Since the dawn of time, people have sailed the seas. The industrial revolution gave birth to an era of great steamships which united the continents and created movable monuments to luxury and gentility.

The French began construction on the Panama Canal in 1880, but abandoned the project after nine years and a loss of 20,000 lives. The United States took over the project and completed it on January 7, 1914. This historical account of its construction examines the ingenuity and enterprise that went into making it one of the 20th-century's engineering wonders

On a somber day in Gettysburg, Abraham Lincoln ended his famous address with a promise that the war-torn nation would someday be reborn. At the time of Lincoln's speech, the greatest symbol of that rebirth had already begun. Hailed as an engineering feat to rival the Egyptian pyramids, the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad was an engineering marvel as well as a technological nightmare. In the 1860s, the Union Pacific began laying tracks...

Explains how air, water, earth, and fire are transformed into clean, reliable sources of heat, electricity, and even automobile fuel. Looks at a solar roof implementation by FedEx at a regional sort facility in Oakland, Calif., a wind power project in central New York using fewer, larger turbines, and the widespread use of geothermal energy in Iceland. Visits Lovecraft Biofuels in Los Angeles, an auto repair shop that converts diesel car and truck...