Modern (18th-20th Century)

Lennox Bridge is the oldest surviving bridge on the Australian mainland. This sandstone, single arched bridge is situated in a bushland setting on the eastern escarpment of the Blue Mountains of New South Wales and is well worth a visit. The bridge can now only be approached from the western side along Mitchell’s Pass. Once across the bridge, the roadway changes to one way traffic down the Pass.

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.

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.

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.

John Roebling was enthusiastic.

"No other part of the East River offers a locality so favorable to bridging," the great engineer wrote to the New York businessmen who proposed building a span to link Manhattan and Long Island.

But the East River bridge that so interested Roebling was not the Brooklyn Bridge that would be the cornerstone of his enduring fame. This span -- proposed in 1856, more than a decade before the Brooklyn Bridge project took form in 1867 -- was what would become the Queensboro Bridge.

As a father and son, John and Washington Roebling were the foremost American engineers of suspension bridge construction in the nineteenth century. John Roebling was born in Muhlhausen, Thuringia in 1806. While in school he developed an interest in both metaphysics and in bridge building. He graduated with a degree in civil engineering from the Royal Polytechnic Institute of Berlin in 1826.

In 1831 Roebling and his brother immigrated to Pennsylvania to farm. When this venture failed, Roebling accepted the position of Pennsylvania state engineer. In this position, he surveyed and supervised the construction of canals, locks, and dams.

In 1841 Roebling invented the twisted wire-rope cable, an invention which foreshadowed the use of wire cable supports for the decks of suspension bridges. Six years later he established a factory in New Jersey for the manufacture of this cable. Because the cable could support long spans and extremely heavy loads, Roebling quickly gained a reputation as a quality bridge engineer.

Upper Delaware Scenic and Recreational River is the home of the oldest existing wire suspension bridge in the United States — the Delaware Aqueduct, or Roebling Bridge as it is now known. Begun in 1847 as one of four suspension aqueducts on the Delaware and Hudson Canal, it was designed by and built under the supervision of John A. Roebling, future engineer of the Brooklyn Bridge.

Portions of the D & H Canal, including the Delaware Aqueduct, were designated a National Historic Landmark in 1968. The Delaware Aqueduct is also designated a National Civil Engineering Landmark.

...A German immigrant, and graduate of the Royal Polytechnic School of Berlin, Roebling came to the United States in 1831. It was not until 1845 that he built his first suspension structure. From 1845 until his death in 1869, he designed five major suspension bridges. Two — the Cincinnati-Covington Bridge and the Brooklyn Bridge — are still standing.

Some further reference should now be made to two men whose names are identified with the rise and progress of the railway system. George Stephenson was born in a small cottage, in the village of Wylam, on the banks of the Tyne, near Newcastle. He was the son of a collier, and had early to labour for his share of the household bread. Heavy were the demands upon him. When " too young to stride across the furrow " he went to plough. Then we find him picking bats and dross from the coal-heaps, at twopence a day, and he was still so small that he often hid himself when the overseer passed, lest he shculd be thought too little to earn his wages. Shortly after he entered his teens he worked as brakesman on a tramway, and subsequently became stoker to an engine on an estate of Lord Ravensworth, often having to rise at one and two o'clock in the morning, and to work till a late hour at night. Thankful in the receipt of a wage of a shilling a day, he declared, when this amount was doubled, that he was "a man for life."

Personal author:
Roebling, John Augustus, 1806-1869.

Title:
Long and short span railway bridges. by John A. Roebling.

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