, February 4—Canals first acted upon in New York.
1817—Construction of Erie Canal was begun.
