0 00:00:08,214 --> 00:00:09,932 - Hello and welcome back. 1 00:00:09,932 --> 00:00:11,685 Today we are standing in front of 2 00:00:11,685 --> 00:00:15,156 one of the world's most significant, most iconic 3 00:00:15,156 --> 00:00:17,513 bridges: the Brooklyn Bridge. 4 00:00:17,513 --> 00:00:19,464 So many of you know the Brooklyn Bridge. 5 00:00:19,464 --> 00:00:22,040 If you've seen it in a photograph, you'll recognize it. 6 00:00:22,040 --> 00:00:24,410 But do you know the story behind the Brooklyn Bridge? 7 00:00:24,410 --> 00:00:26,081 Do you know the man who designed it, 8 00:00:26,081 --> 00:00:28,334 and his inspirations, and the will 9 00:00:28,334 --> 00:00:30,052 it took for him to do it? 10 00:00:30,052 --> 00:00:32,664 So today's lecture, we'll go over this history, 11 00:00:32,664 --> 00:00:35,683 not only the scientific aspects of the Brooklyn Bridge, 12 00:00:35,683 --> 00:00:37,482 where I'll talk to you about some terminology 13 00:00:37,482 --> 00:00:40,222 that engineers use for design, but I also 14 00:00:40,222 --> 00:00:42,428 will tell you the history of the Brooklyn Bridge, 15 00:00:42,428 --> 00:00:45,330 and it's a dramatic story, and it's a great story. 16 00:00:45,330 --> 00:00:48,698 I can only go through it in an abbreviated manner today. 17 00:00:48,698 --> 00:00:51,068 I suggest that you read more about this 18 00:00:51,068 --> 00:00:53,191 because it really is a tremendous story. 19 00:00:53,191 --> 00:00:56,223 It was a tremendous feat of engineering to have 20 00:00:56,223 --> 00:00:58,557 this bridge designed. 21 00:00:58,557 --> 00:01:01,784 Last time, we talked about some bridges in the UK 22 00:01:01,784 --> 00:01:04,315 and we left off with Stephenson and Brunel. 23 00:01:04,315 --> 00:01:06,033 So Stephenson and Brunel were designing 24 00:01:06,033 --> 00:01:08,448 some long-span bridges, and long-span, 25 00:01:08,448 --> 00:01:11,711 for that period of time (this was the 1850s), 26 00:01:11,711 --> 00:01:13,754 was on the order of 500 feet. 27 00:01:13,754 --> 00:01:15,960 Today, we're going to look at John Roebling's 28 00:01:15,960 --> 00:01:19,315 significant bridges and in particular three of them. 29 00:01:19,315 --> 00:01:21,231 So we're going to look at the Niagara River Bridge 30 00:01:21,231 --> 00:01:23,727 that he was designing around the same time 31 00:01:23,727 --> 00:01:25,561 that Stephenson and Brunel were designing 32 00:01:25,561 --> 00:01:28,058 their bridges in the US, except for the span 33 00:01:28,058 --> 00:01:30,832 of the Niagara River Bridge is much longer 34 00:01:30,832 --> 00:01:33,236 than what Stephenson and Brunel were doing. 35 00:01:33,236 --> 00:01:36,010 Stephenson and Brunel and the Niagara River Bridge 36 00:01:36,010 --> 00:01:38,472 were all bridges for railroads. 37 00:01:38,472 --> 00:01:40,956 The other significant bridges by Roebling were 38 00:01:40,956 --> 00:01:43,664 the Cincinnati Bridge and of course, the Brooklyn Bridge. 39 00:01:43,664 --> 00:01:45,292 So we're going to start off by looking 40 00:01:45,292 --> 00:01:47,707 at the Niagara River Bridge, touch upon 41 00:01:47,707 --> 00:01:50,073 a little bit of the Cincinnati Bridge, which is a prototype 42 00:01:50,073 --> 00:01:51,875 essentially to the Brooklyn Bridge. 43 00:01:51,875 --> 00:01:53,663 But today's lecture is going to focus 44 00:01:53,663 --> 00:01:56,484 on his masterpiece, the Brooklyn Bridge. 45 00:01:56,484 --> 00:01:58,270 I like to start off my lectures 46 00:01:58,270 --> 00:02:00,037 with introducing the engineer. 47 00:02:00,037 --> 00:02:02,846 I think that the personality, the person, 48 00:02:02,846 --> 00:02:06,235 plays an important role to having 49 00:02:06,235 --> 00:02:07,873 these bridges designed and accomplished. 50 00:02:07,873 --> 00:02:09,985 So these people not only have to have 51 00:02:09,985 --> 00:02:13,504 a real strong technical understanding of the 52 00:02:13,504 --> 00:02:15,954 mathematics, the engineering, but they also 53 00:02:15,954 --> 00:02:18,287 in many cases have to have a strong will. 54 00:02:18,287 --> 00:02:21,585 They had to persevere, and that is John Roebling's story. 55 00:02:21,585 --> 00:02:25,010 So John Roebling came from Russia. 56 00:02:25,010 --> 00:02:28,934 He graduated in 1826 from the Royal Polytechnic Institute 57 00:02:28,934 --> 00:02:31,871 of Berlin, and before I continue telling you 58 00:02:31,871 --> 00:02:33,671 about his experiences as an engineer, 59 00:02:33,671 --> 00:02:35,668 I want to tell you a little bit about his personality. 60 00:02:35,668 --> 00:02:37,452 What I tell my students is that 61 00:02:37,452 --> 00:02:39,255 his personality matches his face. 62 00:02:39,255 --> 00:02:41,623 So if you look at an image of John Roebling, 63 00:02:41,623 --> 00:02:44,154 you see a very tough looking man, and 64 00:02:44,154 --> 00:02:45,908 indeed, he was a tough man. 65 00:02:45,908 --> 00:02:48,473 I read this book by David McCullough 66 00:02:48,473 --> 00:02:50,517 called "The Great Bridge" and it's a great book 67 00:02:50,517 --> 00:02:53,942 to understand not only the building of the Brooklyn Bridge, 68 00:02:53,942 --> 00:02:56,424 but also the personality of John Roebling. 69 00:02:56,424 --> 00:02:59,538 My impression from the research I did on John Roebling 70 00:02:59,538 --> 00:03:02,115 is that he was certainly a man who was admired, 71 00:03:02,115 --> 00:03:03,706 but admired from afar. 72 00:03:03,706 --> 00:03:05,694 He wasn't a man that you would be 73 00:03:05,694 --> 00:03:08,968 very friendly with, close up to. 74 00:03:08,968 --> 00:03:11,940 He wasn't a very open person, opening up 75 00:03:11,940 --> 00:03:14,343 and speaking of his feelings, so to speak. 76 00:03:14,343 --> 00:03:18,430 He was emotionally and physically a very tough man. 77 00:03:18,430 --> 00:03:20,555 He was a believer in hydropathy, the healing 78 00:03:20,555 --> 00:03:22,911 powers of water, so for example, if he didn't 79 00:03:22,911 --> 00:03:25,535 feel well at night, or whenever he didn't feel well, 80 00:03:25,535 --> 00:03:28,262 he would sit in a scalding hot tub of water, 81 00:03:28,262 --> 00:03:30,063 and then jump out and wrap himself 82 00:03:30,063 --> 00:03:31,898 in ice cold sheets. 83 00:03:31,898 --> 00:03:35,009 He would take cold baths every night, for example, 84 00:03:35,009 --> 00:03:37,900 and he was known to drink concoctions of 85 00:03:37,900 --> 00:03:42,590 raw egg, charcoal, turpentine and warm water. 86 00:03:42,590 --> 00:03:44,585 So this was the kind of person he was, 87 00:03:44,585 --> 00:03:46,304 an indicator of the kind of person 88 00:03:46,304 --> 00:03:48,558 that he was, physically, very tough person. 89 00:03:48,558 --> 00:03:50,195 He was a man of strong will. 90 00:03:50,195 --> 00:03:52,308 If he was convinced he was right, 91 00:03:52,308 --> 00:03:55,129 it was almost impossible to convince him otherwise. 92 00:03:55,129 --> 00:03:57,254 So this is the backdrop to John Roebling, 93 00:03:57,254 --> 00:03:58,960 a person of strong will, of physical 94 00:03:58,960 --> 00:04:00,922 and emotional strength, and it took 95 00:04:00,922 --> 00:04:04,684 that personality to make the Brooklyn Bridge a reality. 96 00:04:04,684 --> 00:04:06,716 John Roebling was also a close friend and 97 00:04:06,716 --> 00:04:09,990 a student of the philosopher Georg Hegel. 98 00:04:09,990 --> 00:04:12,602 Georg Hegel, who author Alan Trachtenberg 99 00:04:12,602 --> 00:04:15,261 wrote this about Hegel to describe him: 100 00:04:15,261 --> 00:04:17,502 he said, quote, he inspired his students 101 00:04:17,502 --> 00:04:20,066 with radical dreams of self-realization, 102 00:04:20,066 --> 00:04:23,898 of personal cogency to realize one's potential. 103 00:04:23,898 --> 00:04:25,861 This was the aspect of Hegel's system which 104 00:04:25,861 --> 00:04:28,357 struck Roebling most forcefully. 105 00:04:28,357 --> 00:04:31,049 Roebling, after graduating, he was an assistant 106 00:04:31,049 --> 00:04:33,465 engineer and he had these high hopes 107 00:04:33,465 --> 00:04:36,240 of being a designer of suspension bridges. 108 00:04:36,240 --> 00:04:38,400 He was fascinated by the suspension bridges 109 00:04:38,400 --> 00:04:40,687 that he was reading about, but he felt 110 00:04:40,687 --> 00:04:42,231 that the German life wouldn't allow him 111 00:04:42,231 --> 00:04:43,821 that opportunity. 112 00:04:43,821 --> 00:04:46,027 He said that quote, the excessive bureaucracy, 113 00:04:46,027 --> 00:04:49,870 end quote, of German society defeated his hopes. 114 00:04:49,870 --> 00:04:51,461 He wrote in his diary that nothing 115 00:04:51,461 --> 00:04:53,957 could be accomplished without quote, an army of 116 00:04:53,957 --> 00:04:56,510 counselors, ministers, and other officials 117 00:04:56,510 --> 00:04:58,438 discussing the matter for 10 years, 118 00:04:58,438 --> 00:05:01,004 making long journeys and writing long reports, 119 00:05:01,004 --> 00:05:03,663 while the money spent in all these preliminaries 120 00:05:03,663 --> 00:05:05,204 comes to more than the actual 121 00:05:05,204 --> 00:05:07,575 accomplishment of the enterprise." 122 00:05:07,575 --> 00:05:11,372 So you can hear the dissatisfaction in his diary entry. 123 00:05:11,372 --> 00:05:15,331 So inspired by Hegel's teaching, he sees America 124 00:05:15,331 --> 00:05:20,331 as a new hope and in 1831, he leaves Europe for America. 125 00:05:21,064 --> 00:05:23,644 He leaves with his brother and a small band 126 00:05:23,644 --> 00:05:25,430 of German immigrants and they land 127 00:05:25,430 --> 00:05:28,587 in Philadelphia on August 6, 1831. 128 00:05:28,587 --> 00:05:31,782 They founded a German farm community near Pittsburgh 129 00:05:31,782 --> 00:05:34,394 called Saxonburg, and he became 130 00:05:34,394 --> 00:05:36,194 a farmer for six years. 131 00:05:36,194 --> 00:05:40,118 But after six years, in 1837, he becomes bored 132 00:05:40,118 --> 00:05:42,196 with farming and he takes a job with 133 00:05:42,196 --> 00:05:44,762 the Pennsylvania state as an engineer. 134 00:05:44,762 --> 00:05:47,049 One of his first responsibilities was 135 00:05:47,049 --> 00:05:49,580 a survey for the Portage Railroad. 136 00:05:49,580 --> 00:05:52,076 At that time, canals were a main source 137 00:05:52,076 --> 00:05:53,539 of transportation, and when the canals 138 00:05:53,539 --> 00:05:55,339 were blocked by mountains, the boats 139 00:05:55,339 --> 00:05:56,686 were loaded onto railway trucks 140 00:05:56,686 --> 00:05:58,648 and hauled over the mountains. 141 00:05:58,648 --> 00:06:00,656 So there was an engine at the top of the 142 00:06:00,656 --> 00:06:02,487 mountain, and the rope connecting the engine 143 00:06:02,487 --> 00:06:06,287 to the truck was a six-inch thick hemp rope. 144 00:06:06,287 --> 00:06:09,420 Now these ropes frayed easily, therefore they 145 00:06:09,420 --> 00:06:11,721 were dangerous, and they had a short life span, 146 00:06:11,721 --> 00:06:14,042 and therefore, they were expensive. 147 00:06:14,042 --> 00:06:16,376 So Roebling saw an opportunity. 148 00:06:16,376 --> 00:06:18,472 He developed a technique of spinning wires 149 00:06:18,472 --> 00:06:21,926 to form wire rope, which was smaller, 150 00:06:21,926 --> 00:06:24,942 stronger and lighter than hemp rope. 151 00:06:24,942 --> 00:06:27,928 He was given this opportunity, and his wire rope 152 00:06:27,928 --> 00:06:30,331 manufacturing business was born. 153 00:06:30,331 --> 00:06:33,953 At first, this business was in Saxonburg, and then 154 00:06:33,953 --> 00:06:38,110 in 1848, he moved it to Trenton, New Jersey. 155 00:06:38,110 --> 00:06:39,701 The success of this business provided him 156 00:06:39,701 --> 00:06:41,581 economic security and the freedom 157 00:06:41,581 --> 00:06:43,869 to pursue his ambitions. 158 00:06:43,869 --> 00:06:46,272 His career as a bridge builder began after 159 00:06:46,272 --> 00:06:48,594 his wire rope business was established. 160 00:06:48,594 --> 00:06:52,309 In 1845, he won a competition for a small aqueduct, 161 00:06:52,309 --> 00:06:55,978 a seven span over the Allegheny River in Pittsburgh, 162 00:06:55,978 --> 00:06:58,277 which was a suspension bridge. 163 00:06:58,277 --> 00:07:01,980 Today, that suspension bridge is no longer in existence. 164 00:07:01,980 --> 00:07:05,080 By 1850, Roebling had six suspension bridges 165 00:07:05,080 --> 00:07:07,156 to his name, each one using rope 166 00:07:07,156 --> 00:07:10,142 from his wire rope manufacturing company. 167 00:07:10,142 --> 00:07:12,557 The oldest suspension bridge in the US 168 00:07:12,557 --> 00:07:15,982 is one designed by Roebling in 1848, 169 00:07:15,982 --> 00:07:17,489 the Delaware Acqueduct. 170 00:07:17,489 --> 00:07:19,743 This bridge is still in existence today and 171 00:07:19,743 --> 00:07:22,808 it is located near the intersection of 172 00:07:22,808 --> 00:07:24,979 the three states of Pennsylvania, 173 00:07:24,979 --> 00:07:27,424 New York and New Jersey.