American mechanical engineer, born in Providence, RI, on the 25th of October 1839, and upon his graduation at the scientific school of Brown University in 1859, entered his father’s shops, taking up mechanical-engineering as a profession. He served in the navy during the Civil War, and participated in the attacks upon Port Royal and Charleston. In 1865 he became assistant professor of experimental philosophy at the Annapolis Naval Academy, and in 1870 visited Europe. After being at Annapolis six years, he accepted the position of professor of engineering in Stevens Institute of Technology, and finally, in 1885, took charge of the Sibley College at Cornell, which he entirely reorganized and improved until it became one of the best schools of engineering in America. He organized, in 1872, what was probably the first mechanical laboratory for research in engineering that was ever founded, and was constantly employed in the investigation of problems of practical importance. He was on the United States commission to investigate the cause of boiler-explosions (1875); on the commission to test iron, steel and other metals (1875–78), the board to report on the best construction of the iron-clad Puritan, and the commission on safe and bank-vault construction (1891). His investigations while on the commission of 1875–78 of the laws of friction, and of properties of the alloys of copper, tin and zinc, which resulted in the determination, by a new and ingenious method, of the relative value of all combinations of those elements, were strikingly original. Mr. Thurston was made a member of nearly all the national civil-engineering societies, and was first president of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, besides being a member of numerous scientific societies and associations. Among his published works are History of the Steam-Engine (1878); Friction and Lost Work; Materials of Engineering (1882–86); Materials of Construction (1885); A Manual of Steam-Boilers (1888); Manual of the Steam-Engine (1890–91); a translation of Carnot’s Réflexions sur la Puissance Motrice du Feu; contributed the third volume to and edited the reports of the United States Science Commission to the Vienna International Exhibition (1874–75). He contributed the articles on Strength of Materials; Marine Engines; and Locomotives, in the New American Supplement to the Latest Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica.
