Primary Source

It will be the effort of the writer in the following pages to point out the peculiarities of material and construction involved in the designing and building of “Iron Highway Bridges,” in the hope that a dissemination of their scientific principles in a popular form, will bear fruit in a more thorough appreciation of a noble art, and in elevating the standard of requirements of this very important class of public works. The subject has been divided into two parts, each complete in itself; the one general and descriptive, and the other analytical. The former is peculiarly intended to present to public committees entrusted with the letting of bridge contracts such information as they ought to possess, while the latter is offered as an aid to engineers not experts in this branch of the profession, and yet who are often called upon to act as inspectors.

Welcome to the online edition of Bridging the Bay: Bridging the Campus.

...At a time when the Bay Area’s bridges are being analyzed and new structures are being planned, it is important to recognize the diversity and depth of the research collections that exist on the Berkeley campus. The exhibit includes books, documents, architectural drawings and renderings, blueprints, artifacts, maps, and photographs. The bridges documented include the Golden Gate Bridge, the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, the Carquinez Bridge, the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, the Antioch Bridge, and the Dumbarton Bridge. The exhibit also contains documents detailing Bay Area bridge projects that were seriously considered, but were never built.

One of the most interesting papers presented to the American Society of Engineers at the Seabright Convention is that of Mr. THEODORE COOPER on "American Railway Bridges." It is interesting from the historical matter contained in it, and here first systematically gathered together, and valuable as showing the progress of a branch of engineering that has made our country famous for its works of this nature. The paper is necessarily long, so that we cannot publish it in full, even did the rules of the society permit, and we must content ourselves with the following abstract. We congratulate Mr. COOPER upon the success attending his efforts to unearth and arrange much matter relating to the early history of wooden bridge building that has usually been considered inaccessible.

A gift of John F. Harbeson, the archive consists of Cret's student and professional work and is displayed on approximately four hundred and seventy-six sheets containing one or more drawings, photos, or prints per sheet. The archival holdings may be broadly divided into eighty-eight sheets of student work at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Lyon and Paris, fifty-three student and professional watercolors, thirteen sheets of bookplates, seals, medals and title pages, fifty-six sheets of competitions (thirty-two of various university designs), nine sheets of commercial work, one hundred and two of memorials, twenty-two sheets of government buildings, twelve residential designs, twenty-one sheets of bridge designs, five sheets of watercolors and ink sketches by Col. Oscar Lahalle (Cret's father-in-law), and one hundred and eleven sheets of varied design work.

A self-made man and one of America’s greatest engineers, James Buchanan Eads led a life inextricably intertwined with the nation’s most important waterway, the Mississippi River. He explored the river bottom in a diving bell of his own design; made a fortune salvaging wrecks; in the 1870s built the world's first steel bridge over the Mississippi at St. Louis; then deepened the river at its mouth, turning New Orleans into the second largest port in the nation. By the time of his death in 1887, Eads was widely acknowledged to be one of the most influential men of his day.

Personal author:
Ellet, Charles, 1810-1862.

Title:
Report on a rail-way suspension bridge across the
Connecticut, at Middletown, with a proposal for its
construction, to a committee of the citizens of

Alexander Lawson's engraving, "Architectural Plan and Elevation of the Schuylkill P. Bridge," illustrates A Statistical Account of the Schuylkill Permanent Bridge, Communicated to the Philadelphia Society of Agriculture, 1806 (Philadelphia: Printed by Jane Aitken, 1807), which was bound with the first volume of the Society's Memoirs. The Society's interest in such a structure acknowledges its importance to the development of the Philadelphia region, both agriculturally and commercially.

The John A. Roebling's Sons company and its employees played an important role in the lives of many, if not all, Americans with thier power to make the impossible, possible and the impractical, practical.

This web site tells the story of one man from Prussia and his family, the people who worked for them, and the communities they built. The archive is mostly Primary Source material and is divided into four sections. For an introduction to the Company, check out The Roebling Story a history published by the company on its Centennial Anniversery. Then check out General History of the Roebling Company for more on the company and the family that built it.

On June 12, 1806, John A. Roebling, civil engineer and designer of the Brooklyn Bridge, was born in Muehlhausen, Prussia. The Brooklyn Bridge, Roebling's greatest achievement, spans the East River to connect Manhattan with Brooklyn. For nearly a decade after its completion, the bridge, with a main span of 1595 feet, was the longest suspension bridge in the world. Steel wire cable, invented and manufactured by Roebling, made the structure possible.

When the Brooklyn Bridge was opened you had to pay three cents to cross it until it was paid for. When they opened the bridge everybody went to see it..It took them 14 years to build the Brooklyn bridge.

Each of the original 33 leaves or folios (66 pages) are reproduced here in digital form for educational use only.
If your screen is set at 800 by 600 pixel resolution the large versions of the pages will appear close to the size of the originals which are approximately 240mm x160mm.
The pages follow the orientation and order in which they were bound together and here the usual convention is followed with each leaf or folio being numbered and the front recto and back verso identified with "r" and "v" respectively.