Military engineer Henry Martyn Robert authored the best known
and most widely used book on parliamentary law - Robert's Rules
of Order. Robert served as an engineer in the army from 1867 to
1871. He worked on the defense of Washington, Philadelphia, and
the New England Coast during the Civil War and was president of
the Board of Engineers from 1895 to 1901. After having
difficulty leading a meeting at church one day he declared that
he would learn about parliamentary procedure before going back.
That resulted in the Pocket Manual of Rules of Order for
Deliberative Assemblies loosely based on the procedures used in
the US House of Representatives. Read Robert's Rules of Order.