VIRTUAL EXHIBITION
The Forth Bridge
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All images copyright National Archive of Scotland
Ten Months in Water / Steel Iron
Queensferry N.W. Caisson
Queensferry N.W. Caisson
Temporary Platform Inside Viaduct Girders
Raising Viaduct Girders
From S. Cantilever End Pier
Central Girder on Drill Road
Demonstrating the Cantilever Principle
From the Hawes Pier
Inchgarvie N.E. Main Pier
Garvie N.E. Bottom Junction at End of Bay
Junction at End of Bottom Member Bay Queensferry
Fife Main Pier from Coastguard Station
Crossing of Tie 1 and Strutt 1 and Temporary Column.
Inchgarvie Main Pier, Method of Erection
Fife Main Pier, Method of Erection
Queensferry Main Pier
Skewback
Machine for Rivetting (sic) Tubes
Queensferry Main Pier from South Cantilever Pier
Riveting on Garvie Pier
Riveting on Garvie Pier
Inchgarvie South Cantilever
Queensferry Main Pier
Surveyor with Measuring Rod
Sounding around sites of deep piers off Inchgarvie
Group of Engineers with Surveying Instruments
Riveting Facts
- 1When Benjamin Baker was born, Fussells Ironworks (one of the many foundries in Frome) was one of the World’s main manufacturers of farming tools. Singers had recently been established and specialised in church ornaments. Cockeys was an established bell foundry.
- 2John Fowler (Baker’s partner) was a friend and contemporary of Isambard Kingdom Brunel & Robert Stephenson. These early engineers and the good fortune to be present at the height of railway construction and moved up quickly through their profession.
- 3Descendants of fellow Forth Bridge engineer, Tom Harrison, live close to Frome. Tom Harrison was known as ‘honest Tom’ and despite being advised against a career in civil engineering by Thomas Telford, had a successful career working on the railways.
- 4Like many engineers Baker did not attend university but served an engineering apprenticeship. By the time Evelyn George Carey came of age Civil Engineering was established as a professional degree.
- 5The Forth Bridge was the first ever steel bridge. Steel was a new material, processed using the Bessemer converter which by passing oxygen through molten iron removed silicone, carbon and manganese.
- 6The Forth Bridge used 65,000 tons of steel and nearly 7,000,000 rivets. Baker insisted that all the rivet holes were pre-drilled to avoid creating localised stresses. The contractor, William Arrol invented new machinery to aide construction.
- 7The first person to drive a train across the Forth Bridge was a woman (the wife of one of the rail company directors). This publicity stunt did not result in much press as the newspapers were rather grave and unresponsive at the time.
- 8The Forth Bridge was the longest bridge in the world until 1918 when it was overtaken by the Pont de Québec which is also a cantilever bridge. The Pont de Québec was initially badly designed (the weight of the structure was not calculated correctly) and collapsed killing 75 workmen in 1907.
- 9Baker was the first engineer to use the undulating railway line on the London Underground. On approach to a station the track would slope up and on departure slope down, thus aiding braking and acceleration. A radical fuel-saving idea still in use today!
- 10The term ‘Civil Engineering’ was coined by John Smeaton in the eighteenth century to distinguish their profession from that of military engineers. John Smeaton was famous for the Eddystone lighthouse but he was prolific in other areas such as, canals, bridges and instrument design.
LATEST NEWS
Engineering Quotes
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“Civil Engineering is the art of directing the great sources of Power in Nature for the use and convenience of man.”
Thomas Tredgold
Charter of the British Institution of Civil Engineers
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“I wish the country had fewer lawyers and more engineers.”
Barack Obama
The Audacity of Hope
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“To the engineer falls the job of clothing the bare bones of science with life, comfort and hope.”
Herbert Hoover
The Profession of Engineering (from his memoirs)
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“Cool, quiet judgement & a restrained strength were his marked characteristics.”
Baker’s Times Obituary
20th May 1907
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“A cantilever is simply another name for a bracket, and an unsatisfactory one at that.”
Benjamin Baker
‘Bridging the Firth of Forth’ lecture, 1887
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“Where no precedent exists, the successful engineer is he who makes the fewest mistakes.”
Benjamin Baker
Speech in Montreal, 1886
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“..every improvement in the art of engineering made the use of iron more ugly, until at last they had that supreme specimen of ugliness, the Forth Bridge.”
William Morris
Lecture to National Association of Advancement of Art & It’s Application to Industry
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“One feature especially delights me – the absence of ornament. Any architectural detail borrowed from any style would have been out of place in such a work. As it is the bridge is a style unto itself.”
Alfred Waterhouse
writing to John Fowler
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“They carried their lives in their hands for the better part of eight or nine years, and I think they are not to be passed over at the end of the battle as so many unimportant items in the camp of the commander.”
William Arrol
on his workforce in a speech on receiving the freedom of Dundee in 1889
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“One of the finest works of mechanical science I have ever witnessed”
Gustav Eiffel
quoted in The Times, 4th March 1890
