When Men were Men

[Tom Bender]

Foundations of Bridges and Buildings
Is an old textbook I must have picked up at a yard sale a few decades ago. It was updated in 1941 but most of the technology was from before the first printing in 1914. I decided to read a bit and got sucked in.

Among the many feats it lists a cassion built in 1888, a wood lined hole in the water 60 ft x 100 ft x 143 feet deep. There would have been steam powered pumps and winches but most of the labor would have been manual, supplemented by horses and mules. If you have cut firewood without the benefit of a chain saw you can appreciate the labor to provide boiler fuel. And the men and animals needed a little fuel from the farms too.

A common type of bridge foundation would have involved a hole like this thru some depth of water then thru the river bottom for some distance. Then a lot of wood piles would be driven thru the bottom of it for a further 30 to 150 ft (sometimes spliced). Sometimes this would be done with the cassion full of water and sometimes it was pumped out. Next a gazillion yards of concrete was poured in stopping just below water level. After that the easy part would begin.

[Neil Gaskin]

Makes one appreciate technology and advancement.

[Bill Orbine]

I had a book about the Brooklyn Bridge one time. It was very interesting reading. It went into good detail about the cassion of this bridge. It was a hazardous work and even the bridge designer succumbed to the bends working under pressure deep on the cassions. Then there was some sort of timber fire seemingly burning endlessly in one of the two cassions. I can't find this book, but you should find this interesting reading if you have copy of this book.

I will try and get myself a copy of what you have. I'm sure your book mentions the Brooklyn bridge.

[Wayne Lomman]

I have to confess to being in love with bridges and hydro electric infrastructure. The way they built these structures by sheer force of labour is amazing.

I spent quite some time working on the Snowy Mountains hydro electric scheme in Australia. When it was built in the 1950s and 60s, a large part of the work was constructing 1600km of access roads. To save costs, the work crews were required to excavate all road cuttings with perpendicular embankments as they are all through solid rock. If they deviated by more than 1 degree from vertical, they had their pay docked! Cheers

[Mike Henderson]

I had a book about the Brooklyn Bridge one time. It was very interesting reading. It went into good detail about the cassion of this bridge. It was a hazardous work and even the bridge designer succumbed to the bends working under pressure deep on the caissons. Then there was some sort of timber fire seemingly burning endlessly in one of the two cassions. I can't find this book, but you should find this interesting reading if you have copy of this book.

I will try and get myself a copy of what you have. I'm sure your book mentions the Brooklyn bridge.

I read that book about the building of the Brooklyn Bridge - but I don't have it any more. I think it's "The Great Bridge, The Epic story of the building of the Brooklyn Bridge"

Mike

[Frederick Skelly]

If they deviated by more than 1 degree from vertical, they had their pay docked! Cheers

Wayne, I kept asking myself why the specs were so tight at 1 degree? Was there less chance of rock slides (so it saved money on avalanche barriers), were they trying to keep the overall footprint (width) of the road small (less land used), or what?

Then, as I re-read your post, I got to wondering: Are you saying that it was a calculated move to save money by giving their workmen a task that was hard to consistently meet - so that they could deliberately keep from paying them a day's wage? I (naively) thought such tactics were 50 years in the past.

Fred

[Wayne Lomman]

Fred, the spec was tight just to save time and therefore money. It was assumed that the roads would only ever be bush tracks. Most of them have remained so but the Alpine Way which traverses the Snowys was built to this spec and gets public use. Rock falls are a daily occurrence especially over winter when it freezes. There are literally mountains of rock that has been removed from roads over the years.

You would never get away with wages like that any more. It was a scheme built with plentiful labour straight after World War 2. I cannot be sure but I also have the feeling that it was a deliberate tactic to cut wages.

I loved working in the Snowy Mountains. It is the second best region in Australia after the Tasmanian highlands. Both regions are hydroelectric generation regions and are also the only regions in Australia to consistently get snow. I'm rambling now. Cheers

[John Stankus]

I had a book about the Brooklyn Bridge one time. It was very interesting reading. It went into good detail about the cassion of this bridge. It was a hazardous work and even the bridge designer succumbed to the bends working under pressure deep on the cassions. Then there was some sort of timber fire seemingly burning endlessly in one of the two cassions. I can't find this book, but you should find this interesting reading if you have copy of this book.

I will try and get myself a copy of what you have. I'm sure your book mentions the Brooklyn bridge.

The nternet is a wonderful thing
https://archive.org/details/foundati...corich/page/n3

[Frederick Skelly]

Thanks Wayne!
Fred

[Ron Citerone]

Amazing how things come together. I was buying some lumber via Craigslist in Allentown PA last year. The seller and I started talking and he showed me the iconic Pic of the ironworkers having lunch on a steel beam (Many people have seen it, it is in textbooks etc.) He said his Dad was one of the guys and he was the splitting image of him so i think it is true. He also said his uncle worked on the bridge and was one of the first guys to walk the beams when the span was first connected.

[Nicholas Lawrence]

Why would you leap to the assumption that it had no purpose but to cheat the workmen out of their pay. Draw a right angle. Shade the area inside the angle. Now draw another line more lines 5 degrees, 10 degrees, and 15 degrees from your vertical. If you deviate from vertical are you increasing the amount of material removed or decreasing it? Will blasting that extra material, loading it on trucks, and haling it away increase or decrease the cost of the project as compared to the tighter specification?

Perhaps projects like this were built in the past because they managed them in a way that kept them on track in terms of the specifications, schedule, and budget? Are our enlightened modern methods better where hardly anything gets built, and what does costs twice as much and takes twice as long as it should have?

Wayne, I kept asking myself why the specs were so tight at 1 degree? Was there less chance of rock slides (so it saved money on avalanche barriers), were they trying to keep the overall footprint (width) of the road small (less land used), or what?

Then, as I re-read your post, I got to wondering: Are you saying that it was a calculated move to save money by giving their workmen a task that was hard to consistently meet - so that they could deliberately keep from paying them a day's wage? I (naively) thought such tactics were 50 years in the past.

Fred

[Frederick Skelly]

Why would you leap to the assumption that it had no purpose but to cheat the workmen out of their pay. Draw a right angle. Shade the area inside the angle. Now draw another line more lines 5 degrees, 10 degrees, and 15 degrees from your vertical. If you deviate from vertical are you increasing the amount of material removed or decreasing it? Will blasting that extra material, loading it on trucks, and haling it away increase or decrease the cost of the project as compared to the tighter specification?

Perhaps projects like this were built in the past because they managed them in a way that kept them on track in terms of the specifications, schedule, and budget? Are our enlightened modern methods better where hardly anything gets built, and what does costs twice as much and takes twice as long as it should have?

Hi Nick,
I didnt initially read it that way. As I said, I kept trying to think of why the spec was that tight. (1 degree on a 30 foot drop in solid rock seems tough to do, to me anyway. Sort of like flattening my bench to 0.002" over 6 feet.) And then, as I re-read Wayne's choice of words, I thought that might be what he was actually saying - not because I have a nasty bias that way, but simply the way I interpreted the way he said it. Sounds like maybe I was the only one that did so.

I've read the history of Australia under the English and also how some of our own robber barons treated their workers in the early part of the 20th century. So while my thought was unsavory, it didn't seem "impossible". The explanation you laid out seems completely plausible to me. Had I thought of it, I would have answered my own question.

Have a good one!
Fred

[Ole Anderson]

Being a retired civil engineer I am particularly fascinated by some of the great stories of early triumphs in civil engineering projects. My BIL, also a civil engineer that worked on the John Hancock center in Chicago while employed by American Bridge, gave me an audio book for a trip back from FL to MI, it was "The Great Bridge" by David McCullough, sub-titled The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge. John Roebling was the man that made it happen. He was the one that had a wire manufacturing business which was key in designing the modern suspension bridge, rather than using cast iron eye bars linked end to end as was previously done. After being incapacitated by the bends working for the first time under compressed air, he watched from his bedroom window as his son completed the project. A great deal of the story revolved around the building of the white oak foundation under the East River in New York.

Another favorite of mine was the story of building the Panama Canal "The Path Between the Seas" also by David McCullough. I have also read his books on the Johnstown Flood and one about the Wright Brothers. Good stuff.

[Nicholas Lawrence]

I enjoyed the Path Between the Seas as well. Another good one is “Nothing like it in the world”

[Mike Henderson]

I enjoyed the Path Between the Seas as well. Another good one is “Nothing like it in the world”

I read the "Path Between the Seas" prior to taking a cruise ship through the Panama Canal. My only objection to the book is that there was nothing too insignificant to be left out of the book. It could have been edited to half its length. It would have made it more enjoyable reading.

Mike