Edward Acheson
Washington, Washington County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
The eminent American chemist was born in this house with the round corner, 1856. Was awarded many medals for his invention of carborundum, artificial graphite, and other valuable products of the electric furnace.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
Edward Goodrich Acheson was born in this distinctive round-cornered house in 1856 and went on to become one of America's most inventive industrial chemists. Working with the intense heat of the electric furnace, he discovered carborundum—an abrasive nearly as hard as diamond—and a method for producing artificial graphite, both of which won him medals and reshaped modern manufacturing. His inventions became indispensable to grinding, machining, and electrical industries worldwide.
Why it matters
Acheson's electric-furnace discoveries helped launch the age of synthetic materials, making a small Washington, Pennsylvania, birthplace the origin point of technologies that underpin modern industry.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Edward Acheson
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
The McGugin Gas Well
Mount Pleasant Township, PA · est. 1967
Drilled in 1882, the McGugin well tapped what was then reported as the greatest flow of natural gas in the world, and its output was soon piped east to fuel Pittsburgh's homes and factories. The strike helped ignite the development of the oil and gas fields of southwestern Pennsylvania, a region that became central to America's early energy industry. It marked a moment when Pennsylvania's underground riches began powering an industrializing nation.
Ralston Thresher
West Middletown, PA · est. 1947
In the decades before the Civil War, the rolling farmland of Washington County was a proving ground for the machines that would transform American agriculture. Near this spot stood Robert McClure's factory, where Andrew Ralston's ingenious device — patented in 1842 — cleaned and threshed grain in a single operation, sparing farmers the slow, back-breaking work of flailing and winnowing by hand. It was a small Pennsylvania shop taking part in a national wave of mechanical invention that steadily pulled labor off the threshing floor.
Dunlap's Creek Bridge
Brownsville, PA · est. 1991
Spanning Dunlap's Creek along the National Road at Brownsville, this 80-foot cast-iron span was built between 1836 and 1839 as the first metal arch bridge in the United States. It replaced a string of earlier crossings on the site, including an 1809 Finley suspension bridge, and was fabricated under the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers with Capt. Richard Delafield and Lt. George W. Cass overseeing the work. It carried the young republic's great westward highway on a structure that pointed toward the age of iron.
John A. Roebling (1806-1869)
Pittsburgh, PA · est. 1996
John A. Roebling was a German-born engineer whose faith in twisted wire cable transformed how Americans crossed their rivers. Here in Pittsburgh in 1846 he built one of the first wire-rope suspension bridges to carry a road over the Monongahela, proving a design he would refine across the country. His genius culminated in the Brooklyn Bridge, whose plans he drew before his death in 1869 left its completion to his son Washington.