Personal

Thomas Bouch died during the public inquest into the failure of the high girders of the Tay Bridge at his country retreat in Moffat, and is buried at the Dean Cemetery in Edinburgh.

He was the engineer to the Edinburgh and Northern Railway during which time he designed the train ferry crossing between Granton and Burntisland.

Afterwards he became a consulting engineer. As an engineer he had a reputation for being able to build lines very cheaply. He went on to design many short distance lines for companies which could not afford heavy engineering.

James Finley: Born 1762, Deceased 1828, in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, USA. Participation in the following structures: builder, Jacob's Creek Bridge (1801).

The use of coke as a fuel to smelt iron had been attempted in the second half of the 17th Century, but the first successful process was established by Abraham Darby around 1709 at his newly acquired ironworks in the Coalbrookdale, Shropshire. This was a major industrial breakthrough because it allowed the casting of much larger pieces than the old charcoal fuel process, which had been largely restricted to pots and kettles. Darby’s achievement in mastering the coke smelting process enabled this small valley in Shropshire to become the cradle of the world’s industrial revolution. The products of Darby’s ironworks were shipped down the River Severn by barge to Bristol and thence all over Britain and progressively outwards to Europe and the rest of the world.

Among the features of Letchworth State Park that attract attention and stand out in the memory bank of visitors of all ages is not part of the Park at all but is the Erie High Bridge. This railroad bridge is still in active use today, and is the same bridge, with some renovations to allow heavier trains, that was built after the equally famous wooden structure burned. The origin of this bridge leads us to study a very interesting man -- the engineer who designed the bridge, George Shattuck Morison. My reason for use of this title will become more clear as you read of his accomplishments.

Few American cities can claim a landmark as distinctive as Cincinnati's Suspension Bridge. The Covington and Cincinnati Bridge, in 1984 renamed after designer John A. Roebling, and all the while called by locals simply "The Suspension Bridge", has been a symbol of the city since its opening in December of 1866. Images of the bridge can be seen today in all parts of the city hanging in homes, offices, restaurants, bars, waiting rooms, and as backdrops for the local television news. More than just a nostalgic decoration, the old bridge remains an important river crossing for thousands of cars and buses each day.

...The bridge opened to pedestrians in December 1866, and the 1,057ft. main span was at that time the longest in the world, surpassing the Wheeling, WV suspension bridge (1849). Not only was the Cincinnati Suspension Bridge the world's longest, but it was also the first to utilize both vertical suspenders and diagonal stays fanning from either tower. This advance was next seen on the Brooklyn Bridge (also designed by John Roebling), which surpassed the Cincinnati bridge in length and almost every other statistical category in 1883.

Villard de Honnecourt is known only through a portfolio of 33 parchment leaves containing approximately 250 drawings preserved in Paris (Bibl. nat. de France, MS. Fr. 19093). There is no record of him in any known contract, guild register, inscription, payment receipt, tax record, or any other type of evidence from which the names of medieval artisans are learnt. Villard's fame is due to the uniqueness of his drawings and 19th-century inventiveness in crediting him with having "erected churches throughout the length and breadth of Christendom" without any documentary evidence that he designed or built any church anywhere, or that he was in fact an architect.

Who Villard was, and what he did, must be postulated from his drawings and the textual addenda to them on 26 of the 66 surfaces of the 33 leaves remaining in his portfolio. In these sometimes enigmatic inscriptions Villard gave his name twice (Wilars dehonecort [fol. 1v]; Vilars dehoncort [fol. 15r]), but said nothing of his occupation and claimed not a single artistic creation or monument of any type. He addressed his portfolio, which he termed a "book," to no one in particular, saying (fol. 1v) that it contained "sound advice on the techniques of masonry and on the devices of carpentry . . . and the techniques of representation, its features as the discipline of geometry commands and instructs it."

Sir Benjamin Baker: Born on 31 March 1840 in Keyford, now part of Frome, Somerset, England, United Kingdom. Deceased on 19 May 1907 in Pangbourne, England, United Kingdom.
Education: Apprentice at the ironworks Price & Fox, Neath Abbey (South Wales)
1862 - 1898.
Works in John Fowler's office; directs the construction of the London underground, 1867. Refitting work on three Telford Bridges: Menai Straits Bridge, Buildwas Bridge, and the Severn River Bridge near Gloucester; Cooperation on the Encyclopedia Britannica, 1882 - 1890.
Designs the Firth of Forth Bridge with John Fowler; Asswan Dam on the Nile

The bridge maker’s signs advertised the builders of the wrought iron bridges that were popular at the turn of the century. These were collected in Central Illinois during 1968-70. There are over 180 signs represented under the “Maker’s Sign” icon. The bridge signs and the bridges they represent are under the major category icon “Iron Bridges”.

Below are Newspaper articles, pictures, stories, commendations, or anything related to the Rivers the 150th Bridged to cross.

From the shores of Maine to "Frisco"--
Fighting Engineers are we!
We build our Countries bridges,
To make way for victory.
First to Fight for Rights and freedom,
and to keep the pathways clear,
we are proud to claim the title of
"Combat Engineers"

Where-ever we are needed
to build or repair,
you can bet that you will always find
The "150th" there.

Squire and Anna lived in Utica, N.Y., where, as a well-known civil engineer, inventor, and theoretician, he developed the first scientifically based rules for bridge construction. After graduating from Union College in Schenectady, N.Y., in 1830, he did survey work for several railroads and canal projects and made surveying instruments. In 1840 he invented a lock to weight canal boats.

The invention of the steam engine required bridges which could support heavy live loads and this motivated Squire to turn his attention to bridges. At the start of the 18th century, iron as a structural material was unknown, but as the century evolved, cast iron came into general use and wrought iron was in commercial use by century end. He invented two new truss designs and in 1853 completed a 146-foot span iron railroad bridge near West Troy (now Watervliet), N.Y.