Topic: Science & Technology
Over the past thousands of years, many varieties of mammals lived in what is now Washington. Several important fossils of prehistoric mammals have been discovered in different parts of the state. (Thi...
At the dawn of the commercial radio industry in the early 1920s, Seattle became an unexpected early hotbed of technological innovation. No less than three different companies began producing radio spe...
George Watkin Evans was a pioneering mining engineer in Washington who spent much of his career studying and documenting the state's coal-mining industry. This People's History of Evans's life and wor...
John M. Fluke Sr., was founder of the John Fluke Engineering Co., later known as Fluke Corp., and was a pioneer in the Pacific Northwest electronics industry. He also was deeply involved in a wide ran...
Washington state has fossils ranging in age from 12,000 years old to more than 500 million years old. People have made use of them for thousands of years, but not until non-Native people arrived were ...
William H. (Bill) Gates was co-founder and CEO of Microsoft Corp. As such, he not only accumulated a fortune -- in 2013 he was the richest person in the world, with a net worth of $72.1 billion -- but...
The Georgetown Steam Plant was built by the Boston-based Stone & Webster utilities conglomerate, which held a dominant position in electricity generation and public transportation in the Seattle a...
The Great Northern Tunnel is a one-mile-long tunnel that runs beneath downtown Seattle from Alaskan Way (below Virginia Street) on the waterfront, to 4th Avenue S and Washington Street. The Great Nort...
Engineer Homer M. Hadley designed several unique concrete bridges throughout the state of Washington during his lifetime, including many early American applications of the European innovation of concr...
Archaeological finds in various locations across Washington have helped scientists learn about how the earliest residents of this state lived. (This essay was written for students in third and fourth ...
Following a dedication ceremony on September 5, 1975, the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center opened the doors of its $12 million, seven-story research and treatment facility, situated on land acqu...
During the Cold War Washington state served an important role in defending the United States and in deterring attacks. Eighteen intercontinental ballistic missiles installed near Moses Lake and Spokan...
Washington State College (later WSU) established the Irrigation Experiment Station at Prosser in 1919. The Washington Irrigation Institute recommended such a program to study problems faced by farmers...
In late 1953 the United States Navy came to Jim Creek Valley in Snohomish County and built the most powerful radio transmitter the world had yet seen. It was designed by the Radio Corporation of Ameri...
A man who lived 8,500 years ago along the Columbia River in what is now central Washington's Tri-Cities area became the center of worldwide attention and heated controversy following the 1996 discover...
What is now State Route 142 in South Central Washington was built by Klickitat County in the mid-1930s to connect Lyle, on the Columbia River, with the county seat at Goldendale, some 24 miles east as...
A visionary designer, artist, inventor, teacher, builder, lecturer, and businessman -- Seattle's Gideon Kramer was a true renaissance man. Long fascinated by the relationship between materials, techno...
Estella Leopold, daughter of famed conservationist and writer Aldo Leopold (1887-1948), earned her own renown through her pioneering work as a conservationist and scientist. As a conservationist, she ...
J. E. Buchanan (1904-1986) wrote this account for The Pacific Northwesterner where it appeared in Vol. 25, No. 3 (Summer 1981). It is reprinted here with kind permission. Born in Iowa, Buchanan was br...
When Walt Sickler (b. 1927) was promoted from line crew foreman to Supervisor of Overhead Construction at Seattle City Light, he brought to the utility's management his knowledge of field operations a...
The Marmes Rockshelter was one of the most significant archaeological sites in the Pacific Northwest, yielding thousands of Stone Age artifacts -- along with the oldest human remains yet to be found i...
In 1975, two young men from Seattle founded a company that would be to the Computer Age what the Ford Motor Company was to the Automobile Age. Like Henry Ford, William H. Gates III (b. 1953) and Paul ...
Don Munro was born in Vermont and grew up in Yakima, but it was in Seattle that he would make a lasting mark as a public servant, business entrepreneur, and supporter of the arts. Munro graduated from...
The Northwest Fisheries Science Center, part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), has been a landmark in Seattle's Montlake neighborhood since its original building was compl...