Ipswich High School - Tiger Yearbook (Ipswich, MA)

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How and where Roebling found time to do all that he did was a fact to be marvelled at. With no modern conveniences he managed to be a specialist in a half dozen fields. He attended scientific conventions and wrote voluminously for scientific journals. He invented tools and machinery and made his own drawings for the patent office. He designed bridges, canals, and portage railroads and superintended their construction. He was also an earnest student of metaphysics. When he died, he left an incomplete manu ' script of over two thousand pages dealing with his conception of the universe. Yet each night before retiring he recorded carefully the day’s happenings. The contract to design and build the Brooklyn Bridge was awarded to Roebling after much discussion. It was predicted, however, that the wire cables would never be able to support a structure of such weight. He set to work on his designs and plans, but while making a preliminary survey, his foot was crushed on a ferry boat, and he died two weeks later of tetanus. His death, however, did not interrupt work on what was to be his posthumous masterpiece. His son Washington A. Roebling was also a talented engineer. He was thoroughly familiar with the plans for the new bridge and had long enjoyed intimate, professional association with the greatest bridge builder of his day, his own father. With great fervor the son gave himself to the task of completing the project. When the foundation caissons were sunk under the East River, he often went below and worked with the “sand hogs,” eager to see the work at first hand and to be sure that every minute detail was correctly performed. Roebling one day had to be taken out of a caisson, paralysed by the “bends,” the affliction most dreaded by those who work in an atmosphere of conv pressed air. He remained partially paralysed, lost the use of his voice, and constantly suffered great physical pain. From a window in a house in Brooklyn Heights he watched the workers on the bridge with the aid of a telescope. Unable to talk, he wrote his instructions to the builders — page after page of de- tailed notes. Eleven years after the accident, from the same window he watched the President of the United States open the bridge to traffic. He died in 1926 at the age of eighty Tour, leaving a great fortune, a flourishing business, an example of rare courage, and the Brooklyn Bridge. When Washington Roebling resigned as president of the company at Trenton in order to devote all his time to the Brooklyn Bridge, his two brothers, Ferdinand and Charles, took charge of the cable plant. Both died shortly after America’s entrance into the World War, for which the RoeU lings supplied considerably important material, and Ferdinand’s son Karl took charge. Karl literally worked himself to death furnishing the government with war supplies, and when he died in 1921, his brother, the grandson of John Roebling, ascended to the presidency of the company and occupies that post today. The third generation of the Roeblings spun the cables for the Washing ' ton Bridge opened last October twentyTourth. The two towers supporting the cables are 635 feet high. The strand consists of 434 original wires, and 61 strands are compressed into a cable thirty six inches in diameter. The cables consist altogether of 57,000,000 pounds of steel and are strong enough 22

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Sires of the Big Bridge By Richard Mansfield X N THE passing of the years during the history of the United States many geniuses in their various environments have been passed by unmerited. For many months people in New York have gased at electric signs flashing “Roebling’s Cables” on the top of two massive towers. Those two words meant nothing to millions but unveiled to a few the history of the modern suspension bridge. John Roebling came to America over one hundred years ago at the age of twenty-five. He had a fine education and was possessor of numerous talents. On his arr ival to pioneering America he decided to be a farmer. Knowing nothing whatsoever of farming, he managed to earn a meagre living from the soil he worked in Saxonburg, Pennsylvania. Failing at farming, he turned to breeding canary birds. However, most of his birds turned out to be the unmusical females. To patch out his income he obtained employment as assistant engineer in making surveys and constructing waterways. In a short time he was devoting all his energy to that field and left his farm to be run by others. On the New York canals cumbrous ropes of Kentucky hemp were used to drag the canal boats over the mountains. These ropes always broke at the most inconvenient times, and serious accidents resulted. Roebling was present one day when an accident occurred. He started thinking of the possibility of a wire rope, flexible enough to be wound on a windlass and which would also be smaller, stronger, and more lasting than a hempen cable. He built a rope walk on his farm and instructed his friends and neighbors in the art of rope twisting. They succeeded in making a wire rope far exceeding anything he had expected. Soon after, his wire cables began replacing the hempen ropes on the canals. Roebling submitted figures to engineers for building an aqueduct over the Allegheny River at Pittsburg. There was considerable risk to the project, for no one before had attempted to suspend an aqueduct across a river by cables. He insisted that his figures were correct and was awarded the task. He set to work, knowing the result would be success or complete ruin for his future. The undertaking was, however, a definite success and he established a reputation. Roebling built three aqueducts while developing his ideas of suspending bridges by wire cables. His works are still in use today, unim- paired and still good for many years’ service. As his farm now was not extensive enough for his workshops and wire mills, he moved to Trenton, New Jersey. He invented and designed practically every piece of machinery that went into his workshops. Roebling wasn’t the first man to build a suspension bridge. One was built across the Merrimac River at Newburyport, Massachusetts, in 1810, and sixteen years later one across the Menai Straits, in Wales. Both were very small and supported by chains. Roebling, however, was the first man to use wire cables on a bridge. 21

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to carry four times as much traffic as the bridge can hold when loaded to capacity. The span across the river is twice the length of the largest span previously in existence or 3,500 feet long. The weight of the bridge hanging from the cables is 90,000 tons. The anchorage for the cables on the New Jersey side is the hard rock of the Palisades, hollowed out 250 feet deep. On the New York side a solid piece of masonry, 290 feet by 200 feet and ten stories high, is used. The bridge cost $60,000,000. The cable in the George Washington Bridge has a strength of 70,000 pounds per square inch more than the cables in the Brooklyn Bridge, showing the advancement in their research laboratories. Some thirty or more devices were invented and patented by the Roeblings, which made possible the construction of the largest suspension bridge in three years and one month. These facts are important and interesting, but no more so than the single thin wire rope which John Roebling fabricated a century ago, and which made them all possible. What, therefore, could have been more appropriate than naming the new bridge for John Roebling? No one can object to naming the new bridge after George Washington, for he can not be honored too much by his countrymen, but on the other hand there are many men who may not be honored enough. America As Viewed by the World By Ida Wells D URING this time of financial and political distress all over the world, it would be a good time perhaps to see what kind of impression we have created upon our foreign neighbors during the last three hundred years. Ever since the world has been civilized “they say,” meaning the people in general, has often been the best means of spreading and enlarging on the gossip which the feminine part of the world can spread so easily. Sometimes, however, it may be beneficial to learn what others think of us. The first country whose opinion we may consider is that of England. Because of her blood relationship to us her views should be particularly inter ' esting. England’s most noticeable reaction toward us is a profound contempt for the way in which the citizens of the United States disregard law and order. The Congress of the United States makes many laws which are broken by many an unscrupulous person who would be speedily brought to justice and promptly punished by Scotland Yard, according to his crime. Here, however, the English say that the wrongdoer is given a light sentence or none at all, and many of the so-called self-respecting and law abiding persons not only do not object but even allow this wholesale breaking of the law with hardly a cry of protest. As far as finances are concerned, England, although she may think a lot, says very little. To a certain extent she respects the financial standing which the United States has acquired and of course is pleased because the Americans 23