33 July 2020 / www.theengineer.co.uk
cities (Brooklyn wasn’t incorporated
into Greater NYC until 1898). But after
securing the backing of the proprietor of
the Brooklyn Eagle Newspaper, Willian
C Kingsley, his proposal gained traction
and the New York Bridge Company was
established with a $3m subscription
backing from Brooklyn’s capital stock
and a further $1.5m from New York.
The company was permi ed to recoup
its outlay by levying tolls (initially
pedestrians were charged one cent),
while profi ts were capped at 15 per cent.
By 1869 surveying was underway and
the informally named ‘Manha an and
Brooklyn Bridge’ that was to link the
country’s fi rst and third largest cities
was to be the technological achievement
of the age. Built with newly available
steel wire, it would be stronger, larger
and longer than any bridge yet built.
The two-tier design off ered cable car
transportation as well as roadways for
horse-drawn vehicles and an elevated
promenade for pedestrians. But the
project suff ered a setback when Roebling
senior got his foot caught between a pier
and a ferry, the resulting crush injury
leading to his untimely death from
tetanus.
Responsibility was handed to the
32-year-old Washington, who was
subsequently to become paralysed after
suff ering from what is now termed
decompression sickness (‘the bends’),
caused by working in the 3,000-ton
pneumatic caissons that had been
constructed to clear away silt from the
riverbed. Wagner explains that in the
Roebling’s bridge is a dominant
feature of New York’s cityscape
alumni association of his alma mater
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. After
Emily died in 1903, he remarried fi ve
years later and was bereaved again in
1912 when his nephew and namesake
Washington Augustus Roebling II
perished in the sinking of RMS Titanic.
For most of the remainder of his life, he
pursued his hobby of mineral and rock
collecting with a passion, eventually
bequeathing an important collection of
16,000 specimens to the Smithsonian
Institute, while his manuscripts found
their way into collections at Rutgers
University in New Brunswick and
Rensselaer in New York.
The relative obscurity that befell
Roebling was conspicuously not the
fate of the Brooklyn Bridge that was
to become a dominant feature of New
York’s cityscape. According to the Library
of Congress, “the bridge became part
of the romance of New York City. Poets
and artists have long found the bridge
a worthy subject,” while it “continues
to serve as the backdrop in countless
photographs and fi lms.” The endless
aff ection and admiration for the bridge
has led to it being honoured as one of the
BBC’s Seven Wonders of the Industrial
World, while it plays a prominent
part in the climax of the 1998 reboot
of Godzilla, although it is debatable
whether Roebling’s massive stone
towers with their 14,000 miles of wire
could have supported the weight of
the fi ctional mutated marine iguana.
On 11 September 2001 the bridge took
on a diff erent form of symbolism as
thousands of pedestrians used it to
escape from Lower Manha an in the
wake of the terrorist a acks on the
World Trade Center.
Nothing can be done perfectly
at the first trial… each day brings
its little quota of experiences,
which with honest intentions,
will lead to perfection.
Washington Roebling (1837-1926)
Read more
of our Late, Great Engineers at
www.theengineer.co.uk
19th century working with compressed air was cu ing edge:
“Many people, including Washington, became sick as a result.
The cause of the disease – nitrogen bubbles trapped in the
blood – was not completely understood and so the men would
ascend out of the caissons quickly. At the time it could only be
alleviated with morphine.”
It was Roebling’s affl iction with ‘caisson disease’ that was to
lead to the increasing involvement of his wife. The arrangement
was challenging for Roebling who, according to his biographer,
was a ‘hands on’ engineer who would spend as much time in
the bridge’s foundations as his assistants. But, due to chronic
health problems, by 1875 he was unable to maintain a physical
presence on the project and was badly aff ected by debilitating
symptoms that included an aversion to both light and sound.
“The only person he could stand to be near was his wife. She
was an extraordinary woman, and when Washington became
ill, she became his amanuensis.” Working from his bed, and
eff ectively overseeing the construction of the world’s greatest
bridge in absentia, its chief engineer dictated correspondence to
Emily and briefed her for meetings with the project’s trustees.
She had a natural fl air for diplomacy and her ability to maintain
a fragile harmony between the project’s stakeholders meant
that Emily’s role in the bringing the project to its conclusion was
crucial.
Given the state of his health it’s hardly surprising that
Roebling fades into the background, his fame rapidly becoming
overshadowed by that of the engineering icon he created.
But he lived until the age of 89, taking on relatively modest
appointments, such as president of the
Oxford Science Archive/Heritage Images/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY ; MaciejBledowski, BRIAN_KINNEY/stock.adobe.com
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