Ohio River steamboat boiler explosion

First federal research contract (1830s), Franklin Institute grant; used to extend the "codes follow disasters" arc backward in time.

It turns out the first research contract ever given by the federal government was in the 1830s, because a steam boiler on one of the steamboats on the Ohio River blew up and killed a hundred people or so. Congress gave a grant to the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia to try to figure out why the boilers were blowing up. They still blow up — not as often, but sometimes the consequences are more catastrophic than they used to be.

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First federal research contract (Franklin Institute, 1830s) — origin point for engineering codes. Used to mark the historical transition from heuristic "make it a little smaller each time until it fails" practice to written design rules.

I want to get into some of the engineering codes now, as opposed to Hammurabi's code and the Hippocratic Oath and Magna Carta. A lot of the codes we have go back to the beginnings of the industrial revolution. The first research contract ever given by the federal government was given in the 1830s. It was given to the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to figure out why steamships on the Ohio River were every now and then blowing up, exploding, and killing a bunch of people. Congress wasn't happy, so they gave some money to the Franklin Institute to study why these things were blowing up.