Discoveries and Inventions of the Nineteenth Century

by Robert Routledge

Fig. 147a.—Clifton Suspension Bridge, Niagara.

The new suspension bridge at the Niagara Falls, called the Clifton Bridge, of which a view is given in Fig. [147a], is intended for the use of passengers and carriages visiting the Falls, and it is also the means of more direct communication between several small towns near the banks of the river. The bridge is situated a short distance below the Falls, crossing the river at right angles to its course at a point where the rocks which form the banks are about 1,200 ft. apart. The distance between the centres of the towers is 1,268 ft. 4 in., and the bridge has by far the longest single span of any bridge in the world, the distance between the points of suspension being more than twice that of the Menai Bridge, and more than six times the span of the widest stone bridge in England. This remarkable suspension bridge was constructed by Mr. Samuel Keefer, and was opened for traffic on the 1st of January, 1869, the actual time employed in the work having been only twelve months. The cables and suspenders are made of wire, which was drawn in England at Warrington and Manchester, and the wires for the main cables were made of such a length, that each wire passed from end to end of the cable without weld or splice. The length of each of the two main cables is 1,888 ft., and of this length 1,286 ft. usually hangs between the suspending towers, the centre being about 90 ft. below the level of the points of suspension. This last distance, however, varies considerably with the temperature, for in winter the contraction produced by the cold brings up the centre to 89 ft. below the level line, while in summer it maybe 3 ft. lower. The centre of the bridge is about 190 ft. above the water in summer, and 193 ft. in winter. The cables are each formed of seven wire ropes, and each rope consists of seven strands, each strand containing nineteen No. 9 Birmingham gauge wires of the diameter of 0·155 in. The cables of this bridge do not hang in vertical planes, since in the centre they are only 12 ft. apart; while at the towers, where they pass over the suspension rollers, they are 42 ft. apart. The end of the platform which rests on the right bank is 5 ft. higher than the other, and if a straight line were drawn from one end to the other, the centre of the roadway would be in winter 7 ft. above it, and in summer 4 ft. From each point of suspension twelve wire ropes, called “stays,” pass directly to certain points of the platform. The stays are not attached to the cables, but pass over rollers on the tops of the towers, and are anchored in the rock, independently of the cables. The longest stays are tangential to the curve formed by the main cables, and they are fixed to the platform at a point about half-way to the centre. Other stays proceed from the platform at intervals of 25 ft., between the longest and the end of the bridge. The thickness of the stays is varied according to the strain they have to bear, and they form not only a great additional support to the platform, but they also serve to stiffen the bridge and lessen the horizontal oscillations to which the platform would be liable from the shifting loads it has to bear. There are also stays which transversely connect the two cables. The wire ropes by which the platform is suspended to the main cables are ⅝ths of an inch in diameter, and have such a strength that the material would only yield to a strain of 10 tons. These suspenders are placed 5 ft. apart and are 480 in number, the lengths, of course, being different according to the position. To each pair of suspenders is attached a transverse beam, 13½ ft. long, 10 in. deep, and 2½ in. wide. Upon these beams—which are, of course, 5 ft. apart from centre to centre—rests the flooring, formed of two layers of pine planking 1½ in. thick; and the roadway thus formed constitutes a single track 10 ft. in width. Along each side of the platform is a truss the whole length of the bridge, formed of an upper and a lower beam, 6½ ft. apart, united by ties and diagonal pieces. The lower chord of the truss is 2 ft. below the road, and on it rolled iron bars are bolted continuously from one end of the bridge to the other. The last arrangement contributes greatly to stiffen the platform, vertically and horizontally. In the central part of the bridge the flooring-boards are bolted up to the cables, and there are studs formed of 2 in. iron tubes, so that the platform cannot be lifted vertically without raising the cables also; and as thus 81 tons of the weight of the cables vertically rest upon the platform, great steadiness is secured, inasmuch as the central part of the cables must partake of any movement of the platform, and their weight greatly increases the inertia to be overcome. In order still further to prevent oscillations as much as possible, a number of “guys” are attached to the bridge. These are wire ropes of the same thickness as the suspenders, and they connect the platform with various points of the bank—some going horizontally to the summit of the cliffs, others vertically, but the majority obliquely. There are twenty-eight guys on the side of the bridge next the falls, and twenty-six on the other side. The thickness of the wire rope of which they are made being little more than ½ in., they are scarcely visible, or rather appear like spider lines. About 400 ft. of the length of the bridge in the centre is without either guys or stays except two small steel ropes, which, tightly strained from cliff to cliff, cross each other nearly at right angles at the centre of the bridge. The suspension towers are pyramidal in form and are built of white pine, the timbers being a foot square in section and very solidly put together, so that they are capable of bearing forty times the load which can ever be put upon them. The towers are surmounted by strong frames of cast iron, to which are fixed the rollers carrying the cables and stays to their anchorage. The weight of the bridge itself, together with the greatest load it can be required to bear, amounts to 363 tons. Its cost was £22,000, and it was constructed without a single accident of any kind.

The foam of the great falls is carried by the stream beneath the bridge, and in sunshine the spectator who places himself on the centre of its platform sees in the spray driven by the wind, not a mere fragment of a rainbow, or a semicircular arc, but the complete circle, half of which appears beneath his feet. The gorge of the Niagara is very liable to furious blasts of winds, for by its conformation it seems to gather the aërial currents into a focus, so that a gentle breeze passing over the surrounding country is here converted into a strong gale, sweeping down with great force between the precipitous banks of the river. Indeed, one would suppose that the cavern from which Æolus allows the winds to rush out, must be situated near Niagara Falls. The bridge is not disturbed by ordinary winds, although during its construction, before the stays and guys were fixed, it was subject to considerable displacement from this cause. The peculiar arrangement of the cables, by which they hang, not vertically, but widening out from the centre of the bridge, giving what has been termed the “cradle” form, has proved of the highest advantage, so that, with the aid of the guys and stays, and the plan of attaching the central part of the roadway to the cables, the bridge is believed to be capable of withstanding without damage a gale having the force of 30 lbs. per square foot, although its total pressure on the structure might then amount to more than 100 tons. The stability of the structure was severely tested soon after its erection by a furious gale from the south-west, by which the guys were severely strained; in fact, many of them gave way. In one case an enormous block of stone, 32 tons in weight, to which one of the guys was moored, was dragged up and moved 10 ft. nearer the bridge. This and some lateral distortion of the platform, which was easily remedied, was all the damage sustained by the bridge. By an increase of the strength of the guys, &c., and the addition of the two diagonal steel wire ropes mentioned above, the bridge was soon made stronger than before. Some years ago, when the Menai suspension bridge was exposed to a storm of like severity, that structure suffered great damage, the platform having been broken and some of it swept away. In the great gale which swept down upon the Niagara bridge, although the force of the wind was so great that passengers and carriages could not make headway, the vertical oscillations of the bridge never exceeded 18 in., an amount which must be considered extremely satisfactory in a bridge of the kind, having a span of nearly a quarter of a mile.[^[4]]

[4]. Notwithstanding the skill displayed in its construction, this bridge has, since the above account was written, been destroyed by a tremendous hurricane.

Fig. 147b.—Living Model of the Cantilever Principle.

CANTILEVER BRIDGES.

The great Forth Bridge, now (December, 1889) approaching completion, is the first bridge on the cantilever and central girder principle that has been erected in Great Britain, and it has also the distinction of being by far the widest spanned bridge in all the world. We are told by the engineers of the bridge that the cantilever and girder principle is by no means new, for it has been adopted hundreds of years ago by comparatively rude tribes in the construction of timber bridges, to which it readily lends itself. Such bridges are described as having been erected by the natives of Hindoostan, Canada, Thibet, etc., even at remote periods. The principle of the cantilever and girder construction was well illustrated by Mr. Baker, one of the engineers of the bridge, at a lecture given by him at the Royal Institution, by means of what he termed “a living model,” of which (Fig. [147b]) shows the general arrangement. Two men, seated on chairs, extend their arms and hold in their hands sticks, of which the other ends butt against the chairs. The central girder is represented by a shorter stick, suspended at a and b. We have here the representation of two double cantilevers, the ropes at c and d, connected with the weights, representing the anchorages of the landward arms of the cantilevers. When a weight is placed on a b, which was done in the “living model,” by a third man seating himself thereon, a tensile strain comes into action in the ropes and in the men’s arms, while the sticks abutting on the chairs have to resist a compressing force, and the weight of the whole is borne by the legs of the chairs, also under compression. Now let the reader imagine the men’s heads to be 360 feet above the ground, and about a third of a mile apart, while the distance between a and b is 350 feet, and he will have a rough but sufficiently clear idea, not only of the principle upon which the Forth Bridge is constructed, but also of the magnitude of one of its spans. To complete the comparison, Mr. Baker further invited his hearers to suppose that the pull upon each arm of the men is equal to 10,000 tons, and that the legs of each chair press on the ground with the weight of more than 100,000 tons.

The Forth Bridge spans the estuary at Queensferry nine miles north-west from Edinburgh, and its purpose is to afford uninterrupted railway communication along the eastern side of Scotland. It will, in effect, shorten the railway journey between Edinburgh and Perth, or Aberdeen, by nearly two hours. Queensferry had long been established as a usual place for crossing the Forth, and readers of Scott’s “Antiquary” will remember that the first chapter describes how Monkbarns and Lovel, by some accidental delays to the coach, lost the tide, and had to wait, to sail “with the tide of ebb and the evening breeze,” finding themselves, in the meanwhile, pretty comfortable over a good dinner at the “Hawes Inn.” This inn still stands, its situation being close to the southern end of the great bridge. A design for the erection of a light suspension bridge at the same spot was published at the beginning of the present century, but although the spans were to be equal to those of the present bridge (17,000 feet), the different scale of the projects may be inferred from the total weight of iron to be used being estimated at 200 tons, while 50,000 tons will be required for the structure now approaching completion.

In 1873, an Act of Parliament was obtained authorizing the construction of a suspension bridge at Queensferry, to carry the railway over the estuary. The design comprised practically two bridges, each carrying a single line of rails, the bridges being braced together at intervals. The central towers were to have been 600 feet high, or about 100 feet loftier than any other erection then existing in the world. The designer was the late Sir Thomas Bouch, and preparations were made for carrying out the plans by the erection of workshops and the manufacture of bricks for the piers. But the project was knocked on the head by the terrible disaster at the Tay Bridge, in December, 1879, when several of the central piers were overturned by the force of the wind, with swift destruction to a passing train, which was precipitated into the water, and every one of about ninety persons in the train perished. Sir Thomas Bouch having been the designer of the Tay Bridge, public confidence in his plan was shaken to such an extent, that the four railway companies who were promoting the construction of the suspension bridge abandoned the project in favour of a design on the cantilever and central girder system, which was then brought forward by Mr. (now Sir John) Fowler and Mr. Baker. When the Bessemer process had made steel attainable at a cheap rate, these engineers recognized the advantages which cantilever bridges, made of that material, presented for the wide spans required for carrying railways across navigable rivers, and in 1865 they had designed such a bridge, with 1,000 feet spans for a viaduct, across the Severn, near the position of the present tunnel. It was not, however, until 1881 that the designs for the Forth Bridge were published in English and American engineering journals. These designs at once attracted attention, and scarcely a year had elapsed before a railway bridge was built for the Canadian and Pacific Railway, on the same principle, and this has been followed by others since. It is, however, absurd to allege that the engineers took their ideas from America, merely because these smaller undertakings have been completed before the great work that dwarfs them all was open for traffic. The construction of the Forth Bridge on its present design was commenced in January, 1883. Its site at Queensferry is at a point where the estuary narrows, and where, in the very middle of the channel, there is a small rocky island, called Inchgarvie, that furnishes a solid foundation for the great central pier. On each side of this island the channels are about one-third of a mile wide, and more than 200 feet deep, and through them the tide rushes with great velocity. The impossibility of building up any intermediate piers, under such circumstances, is sufficiently obvious—the currents must be crossed at one span, if a railway bridge had to be made. The formation of the piers for such a work presented many novel problems, and much of the work had to be commenced in deep water; that is, the ground of rock or hard clay had to be prepared, in some parts, as far as 90 feet below high water. Each pier stands on four caissons, which are great tubes or drums of iron and steel, filled up with concrete. Each weighed, when empty, about 400 tons, but when filled up with concrete, the weight would be about 3,000 tons. The diameter of each is 70 feet, and the deepest one is sunk 89 feet below the water, and it was with no little labour that some of them were put in their places. Each caisson has an outer and an inner tube, is 70 feet in diameter at the base, and 60 feet at the top. Seven feet from the bottom, an air-tight partition formed a chamber in the lower part of the caisson, about 70 feet in diameter, by 7 feet high, and shafts sufficiently large to admit the passage of men and tools led from the top. Air was forced into this chamber, when the caisson had been sunk, expelling the water, and then men descended through the shafts and locks, in which a high pressure of air was also maintained, and excavated the material at the bottom, until the caisson had, by its own weight, sunk to the depth required. The work in this air chamber was carried on by means of electric lights, and ten or twelve weeks were occupied in sinking each caisson. The pressure of the air in the working chamber was sometimes as high as 35 pounds per square inch, or sufficient to maintain the mercurial column in a barometer 72 inches high, instead of the ordinary 29 or 30 inches. It was found that the labour in the compressed air chamber could not be done by our home workmen, as they were quite unaccustomed to the high air pressures required to keep out the water; but arrangements were made for the assistance of a staff of French workmen, inured to the conditions by long working under water in the construction of the docks at Antwerp.