Fink, Albert

Fink, Albert (1827–97) engineer, statistician/economist; born in Lauterbach, Germany. He emigrated to Baltimore, Md., in 1849. As a structural engineer for the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, he invented the so-called Fink truss bridge (c. 1852), which soon became widely used on American railways. From 1857–75 he worked for the Louisville & Nashville Railroad, where he rose to be vice-president (1869). His ability with statistics and record-keeping resulted in the important "Fink Report on Cost of Transportation" (1874), which helped stabilize the transportation industry of the day, and inaugurated the application of economics to railroads for the future.