Ernest L. Ransome

Ernest Leslie Ransome (1844–1917[1]) was an English-born engineer, architect, and early innovator in reinforced concrete building techniques.

Ernest was the son of Frederick Ransome, who had patented a process for producing artificial stone in 1844.

The Pacific Coast Borax fire was, it appears, the triumph and vindication of Ransome's professional life.

The fire and Ransome's great and growing reputation as an inventor and constructor combined to give a kind of charisma to reinforced concrete as the material of the new industrial age; and Ransome was only one of a number of forceful new engineering personalities who appeared upon the scene as exponents and exploiters of this miraculous seemingly material.Likewise Ransome's two experimental buildings at Stanford survived the 1906 San Francisco earthquake essentially without damage while the university's newer, conventional brick structures literally crumbled around them.

In his later career Ransome focused on mixing equipment, formwork, and integrated building systems.