Modern (18th-20th Century)

The King Iron Bridge Co. played an important role in the development and construction of metal truss bridges, a product of American engineering and construction technology, nationwide during the later part of the Nineteenth Century. The King Iron Bridge & Manufacturing Co. was organized under that name in Cleveland in 1871 by Zenas King, who had started his career in building bridges in 1858. King came to Cleveland from Cincinnati around 1861, and by 1865 had established his works on Wason (East 38th St.) between St. Clair and Hamilton Avenue. The Company moved to a larger plant on Ruskin Ave.(East 69th St.) around 1888.

The theory of the equilibrium of arches, until of late years, commanded but little attention from practical men, partly owing to the fact that, since it was derived from observations of their own failures and successes, it came rather too late to be of much service to them, but chiefly owing to the form in which it was presented by mathematicians, who, by giving a fictitious importance to insignificant matters, effectually obscured the broad truth, that the whole question was essentially a comparatively simple problem of weight and leverage.

Bridges are employed to support weight over an open space, and transfer this weight to their supports, or abutments. They may be fundamentally classified by the reactions they exert upon their abutments. They may push on the abutments, pull on them, or simply rest on the abutments without horizontal forces. In general, the production of horzontal forces in the bridge structure is the cost of transferring the weight of bridge and load to the abutments. Bridges are generally, and less fundamentally, classified by the type of construction. Arch bridges push on their abutments, suspension bridges pull on them, while beams and trusses rest on their abutments without horizontal forces. The term beam is used when the material of the bridge is in a single piece, such as a log or a plate girder, while a truss is built up of pieces, called members. A truss generally has an upper chord in compression, a lower chord in tension, and web members consisting of diagonal or vertical ties (if in tension) or posts (if in compression).

Born in Berne, Switzerland, future structural engineering visionary Robert Malliart earned a degree in civil engineering from the Federal Polytechnical Institute in Zurich in 1894. Malliart established his own design-construction company in 1902 and moved the firm to Russia in 1912, only to see it fail during the Russian Revolution five years later.
In a two-year span before the move to Russia, Malliart entered five major bridge competitions, although judging bodies typically preferred bridges more conventional than young Malliart’s. Regardless of the design competitions, continued innovative bridge designs produced notoriety for him.

RENNIE, JOHN, a celebrated civil engineer, was the youngest son of a respectable farmer at Phantassie, in East Lothian, where he was born, June 7, 1761. Before he had attained his sixth year, he had the misfortune to lose his father; his education, nevertheless, was carried on at the parish school (Prestonkirk) by his surviving relatives. The peculiar talents of young Rennie seem to have been called forth and fostered by his proximity to the workshop of the celebrated mechanic, Andrew Meikle, the inventor or improver of the thrashing-machine. He frequently visited that scene of mechanism, to admire the complicated processes which he saw going forward, and amuse himself with the tools of the workmen. In time, he began to imitate at home the models of machinery which he saw there; and at the early age of ten he had made the model of a wind-mill, a steam-engine, and a pile-engine, the last of which is said to have exhibited much practical dexterity.

In 2001 he will has completed 50 years as IST Cathedratic Professor.
That school had a decision to devote oneself a solemn session one year after he died.
He is one of the most mediatic and loved Portuguese Engineer since ever by your job.
He became eternal by various structures and special for bridges, some of then became ex-libris for some places or regions.
To the traditional analysis way of structures study, with very limitation in that time, Edgar Cardoso came to support the experimental analysis in little models of structures to build, this thing allow him to achieve the best performances of the materials and building boldness structures.
To this advantage, Edgar Cardoso, jointed the pleasure for new designs and high esthetic feel for “real structures”.

Mid-19th century advertisement for Wendell Bollman from a City Directory , a civil and constructing engineer noted for his truss bridges. An engraving in the ad. shows a truss bridge with a Civil War era locomotive about to cross it. The address for Bollman's works was given as Clinton Street and Second Avenue, Canton.

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SIR CHARLES FOX was born at Derby on the 11th of March, 1810, and was the youngest of the four sons of Dr. Fox, who held a prominent position as a physician in that town. He was articled to his brother, Mr. Douglas Fox, then practising as a surgeon, and remained with him for some time. During this period he prepared a great deal of apparatus with his own hands for his brother's lectures at the Mechanics' Institution, and also aided in working out the process of casting in elastic moulds, for which the silver medal of the Society of Arts was awarded to Mr. D. Fox. He manifested from the first much mechanical skill, and took the deepest interest, when quite a lad, in manufactures of all kinds. The projection of the Liverpool and Manchester railway gave increased force to his natural bent, and, being released from his medical articles, he was taken as a pupil by Captain Ericsson, then of Liverpool. Whilst with that gentleman, he was engaged in experiments upon rotary engines, and in designing and constructing the "Novelty " engine, one of the three which competed at Rainhill in October 1829. Shortly afterwards, through the late Mr. Robert Stephenson, M.P., Past-President Inst. C.E., he obtained an appointment as an Assistant Engineer on the London and Birmingham railway, then in course of construction, being placed first under the late Mr. Luck, M. Inst. C.E., on the Watford section, and afterwards in charge of the Extension Works from Camden Town to Euston Square.