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1 Adams, William Bridges
[br]b. 1797 Madeley, Staffordshire, Englandd. 23 July 1872 Broadstairs, Kent, England[br]English inventory particularly of road and rail vehicles and their equipment.[br]Ill health forced Adams to live abroad when he was a young man and when he returned to England in the early 1830s he became a partner in his father's firm of coachbuilders. Coaches during that period were steered by a centrally pivoted front axle, which meant that the front wheels had to swing beneath the body and were therefore made smaller than the rear wheels. Adams considered this design defective and invented equirotal coaches, built by his firm, in which the front and rear wheels were of equal diameter and the coach body was articulated midway along its length so that the front part pivoted. He also applied himself to improving vehicles for railways, which were developing rapidly then.In 1843 he opened his own engineering works, Fairfield Works in north London (he was not related to his contemporary William Adams, who was appointed Locomotive Superintendent to the North London Railway in 1854). In 1847 he and James Samuel, Engineer to the Eastern Counties Railway, built for that line a small steam inspection car, the Express, which was light enough to be lifted off the track. The following year Adams built a broad-gauge steam railcar, the Fairfield, for the Bristol \& Exeter Railway at the insistance of the line's Engineer, C.H.Gregory: self-propelled and passenger-carrying, this was the first railcar. Adams developed the concept further into a light locomotive that could haul two or three separate carriages, and light locomotives built both by his own firm and by other noted builders came into vogue for a decade or more.In 1847 Adams also built eight-wheeled coaches for the Eastern Counties Railway that were larger and more spacious than most others of the day: each in effect comprised two four-wheeled coaches articulated together, with wheels that were allowed limited side-play. He also realized the necessity for improvements to railway track, the weakest point of which was the joints between the rails, whose adjoining ends were normally held in common chairs. Adams invented the fishplated joint, first used by the Eastern Counties Railway in 1849 and subsequently used almost universally.Adams was a prolific inventor. Most important of his later inventions was the radial axle, which was first applied to the leading and trailing wheels of a 2–4–2 tank engine, the White Raven, built in 1863; Adams's radial axle was the forerunner of all later radial axles. However, the sprung tyres with which White Raven was also fitted (an elastic steel hoop was interposed between wheel centre and tyre) were not perpetuated. His inventiveness was not restricted to engineering: in matters of dress, his adoption, perhaps invention, of the turn-down collar at a time when men conventionally wore standup collars had lasting effect.[br]BibliographyAdams took out some thirty five British patents, including one for the fishplate in 1847. He wrote copiously, as journalist and author: his most important book was English Pleasure Carriages (1837), a detailed description of coachbuilding, together with ideas for railway vehicles and track. The 1971 reprint (Bath: Adams \& Dart) has a biographical introduction by Jack Simmons.Further ReadingC.Hamilton Ellis, 1958, Twenty Locomotive Men, Shepperton: Ian Allan, Ch. 1. See also England, George.PJGR -
2 Pratt, Thomas Willis
SUBJECT AREA: Civil engineering[br]b. 4 July 1812 Boston, Massachusetts, USAd. 10 July 1875 Boston, Massachusetts, USA.[br]American civil engineer, inventor of the Pratt truss.[br]The son of Caleb and Sally Pratt, Thomas Pratt attended public school in Boston before going on to the Rensselaer School (now the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute) in Troy, New York. While at school, his spare time was spent assisting his father, a well-known architect, in his practice. He is said to have drawn a complete set of plans for a substantial house when only 12 years old. At the conclusion of his studies, he was offered a teaching position at Rensselaer but turned it down as he was planning an engineering career; he became a government assistant on the construction of dry docks at Charleston, South Carolina, and Norfolk, Virginia.After this experience of government work, he turned to railroad construction, first with the Boston and Lowell and Boston and Maine railroads, followed by many others. In this work, he became involved in bridge construction, mostly as consulting engineer. His best-known bridge was that over the Merrimack River at Newburyport, Massachusetts, which he built with six long timber spans and a metal drawspan. He also invented a new method of ship propulsion, a form of steam boiler, an equalizer for drawbridge supports and an improved form of combined timber and steel truss; he is best known, however, for the Pratt truss. This did not truly come into its own until the inception of all-metal construction for bridges, by which time it was too late for Pratt to gain much financial reward from it.[br]Further ReadingD.B.Steinman and S.R.Watson, 1941, Bridges and their Builders, New York: Dover Books.D.Malone (ed.), Dictionary of American Biography, New York: Charles Scribner.IMcN -
3 Roebling, John Augustus
SUBJECT AREA: Civil engineering[br]b. 12 July 1806 Muhlhausen, Prussiad. 22 July 1869 Brooklyn, New York, USA[br]German/American bridge engineer and builder.[br]The son of Polycarp Roebling, a tobacconist, he studied mathematics at Dr Unger's Pedagogium in Erfurt and went on to the Royal Polytechnic Institute in Berlin, from which he graduated in 1826 with honours in civil engineering. He spent the next three years working for the Prussian government on the construction of roads and bridges. With his brother and a group of friends, he emigrated to the United States, sailing from Bremen on 23 May 1831 and docking in Philadelphia eleven weeks later. They bought 7,000 acres (2,800 hectares) in Butler County, western Pennsylvania, and established a village, at first called Germania but later known as Saxonburg. Roebling gave up trying to establish himself as a farmer and found work for the state of Pennsylvania as Assistant Engineer on the Beaver River canal and others, then surveying a railroad route across the Allegheny Mountains. During his canal work, he noted the failings of the hemp ropes that were in use at that time, and recalled having read of wire ropes in a German journal; he built a rope-walk at his Saxonburg farm, bought a supply of iron wire and trained local labour in the method of wire twisting.At this time, many canals crossed rivers by means of aqueducts. In 1844, the Pennsylvania Canal aqueduct across the Allegheny River was due to be renewed, having become unsafe. Roebling made proposals which were accepted by the canal company: seven wooden spans of 162 ft (49 m) each were supported on either side by a 7 in. (18 cm) diameter cable, Roebling himself having to devise all the machinery required for the erection. He subsequently built four more suspension aqueducts, one of which was converted to a toll bridge and was still in use a century later.In 1849 he moved to Trenton, New Jersey, where he set up a new wire rope plant. In 1851 he started the construction (completed in 1855) of an 821 ft (250 m) long suspension railroad bridge across the Niagara River, 245 ft (75 m) above the rapids; each cable consisted of 3,640 wrought iron wires. A lower deck carried road traffic. He also constructed a bridge across the Ohio River between Cincinnati and Covington, a task which was much protracted due to the Civil War; this bridge was finally completed in 1866.Roebling's crowning achievement was to have been the design and construction of the bridge over the Hudson River between Brooklyn and Staten Island, New York, but he did not live to see its completion. It had a span of 1,595 ft (486 m), designed to bear a load of 18,700 tons (19,000 tonnes) with a headroom of 135 ft (41 m). The work of building had barely started when, at the Brooklyn wharf, a boat crushed Roebling's foot against the timbering and he died of tetanus three weeks later. His son, Washington Augustus Roebling, then took charge of this great work.[br]Further ReadingD.B.Steinman and S.R.Watson, 1941, Bridges and their Builders, New York: Dover Books.D.McCullough, 1982, The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge, New York: Simon \& Schuster.IMcNBiographical history of technology > Roebling, John Augustus
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4 Eads, James Buchanan
SUBJECT AREA: Civil engineering[br]b. 23 May 1820 Lawrenceburg, Indiana, USAd. 8 March 1887 Nassau, Bahamas[br]American bridge-builder and hydraulic engineer.[br]The son of an immigrant merchant, he was educated at the local school, leaving at the age of 13 to take on various jobs, eventually becoming a purser on a Mississippi steamboat. He was struck by the number of wrecks lying in the river; he devised a diving bell and, at the age of 22, set up in business as a salvage engineer. So successful was he at this venture that he was able to retire in three years' time and set up the first glassworks west of the Ohio River. This, however, was a failure and in 1848 he returned to the business of salvage on the Ohio River. He was so successful that he was able to retire permanently in 1857. From the start of the American Civil War in 1861 he recommended to President Lincoln that he should obtain a fleet of armour-plated, steam-powered gunboats to operate on the western rivers. He built seven of these himself, later building or converting a further eighteen. After the end of the war he obtained the contract to design and build a bridge over the Mississippi at St Louis. In this he made use of his considerable knowledge of the river-bed currents. He built a bridge with a 500 ft (150 m) centre span and a clearance of 50 ft (15 m) that was completed in 1874. The three spans are, respectively, 502 ft, 520 ft and 502 ft (153 m, 158 m and 153 m), each being spanned by an arch. The Mississippi river is subject to great changes, both seasonal and irregular, with a range of over 41 ft (12.5 m) between low and high water and a velocity varying from 4 ft (1.2 m) to 12 1/2 ft (3.8 m) per second. The Eads Bridge was completed in 1874 and in the following year Eads was commissioned to open one of the mouths of the Mississippi, for which he constructed a number of jetty traps. He was involved later in attempts to construct a ship railway across the isthmus of Panama. He had been suffering from indifferent health for some years, and this effort was too much for him. He died on 8 March 1887. He was the first American to be awarded the Royal Society of Arts' Albert Medal.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsRoyal Society of Arts Albert Medal.Further ReadingD.B.Steinman and S.R.Watson, 1941, Bridges and their Builders, New York: Dover Publications.T.I.Williams, Biographical Dictionary of Science.IMcN -
5 Roebling, Washington Augustus
SUBJECT AREA: Civil engineering[br]b. 26 May 1837 Saxonburg, Pennsylvania, USAd. 21 July 1926 Trenton, New Jersey, USA.[br]American civil engineer.[br]The son of John Augustus Roebling, he graduated in 1857 from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute as a civil engineer, and joined his father in his suspension bridge construction work. He served in the Civil War as a colonel of engineers in the Union Army, and in 1867, two years after the end of the war, he went to Europe to study new methods of sinking underwater foundations by means of compressed air. These new methods were employed in the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge, of which he took charge on his father's death in 1869. Timber pneumatic caissons were used, with a maximum pressure of 34 psi (2.4 kg/cm2) above atmospheric pressure. Two years after work on the piers had started in the caissons, Roebling, who had been working constantly with the men on the foundations of the piers, was carried unconscious out of the caisson, a victim of decompression sickness, then known as “caisson disease”. He was paralysed and lost the use of his voice. From then on he directed the rest of the work from the sickroom of his nearby house, his wife, Emily Warren Roebling, helping with his instructions and notes and carrying them out to the workforce; she even read a statement from him to the American Society of Civil Engineers. The erection of the cables, which were of steel, began in August 1876 and took twenty-six months to complete. In 1881 eleven trustees and Emily Warren Roebling walked across temporary planking, but the decking of the total span was not completed until 1885, fourteen years after construction of the bridge had started. The Brooklyn Bridge was Roebling's last major work, although following the death of his nephew in 1921 he was forced to head again the management of Roebling \& Company, though aged 84 and an invalid.[br]Further ReadingD.B.Steinman and S.R.Watson, 1941, Bridges and their Builders, New York: Dover Books.D.McCullough, 1982, The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the BrooklynBridge, New York: Simon \& Schuster.IMcNBiographical history of technology > Roebling, Washington Augustus
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