Engineering Education "Today in History" Blog: Coney Island's gravity switchback roller coaster railway patented
by Alice Agogino
closeAuthor: Alice Agogino
Name: Alice Agogino
Email: agogino@berkeley.edu
Site: http://www.me.berkeley.edu/faculty/agogino/
About: Alice M. Agogino is the Roscoe and Elizabeth Hughes Professor of Mechanical Engineering and is affiliated faculty at the Haas School of Business in their Operations and Information Technology Management Group. Her research interests include: community-based design; sustainable engineering; intelligent learning systems; information retrieval and data mining; multiobjective and strategic product design; nonlinear optimization; probabilistic modeling; intelligent control and manufacturing; sensor validation, fusion and diagnostics; wireless sensor networks; multimedia and computer-aided design; design databases; design theory and methods; MEMS/NEMS synthesis and computer-aided design; artificial intelligence and decision and expert systems; and gender/ethnic equity.
She has served in a number of administrative positions at UC Berkeley, including Chair of the Faculty Senate, Associate Dean of Engineering and Faculty Assistant to the Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost in Educational Development and Technology. Prof. Agogino also served as Director for Synthesis, an NSF-sponsored coalition of eight universities with the goal of reforming undergraduate engineering education, and continues as PI for the NEEDS (www.needs.org) and SMETE.ORG digital libraries of courseware in science, mathematics, engineering and technology.
Prof. Agogino received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of New Mexico (1975), M.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering (1978) from the University of California at Berkeley and Ph.D. from the Department of Engineering-Economic Systems at Stanford University (1984). Prior to joining the faculty at UC Berkeley, she worked in industry for Dow Chemical, General Electric and SRI International. She has authored over 150 scholarly publications; has won numerous teaching, best paper and research awards; and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). At NAE she served on the Committee on Engineering Education, working on the Technologically Speaking and the Engineer 2020 projects. She is currently a member of the National Research Council's Board on Education and the Women in Academic Science Engineering Committee. She has supervised 66 MS projects/theses, 26 doctoral dissertations and numerous undergraduate researchers.See Authors Posts (149) · December 21st, 2007 · 2 Comments
Today in History – December 22, 1885 – LaMarcus Thompson patents first Gravity Switchback Railway roller coaster. It was built at Coney Island and became the precursor to the modern roller coaster. At the top of one platform, riders climbed into cars and then rode them down a 600 foot track and up to another tower, where they were switched to another track. Thompson’s installation at Coney Island was also a business innovation a it was one of the first “pay per ride”, offering people a short escape from the real world to enjoy themselves for a short thrill. This started a tradition and business model that forms the basis for today’s theme and amusement parks.
See the Engineering Pathway’s resources on theme parks and roller coaster design. For curricular resources, visit the Mechanical Engineering Education, the Engineering Mechanics Education or the Engineering Management Education community sites.
Tags: Architectural Engineering · Engineering Mechanics · General Engineering, Engineering Science · Mechanical Engineering
2 responses so far ↓
1 Alice Agogino // Dec 22, 2007 at 9:45 am
Readers may be interested in the related November 16th blog titled: Disney launches Epcot Center, Community of the Future.
2 hadi // Dec 22, 2007 at 10:50 pm
thanks
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