George Washington was also the one who coined the term "civil engineer." A surveyor by trade when he was a young man in Virginia, Washington knew how vital engineers would be for the war effort, and he petitioned the Continental Congress to establish an engineering division in the Continental Army to help build "roads, forts, bridges and other civil works."
Thaddeus Kosciuszko, a Polish engineer who moved to North America in 1776 and later volunteered to help with the war effort, was named by Washington as the first head of the Army Corps of Engineers. Thomas Jefferson once said that Kosciuszko was "as pure a son of liberty as I have ever known."
People who live in New York City might recognize "Kosciuszko" as the name that nobody seems to pronounce correctly on daily "Shadow Traffic" reports -- that crummy Brooklyn-Queens Expressway bridge over Newtown Creek bears his name.