Daniel Webster Mead (March 6, 1862 – October 13, 1948) was an American engineering consultant and professor at the

University of Wisconsin-Madison A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, the ...

. He is remembered for designing

hydroelectric Hydroelectricity, or hydroelectric power, is electricity generated from hydropower (water power). Hydropower supplies one sixth of the world's electricity, almost 4500 TWh in 2020, which is more than all other renewable sources combined and ...

plants and writing early textbooks on hydraulic engineering and engineering ethics.

Life and career

Mead was born in

Fulton, Oswego County, New York :''There is also a Fulton, Schoharie County, New York, Town of Fulton in Schoharie County, New York, Schoharie County, and a Fulton County, New York, Fulton County in New York.'' Fulton is a Administrative divisions of New York#City, city in the ...

in 1862 and grew up in

Rockford, Illinois Rockford is a city in Winnebago County, Illinois, located in the far northern part of the state. Situated on the banks of the Rock River, Rockford is the county seat of Winnebago County (a small portion of the city is located in Ogle County). ...

. He established the consulting firm Mead and Seastone in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

in 1900. In 1904, Mead was made head of the Department of Hydraulics and Sanitary Engineering at the

University of Wisconsin–Madison A university () is an educational institution, institution of higher education, higher (or Tertiary education, tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several Discipline (academia), academic disciplines. Universities ty ...

. He moved his consulting practice to

Madison, Wisconsin Madison is the county seat of Dane County and the capital city of the U.S. state of Wisconsin. As of the 2020 census the population was 269,840, making it the second-largest city in Wisconsin by population, after Milwaukee, and the 80th-lar ...

, where it grew into the engineering firm Mead & Hunt. Mead contributed to the design of a number of hydraulic engineering projects. He was the principal designer of the Kilbourn Dam (1909) and Prairie du Sac Dam (1914), two hydroelectric plants on the

Wisconsin River The Wisconsin River is a tributary of the Mississippi River in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. At approximately 430 miles (692 km) long, it is the state's longest river. The river's name, first recorded in 1673 by Jacques Marquette as "Meskousi ...

. In the 1910s he served as a consultant for flood control projects including the

Huai River The Huai River (), Postal Map Romanization, formerly romanization of Chinese, romanized as the Hwai, is a major river in China. It is located about midway between the Yellow River and Yangtze, the two longest rivers and largest drainage basins ...

conservancy in

Jiangsu Jiangsu (; ; pinyin: Jiāngsū, Postal romanization, alternatively romanized as Kiangsu or Chiangsu) is an Eastern China, eastern coastal Provinces of the People's Republic of China, province of the China, People's Republic of China. It is o ...

and

Anhui Anhui , (; formerly romanized as Anhwei) is a landlocked province of the People's Republic of China, part of the East China region. Its provincial capital and largest city is Hefei. The province is located across the basins of the Yangtze River ...

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

, and the

Miami Conservancy District The Miami Conservancy District is a river management agency operating in Southwest Ohio to control flooding of the Great Miami River and its tributaries. It was organized in 1915 following the catastrophic Great Dayton Flood of the Great Miami R ...

Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...

. President

Calvin Coolidge Calvin Coolidge (born John Calvin Coolidge Jr.; ; July 4, 1872January 5, 1933) was the 30th president of the United States from 1923 to 1929. Born in Vermont, Coolidge was a History of the Republican Party (United States), Republican lawyer ...

appointed Mead to the Colorado River Board commission to study the

Hoover Dam Hoover Dam is a concrete arch-gravity dam in the Black Canyon of the Colorado River, on the border between the U.S. states of Nevada and Arizona. It was constructed between 1931 and 1936 during the Great Depression and was dedicated on Se ...

project in 1928. In 1921, Mead became the first president of the

Technical Club of Madison Technical may refer to: * Technical (vehicle), an improvised fighting vehicle * Technical analysis, a discipline for forecasting the future direction of prices through the study of past market data * Technical drawing, showing how something is co ...

. He later became president of the

American Society of Civil Engineers American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

(ASCE) in 1936, which recognizes him in the annual Daniel W. Mead essay contest. Mead's later career included a strong focus on engineering ethics, including writing a manual of professional ethics for ASCE in 1941.

Publications

* ''Contracts, Specifications, and Engineering Relations.'' New York: McGraw-Hill, 1916. * ''Hydrology: The Fundamental Basis of Hydraulic Engineering.'' New York: McGraw-Hill, 1919. * "The Engineer and His Code," ''Civil Engineering'' 6, no. 8 (1936): pp. 499–501. * ''Standards of professional relations and conduct.'' New York: American Society of Civil Engineers, 1941.

References

External links

Involvement in Wisconsin's first large hydroelectric project

History of Mead & Hunt consulting firm
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mead, Daniel W 1862 births 1948 deaths People from Fulton, Oswego County, New York American civil engineers University of Wisconsin–Madison faculty Engineers from New York (state)