Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography/Steckel, Louis Joseph Réné

STECKEL, Louis Joseph Réné, Canadian civil engineer, b. in Wintzenheim, Alsace, 6 Sept., 1844. He was educated at Benfeld, Alsace, and at Laval university, Quebec. He came to Quebec in 1807, and in the following year went to the western part of the United States, remaining till 1860, when he returned to Quebec. After studying civil engineering in Laval university, he practised his profession successfully, and has been chief clerk of the engineering branch of the department of public works, Canada, since July, 1880. In addition to other important work, he carried on extensive hydrographic surveys in 1881-'2 of St. Lawrence ship-channel between Quebec and Cap à la Roche, and from 1884 till 1887 extensive geodetic levelling operations along Richelieu and St. Lawrence rivers, from Lake Champlain to tide-water in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. He invented in 1868 a perfected flute, called the “Harmonic flute,” and exhibited at the Indian and colonial exhibition, in London in 1886, a piccolo constructed on his system, and geodetic rods as perfected by him. He has published “Treatise on Geometry and Trigonometry” (Quebec, 1866), and “Essay on the Contracted Liquid Vein affecting the Present Theory of the Science of Hydraulics” (Ottawa, 1884).