[arethuza]

It's not just the US - it happened in the UK at the same time. Although it is very obvious that in places like Germany this decline never happened (or at least not to the same extent).

Interestingly enough, in a fairly recent poll of the Top 100 Britons an engineer came second, only problem is he lived in the 19th century:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isambard_Kingdom_Brunel