Year 3 Children at St. John's School, Frome have a go at re-creating the demonstration of how a cantilever bridge works as part of the 'Benjamin Baker of Frome: Bridging the World' education programme.
The original photograph of the demonstration taking place in the 1880's - as taken by Evelyn Carey, engineering assistant to Benjamin Baker - can be seen in the current exhibition at Rook Lane Chapel. Baker wanted to show how a cantilever bridge worked as at the time he was partway through the construction of the Forth Bridge which he had designed – work started in 1883 and the bridge was completed in 1890.He famously said in his speech ‘Bridging the Firth of Forth’, that ‘a cantilever’ was just another way of saying ‘a bracket’. The Forth Bridge was the first ever cantilever bridge, as well as the first ever steel bridge and the longest bridge in the world until 1918.
