Quebec Bridge Failure

I'm looking at two photographs, both taken in late August, 1907. In one, a great cantilever structure extends almost 900 feet from its pier -- half a huge bridge over the St. Lawrence River -- 40 million pounds of structural steel reaching toward Quebec. The second photograph is not so pretty. It shows 40 million pounds of what looks like wet spaghetti, splashed across the ground, leading away from the pier and off into the water.

For eight years the Quebec bridge project had been under the direction of an American engineer. He was Theodore Cooper, the biggest name in bridge building. Cooper had never produced a true superlative, and his first move was to extend the span from 1600 to 1800 feet. That got the piers out of the water and on to dry land. But it also made this the largest cantilever span ever attempted.