The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Fink, Albert

FINK, Albert, American civil engineer: b. near Frankfort-on-the-Main, Germany, 1827; d. 1897. He was graduated at the Polytechnic Institute of Darmstadt in 1848 and came to America in 1849. He entered the employ of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company as a draughtsman and for that company he designed and built some of the earliest iron bridges in the United States. For the Louisville and Nashville Railroad he built a bridge over the Ohio River at Louisville, Ky. In the Civil War he was engaged by the Federal government as superintendent of the road and machinery department. From 1865 to 1875 he was general manager and from 1870 to 1875 vice-president of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad. He brought about a merger of four trunk railroads of the South and worked out the details of operating the system, which in its day was revolutionary.