Childhood, Early Experience
Born in Springfield Township, Delaware County, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia, to a family with Quaker roots that had arrived in the colonial era. His father John Thomson was a leading civil engineer, who helped build the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, and the first experimental railroad in the United States. The son had little formal schooling, worked closely with his father from an early age, acquiring a sound foundation of engineering practice which he augmented by reading, observation, and experience. He began his railroad career at age 19 as a rodman working in a survey crew locating the Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad and later worked for Camden and Amboy Railroad. He made an inspection tour of the new railways of Britain in 1832. Through his father's influence he became a member of the state's engineer corps surveying routes for a rail line west from Philadelphia. He was soon made assistant engineer, and in 1830, when the line of the Camden & Amboy Railroad was located across the state of New Jersey, Thomson was placed in charge of an engineering division.
Read more about this topic: John Edgar Thomson
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or experience:
““Never hug and kiss your children! Mother love may make your children’s infancy unhappy and prevent them from pursuing a career or getting married!” That’s total hogwash, of course. But it shows on extreme example of what state-of-the-art “scientific” parenting was supposed to be in early twentieth-century America. After all, that was the heyday of efficiency experts, time-and-motion studies, and the like.”
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