ROEBLING TURNS HIS ATTENTION TO BRIDGES
The age of wire was marching rapidly, but John A. Roebling had set a distant mark. In the mountains of Peru, India and other lands for ages the natives have made use of bridges made of vines, to cross appalling chasms. As time went on and arts progressed the principle was applied through the agency of hemp ropes and chains, and men of small imagination thought that in these the limit had been attained. But Roebling’s faith was as the faith of the Moslem in the Prophet. He believed that in wire the solution of all the pesky problems of bridge-building had been found. In a small way the thing was obvious, but his ambition never stopped there. He believed, and had believed ever since he made the first rope, that a major bridge made up of wires of scrupulously high quality, constructed with rigorous regard for scientific tenets, would carry with ease and indefinitely any reasonable traffic that might be imposed on it.
Famous engineers said he was a visionary and a hobbyist; still with force and tenacity he urged his contention until at last the engineering world was compelled to give heed to him. In the face of such opposition, and in view of the centuries that had dragged by before wires were twisted into rope, it is remarkable that so soon after his initial experiment he should have worked out in practical entirety the plan of bridge construction which came to its climax in the spanning of the East River.
Between 1840, when he made his first rope, and 1844, he had not only perfected his theory of wire bridges but in spite of furious opposition had built one as an aqueduct for the old Pennsylvania Canal, the basins of which were at Pittsburg. This was followed by four more suspension aqueducts for the Delaware and Hudson Canal Co. Having espoused a theory he let no grass grow under his feet. He cast about vigorously for bridges to build. He found an opening in Cincinnati.
THE OHIO RIVER BRIDGE AT CINCINNATI
River traffic along the Ohio, in the forties, was still a big factor in business but was contesting tooth and nail the advance of the railways, and fought bitterly against the right of the invaders to build bridges over the waterways. The steamboat men said bridge piers would be a peril to navigation, but the cities of Cincinnati and Covington, facing each other across the river, cried for the bridge. The rivermen were on top in 1846 when Roebling came along, fresh from the building of the wire bridge in Pennsylvania and with his head full of wire bridges, and offered to throw a wire span across the Ohio with a length of 1057 feet and a floor height above the water of 103 feet.
LOGGING—HANDLING BIG FELLOWS WITH WIRE ROPE
For just ten years the steamboat faction staved it off. It was not begun till 1856, just after the Niagara Bridge was opened. The panic of 1857 and then the Civil War kept the project at a standstill until 1863. On Easter Day in 1867 the bridge was opened. Colonel Washington A. Roebling, son of the pioneer, was the first to cross on its cable. In the meantime John A. Roebling had completed not alone the Niagara Bridge, but the Alleghany Bridge over the Alleghany River at Pittsburg. The last named differed from the Niagara, Ohio and later East River bridges in that it had several piers in the streamway, after the manner of the old type structures, but in principle it conformed to the plan which had been in his mind from the beginning. His son, Washington, was his only assistant.
BRIDGING NIAGARA GORGE