The James Brindley Diaries contain two volumes related to his work on the Susquehanna, Conewago, Chesapeake, and Delaware canals. The first, entitled "Susquehanna and Conewago Canal Diary" (9/2/1794-1/20/1795) features highly detailed entries with significant technical data related to the project. Interspersed throughout, Brindley remarks on technical and logistical problems he encounters. For example, he notes that after the Canal Board fails to provide wages to workers, he has to advance funds to purchase tools. Perhaps most notably, he records the tensions related to Whiskey Rebellion in western Pennsylvania in an extended passage excerpted in Selected Quotations. The volume also includes drafts of letters to William Smith and Robert Morris.
 
The second volume, "Chesapeake and Delaware Canal Diary" (1/18-6/10/1803) recounts his early work on the Chesapeake and Delaware Canals, which would not be completed for another twenty-five years on account of funding problems. Brindley registers those issues in his early diary, discussing some of the legal and financial problems facing the project.

An engineer in the early national period, James Brindley worked on a host of canal projects in the United States, including the Potomac Canal in Maryland and the James River Canal in Virginia. His diaries, available in two volumes, document his work on the Susquehanna and Conewago Canal in 1794-1795 and the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal in 1803. The Conewago Canal, financed by Robert Morris and completed in 1797, improved access to Philadelphia markets. While the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal was debated as early as the 1760s, it was not funded until 1802 (and continued funding challenges would delay its completion for another 25 years). Brindley served as the lead engineer for both projects, and his journal provides valuable insights into early-nineteenth century canals and engineering, the Whiskey Rebellion, and U.S. government funding problems in the early national period.
 
The James Brindley Diaries contain two volumes related to his work on the Susquehanna, Conewago, Chesapeake, and Delaware canals. The first, entitled "Susquehanna and Conewago Canal Diary" (9/2/1794-1/20/1795) features highly detailed entries with significant technical data related to the project. Interspersed throughout, Brindley remarks on technical and logistical problems he encounters. For example, he notes that after the Canal Board fails to provide wages to workers, he has to advance funds to purchase tools. Perhaps most notably, he records the tensions related to Whiskey Rebellion in western Pennsylvania in an extended passage excerpted in Selected Quotations. The volume also includes drafts of letters to William Smith and Robert Morris.
 
The second volume, "Chesapeake and Delaware Canal Diary" (1/18-6/10/1803) recounts his early work on the Chesapeake and Delaware Canals, which would not be completed for another twenty-five years on account of funding problems. Brindley registers those issues in his early diary, discussing some of the legal and financial problems facing the project.

The John Slater Papers include abstracts from his diaries, available as loose, mostly typed pages, which traverse his consequential career in physics (1900-1975). These abstracts trace Slater's doctoral study at Harvard (1923) and postgraduate work at Cambridge University, appointment at MIT (1930), work at the Laboratory for Nuclear Science during World War II, and late-career at the University of Florida (after his retirement from MIT in 1966). His diaries contain notes about a trip to Japan (including Hiroshima and Nagasaki) in the fall 1953, meetings with defense contractors (such as Lockheed Martin) throughout the 1950s and 1960s, a sighting of Sputnik (7/20/1958), notes about an "NSF proposal for computing center" (4/30/1965), associations with and publications of APS members (7/7/1951, 7/7/1972), and Slater's own personal affairs, as excerpted in Selected Quotations. As such, these abstracts may interest scholars researching John Clark Slater's career in the field of physics, biochemistry, atomic history, and the history of science more broadly, as well as those considering World War II and military contractors in the Cold War period, the space race, the history of computing, and the institutional history of the American Philosophical Society.; To supplement these diary abstracts, researchers might choose to expand their exploration of the Slater Papers, which also contain 133 research notebooks (1944-1976), a lengthy series of folders, containing lectures, scientific notes, drafts of manuscripts and papers, correspondence from his collaboration with the Los Alamos Labs (1966-1970), and correspondence relating to the National Academy of Science.