About the Author

Robert Doan Hutton, Sr. is a civil engineer.  He was a partner in the company  Modjeski and Masters consulting engineers in Harrisburg, PA until his retirement in 1980. He worked on quite a few important bridges, including the Pennsylvania Turnpike Bridge over the Swatara Creek, the Cincinnati-Covington Bridge over the Ohio River, the Cairo, Illinois Railroad Bridge, the Acme Bend Railroad Bridges in Chicago, the Ogdensburg Bridge over the St. Lawrence River, the Newburgh Beacon Bridges over the Hudson River, the second Davenport, Iowa Bridge over the Mississippi, the Theodore Roosevelt and WMATA Bridges over the Potomac River in Washington D.C., the Passyunk Avenue Bridge over the Schuykill River in Philadelphia, and the Fire Island Bridge over the Fire Island Inlet on Long Island. He was also active in bridge inspections and investigations, notably the Silver Bridge catastrophe over the Ohio River, the Yadkin River Bridge collapse in Siloam, NC, and the Canadian River collapse in Calving, OK.

Over the years, he has been active in his children's schools and education, the Quaker Meeting in Harrisburg, and Boy Scouts of America.  His energy has also been devoted to all sorts of "let's figure this out and do it" kinds of projects like building boats, gardening, solar energy, and many more. He participated in the Pacific theatre of World War II and has some good stories about moving Quonset huts without the benefit of heavy equipment and being assigned to be the company Band Director (although his brother likes to make fun of his music ability).

Bob has lived most of his life in central Pennsylvania, with some stints in West Virginia and Louisiana.

Bob enjoys doing various projects and he became interested in the Mason Dixon line as outlined on his web page How This Project Got Started.

Another part of his life has been his family. In fact, he had help in the technology of this project from Jane, a librarian with the State of Pennsylvania; Bob, Jr., a music and science teacher in Hoonah, Alaska; and Bill, an assistant superintendent of schools in Sitka, Alaska. Fortunately, Bob, Jr. and Jane showed Bill how to make things look reasonably attractive for this web site - or at least we think so. Bob, Sr.'s wife Dorothy was supportive of the whole project but confessed that she couldn't help much.

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