A classics major at Harvard who trained to be a lawyer, he instead became a civil engineer and leading bridge designer in North America during the late 19th century.

In 1867, with only general mathematics training and an aptitude for mechanics, he abandoned the practice of law and pursued a career as a civil engineer.

In The Path Between the Seas, author David McCullough notes that in the Panama canal affair, "Morison emerges a bit like the butler at the end of the mystery--as the ever-present, frequently unobtrusive, highly instrumental fixture around whom the entire plot turned."

[3] In the 1890s, Morison developed a series of lectures — inspired by reading his Harvard classmate Fiske's book The Discovery of America — on the transformative effects of the new manufacturing power of that era.

[4] Morison died in his rooms at 36 West 50th Street in New York, and was buried in Peterborough, New Hampshire, where he had a summer home (and designed the town library).

"[6] According to Elting Morison, his great uncle was rude to waiters, hired a substitute during the Civil War, and "invariably referred to Mexico as Pjacko."

Between 1893 and 1897, Morison, a bachelor, built a house of about 57 rooms so, he said, that he would "have a place to eat Thanksgiving dinner and to watch the sun set over Mount Monadnock.