This inspired the renowned Russian engineer Dmitrii Ivanovich Zhuravskii to perform studies and develop structural analysis techniques for Howe truss bridges.

His father had been a British soldier under General Burgoyne at the Battles of Saratoga in the Revolutionary War, later to enlist in American service.

[5][7] Whistler and William Gibbs McNeil lived in Fisher Ames' house while working on the Boston and Providence Railroad.

[3][9] Upon graduation, Whistler was commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the Corps of Artillery serving as a topography engineer at Fort Columbus, New York, from 1819 to 1821.

[12]Whistler supervised construction of the first rails on the railroad in October 1829, consisting of wood and iron from Pratt Street to the Carrollton Viaduct.

The railroad's future road master, Wendel Bollman, helped with the construction layout as a fifteen-year-old carpenter.

[10] In 1835, along with William Gibbs McNeill, Whistler designed the Boston & Providence Railroad, which included the famous Canton Viaduct which has been in continuous service for 174 years.

As superintendent of the Proprietors of Locks and Canals Co. water powered machine shop in Lowell (1834–1837), Whistler was responsible for the design of the earliest steam locomotive built in New England.

[17] In 1838, Baltimore and Ohio railroad engineers Knight and Latrobe surveyed steam locomotives for their management, some of which included machines built in Whistler's Lowell shops.

[4] So two professors from St. Petersburg's Institute of the Corps of Transportation Engineers, Pavel Petrovich Melnikov and Nikolai Osipovich Kraft, traveled to the United States in 1839 to study railroad technology.

B. Jervis and Benjamin Wright of New York, Moncure Robinson and Claude Crozet of Virginia, Jonathan Knight of Maryland, J. Edgar Thomson then in Georgia, later in Pennsylvania.

[23] Whistler's stone arch railroad bridges built in 1841 are still in freight and passenger service on the CSX mainline in western Massachusetts.