author
Charles Latimer
1827–1888
A 19th-century American civil engineer and practical writer, he turned technical know-how into books for railroad workers and curious readers alike. His work ranges from hands-on guidance for maintaining rail lines to a book on the long-debated lore of the divining rod.
1 Audiobook
The Divining Rod: Virgula Divina—Baculus Divinatorius (Water-Witching)
by Charles Latimer
About the author
Born in Washington, D.C., on September 7, 1827, Charles Latimer built his career as an engineer and inventor in an era when railroads were reshaping the United States. Biographical references describe him as a civil engineer, and he is also associated with service connected to military railroads during the Civil War.
Latimer is best remembered as the reviser and enlarger of The Road-Master's Assistant and Section-Master's Guide, a practical manual for railroad track laying, ballast work, and maintenance. He also wrote The Divining Rod: Virgula Divina—Baculus Divinatorius (Water-Witching), showing that his interests reached beyond engineering into unusual and widely discussed subjects of the day.
He died in Cleveland, Ohio, on March 25, 1888. Taken together, his books suggest a writer drawn both to solid, everyday technical practice and to the stranger questions that fascinated 19th-century readers.