Excerpt:
Today, we meet the father and son who built the Brooklyn Bridge. The University of Houston's College of Engineering presents this series about the machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them.
For me, the story of John Roebling begins in Kentucky, not far from where I used to live. On Sunday afternoons my wife and I would take our kids to see Old High Bridge over the Kentucky River. A plaque credits John Roebling with having started this old bridge in 1853. Actually, the bridge there today has been entirely reconceived. Still, the glorious spider web of steel emerging out of the quiet hilly isolation around it powerfully evokes Roebling's sense of design.
Annotation:
John and Washington Roebling and the Brooklyn Bridge. Essay by John H. Lienhard.