Ysarex
Been spending a lot of time on here!
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Went down to the Arch and riverfront for my walk this morning. Grabbed a couple snaps of the Eads Bridge. The bridge is finishing it's 150th year today. James Eads bridge was the second bridge to cross the Mississippi. The first was built in Rock Island Ill. Shortly after that bridge was completed a steamboat captain ran his boat into the bridge destroying the boat. They wanted grounds for a lawsuit. The bridge was fiercely resisted by the riverboat owners who knew that a railroad finally crossing the Mississippi would be the first nail in their coffin. James Eads bridge then was even more fiercely resisted.
The boat owners hired a team of engineers and put this question to them: What's the widest possible bridge span that could conceivably be constructed to carry a railroad across the river. The answer they got at that time was 250 feet. To be safe they doubled it and then had the municipality across the river in Illinois pass a law that, to ensure boat travel remained unobstructed, any bridge crossing the river had to leave 500 feet open between the bridge supports. The arches in the Eads bridge are 550 feet. Eads added the 50 feet to spite them.
Those engineers were right. What Eads did was impossible in 1870. The steel to hold up the bridge didn't exist. So Eads went to Pittsburgh and visited Andrew Carnegie. With Carnegie's help Eads invented the steel that had the tensile strength he needed and then oversaw it's manufacture. Eads was a self-taught engineer and had never built a bridge before. His bridge is an engineering marvel and ready for it's next 150 years. Fuji X-T2 w/18-55mm
Cory Williams passing under the Eads Bridge
The boat owners hired a team of engineers and put this question to them: What's the widest possible bridge span that could conceivably be constructed to carry a railroad across the river. The answer they got at that time was 250 feet. To be safe they doubled it and then had the municipality across the river in Illinois pass a law that, to ensure boat travel remained unobstructed, any bridge crossing the river had to leave 500 feet open between the bridge supports. The arches in the Eads bridge are 550 feet. Eads added the 50 feet to spite them.
Those engineers were right. What Eads did was impossible in 1870. The steel to hold up the bridge didn't exist. So Eads went to Pittsburgh and visited Andrew Carnegie. With Carnegie's help Eads invented the steel that had the tensile strength he needed and then oversaw it's manufacture. Eads was a self-taught engineer and had never built a bridge before. His bridge is an engineering marvel and ready for it's next 150 years. Fuji X-T2 w/18-55mm
Cory Williams passing under the Eads Bridge
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