Inventions in the centuryDoolittle, William H. (William Henry)
History
Inventions in the century
Doolittle, William H. (William Henry)
Inventions
grandest lift ever effected in engineering.” It was accomplished by
means of powerful hydraulic presses. Another and still grander example
of this style of bridge is the Victoria at Montreal, Canada. This also
was designed by Robert Stephenson and built under his direction by James
Hodges of Montreal. Work was commenced in 1854 and it was completed in
December, 1859, and opened for travel in 1860. It consists of 24 piers,
242 feet apart, except the centre one, from which the span is 330 feet.
The tube is in sections and quadrangular in form. Every plate and piece
of iron was made and punched in England and brought across the Atlantic.
In Canada little remained to be done but to put the parts together and
in position. This, however, was in itself a Herculean task. The enormous
structure was to be placed sixty feet above the swift current of the
broad St. Lawrence, and wherein huge masses of ice, each block from
three to five feet in thickness, accumulated every winter. The work was
accomplished by the erection of a vast rigid stage of timber, on which
the tubes were built up plate by plate. When all was completed the great
staging was removed, and the mighty tube rested alone and secure upon
its massive wedge-faced piers rising from the bedrock of the flood
below.
_The Tubular Arch Bridge._--This differs from the tubular bridge proper,
in that the former consists of a bridge the body of which is supported
by a tubular archway of iron and steel, whereas in the latter the body
of the bridge itself is a tube. The tubular arch is also properly
classed as a girder bridge because the great tube which covers the span
is simply an immense beam or girder, which supports the superstructure
on which the floor of the bridge is laid. A fine illustration of this
style of bridge is seen in what is known as the aqueduct bridge over
Rock Creek at Washington, D. C., in which the arch consists of two
cast-iron jointed pipes, supporting a double carriage and a double
street car way, and through which pipes all the water for the supply of
the City of Washington passes. General M. C. Meigs was the engineer.
Another far grander illustration of such a structure, in combination
with the truss system, is that of the Illinois and St. Louis bridge,
across the Mississippi, of which Captain James B. Eads was the engineer.
There are three great spans, the central one of which has a length of
about 520 feet, and the others a few feet less. Four arches form each
span, each arch consisting of an upper and lower curved member or rib,
extending from pier to pier, and each member composed of two parallel
steel tubes.
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