October 28, 1996
Focusing on five engineers and their creations, Petroski looks at the great bridge-building era that spanned from the 1870s to the 1930s.
October 2, 1995
An exhilarating saga of ingenuity and sheer determination, this chronicle of the great era of American bridge building intersects with the time of technological innovation, the transformation of the U.S. into an industrial power and the birth of modern civil engineering. Duke engineering professor Petroski (The Pencil) focuses on the dreams, foibles, successes and failures of five engineers. James Eads designed the St. Louis Bridge (1874) across the Mississippi. Theodore Cooper pioneered steel railway bridges, but the 1907 collapse of his cantilevered Quebec Bridge altered the course of bridge development. Swiss-born Othmar Ammann left two New York landmarks, the George Washington Bridge (1932) across the Hudson River and the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge (1964). Moravian-born Gustav Lindenthal designed bridges in Pittsburgh in the 1880s and spanned New York's East River with the Hell Gate Bridge (1916). David Steinman engineered Michigan's Mackinac Bridge (1953) as well as bridges in California, Oregon and Maine. Illustrations.