While Ulric Grubenmann was working at Schaffhausen, his brother Jean built a similar bridge at Reichenau, two hundred and forty feet in a single span; and some years later the two brothers constructed their Wittingen Bridge over the Limmat, near Baden, giving to it a span of three hundred and ninety feet. They were famous now, and their influence travelled from Europe to America, where it found in Bludget an able interpreter, Bludget’s bridge over the Portsmouth River being similar in technique to the bridge at Schaffhausen. Since that time the evolution of timber bridges has remained in the United States of America, where it has ranged from the criss-cross of logs for bearing piles to the most intricate combinations of lattices and trusses. Very often there is far too much intricacy, and no thought at all is given to military considerations (p. 352). “Many wooden American bridges are trusses which almost defy analysis, the designs being, however, obviously suggested by an attempt to combine at least two of the three main types of bridges. No advantage whatever is gained by a combination of this kind; on the contrary, great disadvantage is almost sure to follow its adoption, namely, that it will be impossible that each part of the structure should, under all circumstances, carry that portion of the load which the designer entrusted to it. For suppose a bridge constructed partly as a girder and partly as a suspension bridge, the girder being very stiff and deep, the chain perfectly flexible with considerable dip. Let the chain and girder be each fit to carry half the passing load. It is perfectly conceivable that the deflections of the two should be so different that the girder would, under the actual load, break before the chain was sensibly strained, or the difference in the relative dip of the chain and depth of the girder might be such as to cause the former to give way first.”[51] VII PRIMITIVE SUSPENSION BRIDGES