St. George, Judith. The Brooklyn Bridge: They Said It Couldn’t Be Built. New York: Putnam, 1982.
Published shortly before the centennial of the Brooklyn Bridge, this book is a short history of bridge. The story of the bridge is necessarily the story of the Roeblings, the family responsible for designing the bridge and overseeing its construction.
When the builders completed the bridge in 1883, it was at the end of 14 years of construction. The plan for the bridge went back further to 1857 when engineer and German immigrant John Roebling first proposed a bridge across the East River to connect New York to Brooklyn. At the time, the only communication across the river was by ferry. Roebling was the leading suspension bridge engineer in the United States.
The bridge would not get needed support until after the Civil War. In the mean time, Roebling’s son Washington would be come a skilled engineer in own right, studying Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, getting a practical education working with his father and studying bridge-building techniques in Europe in the company of his wife, Emily. He also was trained in leadership, having risen to the rank of colonel in the Army during the Civil War.
The bridge took a great toll on the Roeblings. John was killed by tetanus early in the development of the project. Washington’s health was ruined by caisson’s disease (the bends) and for many years Emily acted as his hand, feet, eyes and ears on the bridge project.
St. George’s brief book is a quick read, but for its brevity still a good overview of the bridges development and construction. It includes several photos and illustrations. It seems suitable for younger readers, but is not too simplistic for an adult reader who wants a quick introduction to the bridge and its early history.
If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
Dreams of Iron and Steel by Deborah Cadbury
The Great Bridge by David McCollough
Steam by Andrea Sutcliffe
Related articles:
Brooklyn Bridge getting a $500 million makeover
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query bridge. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query bridge. Sort by date Show all posts
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Saturday, November 24, 2018
Chief Engineer by Erica Wagner
Washington
Roebling spent 14 year of his life designing and building the Brooklyn Bridge. Though originally conceived by his
father, John A. Roebling, almost every aspect of the bridge
conceived of and constructed from 1869 until it opened in 1883 was from the imagination and under the supervision of
Washington Roebling, the chief engineer.
A lot has been written
about the bridge. In Chief Engineer, Erica Wagner provides a broader picture of
Roebling’s life from his youth to his productive old age.
Roebling grew up in Pennsylvania. His boyhood home was still on the
frontier of settlement even in the 1830s. His formally schooling was varied, and much of his education came from assisting his father in
bridge building. Though John Roebling was a successful engineer and businessman, and immigrant success story, he was abusive to his wife and children. Washington Roebling grew up to be a
man who could bear hardship, but he long resented the abuse he, his siblings and especially his mother suffered in his father’s house.
Engineering was not
Roebling’s only area of success. He joined Union forces during the Civil War.
Though he joined a private, his engineering experience won him an
appointment and an officer and he eventually rose to the rank of colonel. His
rise to the officer corps did not remove him from danger in that bloody war. Antietam, Chancellorsville and Gettysburg were just some of the battles he was
part of.
The war
was hard on his health, but good in other ways. It was
during those years that he met his wife Emily, sister of General G. K. Warren. Emily was a vigorous, capable person
who proved to be a great partner to her husband and successful on her own.
The war was not as hard
on Roebling’s health as hard as the Brooklyn Bridge would be. Roebling spent a
lot of time in the caissons as they sunk deeper, seeking firm
foundations for the bridge towers. Prolonged work in compressed air damaged his
health, possibly permanently. Though he remained in charge of the bridge, his
health prevented him from being at the bridge during much of its above ground
construction. Emily became his secretary and agent during this time. She was
involved to such a degree that rumors spread that she was the actual engineer.
There no support for the rumors that Emily was a designer of the bridge, but it
is fair to say that Roebling leaned on her and her ability to organize and
communicate with tact and she made important contributions to the success of
the bridge.
Roebling lived a long
life, surviving Emily, two of his younger brothers and even some of his nephews. Though he left an active role in the
wire company his father founded, he eventually took over management of the
company when his brothers who ran it, Ferdinand and Charles, and later their sons died. He seemed to relish the work and the challenge
well into his eighties.
If you’re interested in
this book, you may also be interested in
Wagner, Erica. Chief Engineer: Washington Roebling: The Man
Who Built the Brooklyn Bridge. New York: Bloomsbury, 2017.
Friday, December 21, 2012
STEM Books
I’ve reviewed 39 STEM-related
books (and counting). STEM is an acronym
for science,
technology,
engineering, and mathematics. As you may have seen in the news, there is a
push to improve STEM education,
interest students in STEM fields, and grow the number of workers
in these fields. The idea is that these
will be the skills needed by workers of the future. If you’re a STEM educator or a student
considering a career in STEM fields, you might like to take a look at some of
these books.
I’ll confess that I’m not an educator, but I think most of these books
will be accessible to high school and college students, and a few to middle
school students. The list is also a
reflection of my career and interests in engineering, public
health, policy,
and history. Even with these biases, I think it is a good
list for someone looking for STEM-related books.
I was fascinated by robots as a
kid. I enjoyed reading Isaac Asimov’s
robot stories. I longed for the Omnibot
2000 in the Sears Wishbook.
Robots have come a long way. In How to Build an Android, David F. Dufty
describes the short strange life of a very complex robot made to look and talk
like science
fiction author Philip K.
Dick. The robot had a very
sophisticated and lifelike head and complex artificial
intelligence. As with most complex
things, it was the work of many people who had to solve a lot of problems.
If you’re interested in robotics, this is an interesting nontechnical
book. In addition, you’ll get introduced
to some freaky sci-fi. You may even get
as (somewhat) legitimate reason to use the word “Dickhead” (capitalized, it
refers to a fan of PKD, so don’t go using it on anyone).
The Interstate
highway
system in the United States
is one of the most enormous structures built.
Some of the prospective STEM students who read this may actually be
younger than the Intestate system, though in some sense it is never complete
because it needs constant repair and maintenance. The Interstates were completed in the 1990s, but the Federal-Aid
Highways go back to 1916.
Earl
Swift wrote an accessible history of the Interstates in The Big Roads. If you interested in automobiles
or transportation,
it’s a good read.
Deborah
Cadbury describes seven wonders of engineering in Dreams of Iron and Steel. It covers almost a century of history, but
many of the events are concentrated in the Victorian Era. That was a time of great technological
innovation.
Though the book is history, many of the structures still stand. Railways, the Brooklyn
Bridge, the Suez
and Panama
Canals, and Hoover
Dam stand testament to an age of big engineering.
Though the memory of Professor Wragg’s sneer prompts me to not make
this confession, part of my interest in science and technology came from comic
books. Iron Man was
cool. Spider-Man’s
web shooters were very cool. Superhero
comics are full of fantasy,
admittedly, but the strange, unrealistic science and technology they depict
have inspired many to study STEM in reality.
Physicist John
Kakalios uses examples from comic books to explore real physics in The Physics of Supeheroes. Sometimes comics get there science
right. Even when they get it wrong, it
can be instructive. If you know what
people are talking about when they refer to the “New 52,” you may find this
book to be a great introduction to physics.
Here is another confession: I’m not especially interested in math. I endured a lot of math classes to study
engineering. Reading David
Acheson’s 1089 and All That did
not require such endurance. For one
reason, it is a short book. For another,
Acheson doesn’t expect his readers to be mathematicians; it is enough to follow
the outline of the math he discusses.
I recommend this book because so many people have a fear of math. 1089
can be followed by many high school students and older folks with math
phobias. Just take a deep breath, relax,
and follow along as well as you can.
You’ll see that math can be interesting, useful, and even beautiful in a
way.
Judith
St. George’s The Brooklyn Bridge is a short history of and iconic bridge. Written for the
bridge’s 100th anniversary, it is also the story of the engineers
who sacrificed life and health to see it completed: John Roebling and his son Washington. John Roebling was
a German immigrant who built many suspension
bridges and owed a wire-making business. He gave his son
and extraordinary education in bridge engineering for the time, and before
beginning work on the Brooklyn Bridge he served as an officer in the Union Army during the Civil War.
Why should a cutting-edge STEM student read about a
bridge that is almost 130 years old? It’s
because we still use and rely on very successful, centuries old technologies. Improving and rebuilding our infrastructure will be an important part of our economy. As recently as 2010, New York City and the federal government committed $500 million to
repair and repaint the Brooklyn Bridge.
STEM lumps together science, technology, engineering, and
mathematics. Is there a difference
between science and engineering? Is it
important?
Henry
Petroski, a professor of civil
engineering and history and author of The Essential Engineer, believes
there is an important difference. At
heart, science is about increasing knowledge. Engineering is about invention. Of course, new knowledge makes new invention
possible. Just as often, though,
engineering runs ahead of science.
Sometimes science didn’t advance until someone invented the instruments
to conduct new observations and experiments.
The invention of the microscope
made possible the science of microbiology. Steam engines
were built and greatly improved before we had a modern scientific understanding
of thermodynamics. In fact, thermodynamics was to a large extent
born out of desire to understand steam engines. In this sense, it is an
engineering science (study of manmade things) as much as a natural science
(study of natural things) or branch of physics.
Petroski’s focus in the book is the importance of engineering to
policymaking, where it is often overshadowed by science. Policy, science, and engineering play off of
each other a lot. Most of my career as
an engineer has been related to government, policy, and regulatory compliance.
The Ghost Map by science writer Steven
Johnson is the story of the birth of epidemiology. Epidemiology is a medical
science that uses statistics to
help us understand how diseases operate in a population. Using various statistical and geographic
tools, long before we had computers and GIS, physician
John Snow
demonstrated that cholera,
once a recurring plague
that wiped out hundreds of thousands of people in some outbreaks, was a waterborne
disease. This understanding,
initially met with much skepticism, allowed officials to intervene to prevent
the spread of the disease. For those who
say of their math classes, “I’ll never us this,” here is a case where math (and
science and policy) were used to make a great difference.
It is not much publicized today that the Lewis
and Clark
expedition of 1804
to 1806 had a
partly scientific mission. Captains
Lewis and Clark were charges with bringing back samples of the flora, fauna, and culture of the
western territories. It was also hoped
that they would find a water
passage to the Pacific Ocean. In Undaunted Courage, Stephen Ambrose
writes about the scientific mission as well as the policy, diplomacy, and
commercial
hopes the expedition carried.
Of course, what attracts most people to the Lewis and Clark expedition
is that it was a great adventure. There is a place in STEM fields for thoughtful
adventurers and explorers.
A list like this deserves something strange, creepy, and more fun than you care to
admit. Right now, thousands of very
young future STEM workers are catching bugs and snakes, breaking
their toys to see
what is inside, or staring into space with a weird expression
of vacancy and concentration.
Jan
Bondeson’s Buried Alive is not a
morbid book. It is sometimes humorous,
especially in consideration of topic.
From a STEM point of view, Bondeson shows how knowledge accumulates over
time. The fears and activities of our
forefathers may seem strange to us, but they sometimes made sense in light of
what they knew. Buried Alive doesn’t simply play off our fascination with the grotesque and death, though the
book might not have been written if we lacked that fascination, I think it
reminds us to approach our ancestors with a touch of grace and humility. Maybe our progeny will show us the same courtesy.
If you’re looking for something for a younger student, check out this post→
from Joanne
Loves Science or these
recommendations→ from STEM
Friday. By the way, I also write
about engineering, infrastructure and the environment at Infrastructure Watch.
Google
Saturday, April 22, 2017
Road to the Sea by Florence Dorsey
James
B. Eads was a prominent 19th
Century civil engineer
who was based in St.
Louis most of his long career. The mark of his work can still be found on
the Mississippi
River more than a century after his death in 1887. Florence
Dorsey’s 1947
biography,
Road to the Sea, recounts his life
and accomplishments.
Eads came to St. Louis with his family in 1833 at the age of
13. They were coming by river from Louisville,
Kentucky, to set up shop in greener pastures ahead of his father, Col.
Thomas Clark Eads, who moved westward from one failed venture to the next.
The ship that carried them caught fire just as they arrived in St. Louis and
all their possessions burned up with it.
The family needed the support of the enterprising boy, so he had no
opportunity to go to school. He read voraciously, though, borrowing books from
an employer, Barret
Williams, whose collection included many books on scientific
and mechanical
subjects.
Eads decided to stay in St. Louis when his family
moved upriver to Iowa.
He was on his own at age 17, but maturing into a man who would have success as
an engineer, businessman
and builder.
Eads career began to flourish when, at age 22, he designed and had
built a boat with a diving bell. He eventually launched a fleet of bell boats
that supported his salvage business. He salvaged wrecks and cargo from the
Mississippi and its tributaries. He spent a lot of time in the river and began
to know it very well.
By the time the Civil War
broke out he had retired from salvaging and enjoying his wealth, but he risked
his own fortune to secure the Mississippi River for the Union. He built
ironclad gunboats to guard the river and attack Confederate fortifications.
America’s military leaders weren’t sure what to make of them at first, but as
the war progressed his ships were in great demand.
Eads found it frustrating to deal with Washington
politicking
and bureaucracy, especially in the U.S. Army. In
his post-war endeavors he regularly had opposition from the Army Corps
of Engineers and its chief, Andrew A.
Humphreys.
These ventures were daring feats of engineering that were aimed at
improving the commerce of the Mississippi valley. He built the world’s first
steel arch bridge at St. Louis that would connect the city to the east by railroad (and
got soaked by his contractor, Andrew
Carnegie, while he was at it). He opened a route through the mud at the
mouth of the Mississippi River that gave passage from the middle of the country
to the ocean and helped make New Orleans
a major port. In both these efforts he faced opposition and meddling from the
Corp of Engineers.
In his last days he proposed to build a railroad across Mexico’s
Tehuantepec isthmus to permit shorter passage from the Atlantic (i.e.,
the Mississippi) to the Pacific Ocean.
His proposal was a serious alternative to Ferdinand
de Lesseps’ Panama Canal.
Though others took up the cause, Eads’ ship railroad proposal practically died
with him. The Panama Canal didn’t fare much better at the time; the United
States didn’t take over the project until 1904 and it didn’t
open until 1914,
de Lesseps’ plan for a tide-level canal with no locks having been abandoned.
As an engineer and Missourian, I’m
fascinated by Eads and his extraordinary career. I would recommend Dorsey’s book to anyone
looking for an interesting and little-known bit of history.
If you’re interested in this book, you also be interested in
Dorsey, Florence. Road to the
Sea: The Story of James B. Eads and the Mississippi River. New York: Rinehart &
Company, 1947.
Sunday, October 28, 2018
The Johnstown Flood by David McCollough
On Memorial Day 1889, a storm struck western Pennsylvania. Floods were common enough in the mountain
community of Johnstown and the surrounding villages. This
one was extraordinary. Upstream the valley sat a structure that was poised to
make the flood much worse, the dam
at South Fork Reservoir.
David McCullough describes the flood and the
devastating dam break in The Johnstown
Flood. It was the worst disaster in the United States up until its time with more than
2,000 people killed by the huge wave that swept down the valley, with more
killed by fire and disease in the aftermath.
The dam had originally
built by the State of Pennsylvania too supply water for a canal. Within a few years the canal was
closed because the railroad provided freight and passenger transportation through the area. The dam changed
hands several times after that. I fell into disrepair. Somewhere along the line
someone salvaged the pipes that allowed one to control the water level behind
the dam; though in it partly collapsed state it no longer held much water.
This changed when
developers bought the dam and surrounding property to build a resort for the
wealthy industrialists of Pittsburgh. The dam was rebuilt with
indifference to materials and methods. The drain pipes were never restored. The
spillway was obstructed by a grate (to keep the fish in the stocked lake from
disappearing downstream) and low bridge. By the time of the flood, perhaps
since it was repaired, there was a slight dip in the center of the dam,
creating an unknown, unprotected second spillway. This dip was hard to see with
the eye on the large dam, but a survey to measure the elevations would have
turned it up.
The dam filled and the
lake became quite large. The vacationers sailed ships on it. The water level
was commonly within a couple of feet of the spillway, and there was no
practical way for the dam operators to control that water level. It was a
disaster waiting to happen.
Many of the people of
Johnstown expressed concern that the dam was a danger to the city. However, the
prevailing view was that the wealthy elite of Pittsburgh would have it built
right; very few endeavored to assess it for themselves. Similarly, the members
of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, including such prominences as Andrew Carnegie, had faith that the developer did the
work right, and they put no effort into checking it out.
When the floodwaters
overtopped the earthen dam, it collapsed quickly, unleashing a deadly wave of
possibly 20 million tons of water. It is hard to imagine the devastation caused
by the wave, even 15 miles downstream in Johnstown. McCullough describes it,
sometimes in great detail, based on reports from the time. The rolling wall of
water seems awesome at first, but as it begins to destroy homes and injure and
kill people, it becomes sickening as well.
The people of that
valley recovered with admirable speed and took over the cleanup and restoration
of their town the very next day. Soon aid came from across the country, and
especially from elsewhere in Pennsylvania, including the National Guard and a still young American Red Cross.
As the initial terror of
the event subsided, attention turned to the club at South Fork. Though the
press, including the Engineering
News, laid blame
on the club and the shoddy, unprofessional work done to rebuild the dam, the courts
never held the club or its members accountable. The courts, mostly in
Pittsburgh where club members held sway, accepted that it was an act of God.
It’s clear to more objective observers that a properly built dam would probably
have survived the flood, or at the very least would have had a much less
damaging failure. Though McCullough suggests the residents of Johnstown and the
members of the club were too trusting, he does not shy away from the negligence
of those who rebuilt the dam in a way that would almost surely lead to the
disaster that came.
David McCollough also
wrote
If you’re interested in
this book, you may also be interested in
Monday, June 4, 2012
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