LXC Engineering Group LLC

11/25/2022

Happy Belated Thanksgiving to all of our Clients and A/E Friends! Have a great day shopping and enjoy the Holiday weekend!

07/05/2022

Nikola Tesla, number 8 on the “10 Engineers Who Changed the World”, was born July 10, 1856. Though born a 170 years ago this year his name is still one we know well. A Tesla is an electric car. Just about everybody knows that.
But it is less widely known that the car was named for Nikola Tesla, an electrical engineer who was once renowned as the prototype of a genius inventor.
Nikola arrived in New York to work for Thomas Edison in 1884 hoping to convince Edison to invest in his Alternating Current (AC) motor and electrical system but unfortunately Edison was adamant about DC systems and Tesla had to wait for George Westinghouse to provide the necessary funding for his AC induction motors and devices. Unlike DC motors, Tesla’s didn’t spark or require expensive permanent magnets. The biggest advance for Tesla’s AC system was the 1896 design of the power generating system at Niagara Falls. After that entire cities were eventually able to run on AC power.
Tesla developed radio technology and tested it from 1892 through 1894. He called radio an “oscillator” through which electricity is converted into high-frequency radio waves, enabling energy, sound and other transmissions over great distances. The beginning of wireless transmissions that he envisioned transmitting across the globe.
I could literally go on for days about this engineer, who I LOVE! I highly recommend if you don’t know enough go read up, it’s worth it!

07/01/2022

"Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847 – October 18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman.[1][2][3] He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures.[4] These inventions, which include the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and early versions of the electric light bulb, have had a widespread impact on the modern industrialized world.[5] He was one of the first inventors to apply the principles of organized science and teamwork to the process of invention, working with many researchers and employees. He established the first industrial research laboratory.[6]

Edison was raised in the American Midwest; early in his career, he worked as a telegraph operator, which inspired some of his earliest inventions.[4] In 1876, he established his first laboratory facility in Menlo Park, New Jersey, where many of his early inventions were developed. He later established a botanical laboratory in Fort Myers, Florida, in collaboration with businessmen Henry Ford and Harvey S. Firestone, and a laboratory in West Orange, New Jersey, that featured the world's first film studio, the Black Maria. With 1,093 US patents in his name, as well as patents in other countries, Edison is regarded as the most prolific inventor in American history.[7] Edison married twice and fathered six children. He died in 1931 of complications of diabetes." (Wikipedia)

07/01/2022

Another Awesome female engineer was Stephanie Kwolek, an American chemical engineer who is famous for inventing Kevlar. She spent her 40 year career at DuPont, who awarded Kwolek their Lavoisier Medal for her outstanding discovery (and is still the only female to be awarded it).. She discovered poly-paraphenylene terephthalamide, the first family of synthetic fibres that had excellent stiffness and strength. Kwolek received other awards in the field of polymer chemistry, including the National Medal of Technology.

07/01/2022

Alice Parker is one of my favorite female engineers. Relatively little is known about Alice Parker’s life, not even the year she died is known for sure. She was an African American inventor who became famous for her patent for creating a central heating system that used natural gas. Using natural gas to power a heating furnace was a very futuristic idea in the 1920s, which conserved significant amounts of energy and eventually became the heating systems that are in most modern homes. Go Alice! Before Parker came up with the idea, wood and coal were used to power heating systems, which were rudimentary when compared to Parker’s design

07/01/2022

Number 6 on the list of the Top Ten Engineers ( Which yes should have been posted yesterday) is Alexander Graham Bell the inventor of the first practical telephone. Both Alexander's mother and wife were deaf. Which is what led to his eventual invention, but his true love was aeronautics. Although none of his flying inventions ever led to much he did what he did best did best he became one of the 1st accident investigators in the field of aviation where he could put his love of problem solving to use and with his findings and inputs help others successfully develop designs for planes that could carry passengers long distances.

An interesting note although he invented the phone he never allowed one in his study where he did all of his work because he considered a distraction from his true work.

06/29/2022

Nicklaus Otto is #5 on the Top Ten Engineers List. See photos for info..

06/28/2022

Charles Babbage is number 4 on our list of the Top Ten Engineers. A mechanical engineer, Babbage is known as the "Father of the Computer". Were it not for funding issues the first computer could have been built in the 1800s. Babbage's first, the Difference Engine was finally built to the tolerance and with the technology available to him in his time in 1991 and it worked!

06/28/2022

06/28/2022

In the same time period roughly as our other Industrial Revolution Engineers lived a female Engineer was born/lived- Sarah Guppy. She was the first woman to ever get a patent for a bridge in 1811. She is well known for her work on the Clifton Suspension Bridge. And her last patent was for a device that improved the process of caulking ships which helped prevent barnacles (marine creatures that were very corrosive to ships and caused the ships to "drag" or move more slowly and therefore burn more fuel and take far longer to cross the ocean). She earned a contract with the Royal Navy and was paid 40,000 pounds which is equivalent to $4.5 million dollars today. See pics on next post.

06/27/2022

More George Stephenson Pics

06/27/2022

The third engineer in our "Ten Engineers who Changed the World" is George Stephenson who is known as the "Father of the Railway" for his creation of the Stephenson Gauge, now known as the Standard Gauge, which is still used in all but 3 countries as the official track gauge (a track gauge is the distance between two rails of a railway track- in America that is 4ft 8.5 inches, every where else 1435mm). It is an interesting note that the width of the gauge is the same as a horses ass- no joke- because originally horses were our main source of transportation and many things were measured by them (remember yesterdays horsepower?)