Samuel Diescher

Samuel Diescher (June 25, 1839 – December 24, 1915) was a prominent civil and mechanical engineer.

Samuel Diescher
Born(1839-06-25)June 25, 1839
Budapest, Hungary
DiedDecember 24, 1915(1915-12-24) (aged 76)
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Resting placeAllegheny Cemetery
OccupationCivil and mechanical engineer
Years active1866-1908
Known forInclines, machinery for the Ferris wheel
Spouse(s)
​
(m. 1872)​

Biography

Born in Budapest, Diescher was educated at Karlsruhe Polytechnique and the University of Zurich.[1] Emigrating to the United States in 1866, he settled in Cincinnati, where he built his first inclined plane. He came to Pittsburgh and was associated with John Endres, the builder of the Monongahela Incline. In 1872, he married Endres's daughter, Caroline Endres, at the St. Paul German Evangelical Church in Cincinnati, Ohio.[2] She was one of the first female engineers in the United States.[3] Thereafter, the Dieschers made their home on Mount Washington. His sons entered into partnership with him in 1901, under the name of Samuel Diescher & Sons.

Diescher designed water works, industrial buildings and plants, coal handling equipment, furnaces for the steel industry, and miscellaneous machinery for tasks ranging from soap making to steel fabrication to sugar beet processing. He also designed the majority of inclined planes in the United States, including numerous inclines in Pittsburgh and southwestern Pennsylvania. The most notable of these is the Duquesne Incline which has become a popular tourist attraction in the city of Pittsburgh. Other works attributed to him include the Castle Shannon Incline, the Castle Shannon South Incline, Penn Incline, Fort Pitt Incline, Troy Hill Incline (more probably designed by Gustav Lindenthal[4]), Nunnery Hill Incline, Clifton Incline, Ridgewood Incline (alternatively credited to J. Ford Mackenzie[5]) and the Johnstown Inclined Plane; as well as inclines in Wheeling, WV, Cleveland, OH, Duluth, MN, Orange, NJ, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, and Girardot and Camboa, Colombia. He was the chief engineer for the Pittsburgh and Castle Shannon Railroad.[6][7]

He also designed the machinery for the famous Ferris wheel at the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago, and an energy generating plant for the U. S. Wave Power Company in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

He was active in highway engineering and street-railway construction, and he was well known for designing and building coal-washing plants, coke works, water works, machine shops, and rolling mills. He retired in 1908 and died on December 24, 1915.

References
  1. "Samuel Diescher Obituary". Proceedings of the Engineers' Society of Western Pennsylvania. Pittsburgh. 31: 932. 1915.
  2. "Marriages 1808-1884: Grooms Abbreviated Index" (PDF). Hamilton County Genealogical Society. 23 October 2013. p. 55.
  3. Treese, Lorett (2003). Railroads of Pennsylvania: Fragments of the Past in the Keystone Landscape. Stackpole Books. p. 237. ISBN 978-0-8117-2622-1.
  4. Jones, Diana Nelson (10 August 2015). "Research changes information on Troy Hill incline". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Retrieved 11 August 2015.
  5. "A Passenger Incline Railroad". Railroad Gazette. 18 (53): 912. 31 December 1886.
  6. Annual Report. Pennsylvania Department of Internal Affairs. 30 June 1892. p. 369.
  7. Fox, Arthur B. (1 June 1997). "The Incline Builders: Forgotten engineers of Pittsburgh". Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.
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