Bridge Construction

Abstract

THIS book is principally intended for practical use by engineers and draughtsmen, who are now being called upon to design and construct bridges of unprecedented magnitude, like the Forth Bridge, which the introduction of iron, and latterly more especially of steel, has rendered possible. The execution of these requirements has brought forward a number of new problems to be solved in Statics, and the Elasticity and Strength of Materials, and has invested old problems with an importance which they did not before possess. Evolution in this branch of creation has gone on so rapidly that the Darwinian student of the “survival of the fittest” might turn to this book for striking exemplifications of his theories, which he would find in the classification of bridges, described and illustrated in the second section of the work. But while in the animate kingdom the mammoth animals have become extinct from insufficient mobility and relative strength to carry their own weight, the converse operation is observable in engineering construction. Bone and muscle are of the same strength as formerly, but the improved manufacture of steel has placed in the hands of the engineer a material with which he can safely attempt his mammoth creations; and should metallurgical science provide commercially for the engineer a new metal, as strong as, or stronger than, steel, but of less weight—say, aluminium—then we may expect to see still more marvellous developments in bridge building.

A Practical Treatise on Bridge Construction: being a Text-book on the Design and Construction of Bridges in Iron and Steel.

For the Use of Students, Draughtsmen, and Engineers. By T. Claxton Fidler. (London: Charles Griffin and Co., 1887.)