Vocation : Engineer : Mechanical

Richard Joseph Grosh (born October 29, 1927) was the thirteenth president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
He was born on October 29, 1927, in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He attended Purdue University, where he received B.S., M.S. and P.h.D. degrees in mechanical engineering (in 1950, 1952 and 1953 respectively). In 1953, he was appointed assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue. In 1953, he was appointed professor of mechanical engineering and in 1961, he was appointed head of the School of Mechanical Engineering at Purdue. In 1965, he was named associate dean of the Schools of Engineering. In 1967, he was appointed dean of the Schools of Engineering. In 1971, he was appointed president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. In 1976, he left Rensselaer to become CEO of Ranco Inc. of Columbus, Ohio and remained in that post until the company was acquired by Invensys in 1987.In 1969, he was elected as a member into the National Academy of Engineering for significant contributions to heat transfer research. In 1991, he received the Outstanding Mechanical Engineer Award from the Purdue University School of Mechanical Engineering. He served on the board of the Maine Maritime Academy from 1997 until 2012.

Ermal Cleon "Ernie" Fraze (September 16, 1913 – October 26, 1989) was an American engineer who invented the pull-tab opener used in beverage cans.

Thomas C. McMurtry (June 4, 1935 - January 3, 2015) was an American mechanical engineer, and a former naval aviator, test pilot at NASA's Flight Research Center and a consultant for Lockheed Corporation.

George Walther Sr. (August 13, 1876 – April 10, 1961) was an American inventor, engineer, businessman, civic leader and the holder of over 100 patents for truck wheels, brake drums, fifth wheels, and landing gear/legs for the trucking industry. He was the founder of the Dayton Steel Foundry.
Walther developed the first practical cast steel wheel for solid rubber tires. This was a basic but critical contribution to the evolution of the early trucking industry and the U.S. Army trucks in World War I.
Walther followed the design of the cast steel wheel for solid rubber tires with the design of a cast steel wheel for pneumatic tires and then the design of an improved brake drum. When semi-trailer trucks were developed, he designed improved versions of the fifth wheel and landing legs for semi-trailer trucks. Walther's engineering skills resulted in patents for many developments of truck wheels, brake drums, fifth wheels, and landing legs that have helped to expand the role of trucks in the transportation industry.

Gualterio Looser Schallemberg (September 4, 1898, Santiago – July 22, 1982) was a Chilean botanist and engineer of Swiss parentage. He owned a factory that made agricultural implements.
In 1928 Looser joined the American Fern Society, and started to publish papers on the pteridophytes of Chile. His herbarium containing ca. 8000 specimens was given to Conservatoire et Jardin botaniques de la Ville de Genève.

Henri Édouard Tresca (12 October 1814 – 21 June 1885) was a French mechanical engineer, and a professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers in Paris.

Yvonne Y. Clark (born Georgianna Yvonne Young; April 13, 1929 – January 27, 2019) was a pioneer for African-American and women engineers. Also known as Y.Y., she was the first woman to earn a Bachelor of Science degree in mechanical engineering at Howard University, the first woman to earn a master's degree in Engineering Management from Vanderbilt University, and the first woman to serve as a faculty member in the College of Engineering and Technology at Tennessee State University, afterward becoming a professor emeritus.

Maurice Lévy (February 28, 1838, in Ribeauvillé – September 30, 1910, in Paris) was a French engineer and member of the Institut de France.
Lévy was born in Ribeauvillé in Alsace. Educated at the École Polytechnique, where he was a student of Adhémar Jean Claude Barré de Saint-Venant, and the École des Ponts et Chaussées, he became an engineer in 1863. During the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871), he was entrusted by the Government of National Defense with the control of part of the artillery. During the next decade he held several educational positions, becoming professor at the École Centrale in 1875, member of the commission of the geodetic survey of France in 1879, and professor at the Collège de France in 1885.

Maurice Leblanc (1857 – 1923) was a French engineer and industrialist.
Born in Paris, Leblanc worked primarily in improving induction motors and alternators, where he invented the damper winding. He also invented an improved vacuum pump and worked in the area of refrigeration.
The December 1, 1880 French publication "La Lumière électrique", published an article by Leblanc entitled "Etude sur la transmission électrique des impressions lumineuses". In this article Leblanc outlined five functions required for a television system.

a transducer to convert light into electricity
a scanner to break up a picture into its constituent parts
a method of synchronising the receiver and the transmitter
a means of converting electrical signals back into light
a screen for viewing the imageLeblanc was awarded the Prix Poncelet for 1913 by the French Academy of Sciences.

Andrew Meikle (5 May 1719 – 27 November 1811) was a Scottish mechanical engineer credited with inventing the threshing machine, a device used to remove the outer husks from grains of wheat. He also had a hand in assisting Firbeck in the invention of the Rotherham Plough. This was regarded as one of the key developments of the British Agricultural Revolution in the late 18th century. The invention was made around 1786, although some say he only improved on an earlier design by a Scottish farmer named Leckie.
Michael Stirling is said to have invented a rotary threshing machine in 1758 which for forty years was used to process all the corn on his farm at Gateside, no published works have yet been found but his son William made a sworn statement to his minister to this fact, he also gave him the details of his father's death in 1796.Earlier (c.1772), he also invented windmill "spring sails", which replaced the simple canvas designs previously used with sails made from a series of shutters that could be operated by levers, allowing windmill sails to be quickly and safely controlled in the event of a storm.
Meikle worked as a millwright at Houston Mill in East Linton, East Lothian, and inspired John Rennie to become a noted civil engineer.
He died at Houston Mill and is buried in East Lothian's Prestonkirk Parish Church kirkyard, close to Rennie's father, George Rennie, who farmed the nearby Phantassie estate by the River Tyne.
In 2011 he was one of seven inaugural inductees to the Scottish Engineering Hall of Fame.Ascertaining that Andrew Meikle was in poverty, Sir John Sinclair raised for him by subscription the sum of £1, which was invested so as to place the aged mechanic in circumstances of comfort. Meikle died in 1811, and his remains were interred in the parish churchyard of Prestonkirk, Haddingtonshire. At his grave has been raised a handsome tombstone, with the following legend:—"Beneath this stone are deposited the mortal remains of the late Andrew Meikle, civil engineer at Houston Mill, who died in the year 1811, aged 92 years. Descended from a race of ingenious mechanics, to whom the country for ages had been greatly indebted, he steadily followed the example of his ancestors, and by inventing and bringing to perfection a machine for separating corn from the straw (constructed upon the principles of velocity, and furnished with fixed beaters or skutchers), rendered to the agriculturists of Great Britain, and of other nations, a more beneficial service than any hitherto recorded in the annals of ancient or modern science." [from volume 3 of Social Life in Scotland by Rev. Charles Rogers]