Golden Gate Research Paper

It is 1933. Construction begins. 1937, this landmark is completed and opened to pedestrians and vehicles. It is built at a cost of approximately $35.5 million and comes in under budget and ahead of schedule. World War I veteran Harold Wobber, this landmarks first suicide, claimed, "This is where I get off,” and then jumps to his death. Now jump to 2013. Nearly 1,600 people have committed suicide by jumping off. The average number of suicides from this landmark is three per month. The Golden Gate Bridge was an example of a feat of engineering.

The owners in charge of the bridge during the many repairs and maintenance problems that the bridge had, managed to disregard how the construction loads were being placed on the bridge to prevent from too much weight at a precise point. Their knowledge from past experiences with dealing with loads and not making proper adjustments lines up Kantian ethics. They had the will to repair and maintain the bridge by performing road work on the bridge, but when they acted on the procedures to carry out their goal was inadequate. The federal and state official of transportation did not provide all the truth with their inspection throughout the years especially the gusset plates load capacity conditions. Throughout the years major since the bridge was

were very poor, but somehow, many architectural feats were being made. The U.S. Government was still building the greatest dam in the world before the Depression, the Hoover Dam, which lasted five years to build. It takes a lot of manpower and materials for the Government to build this great dam, so they hired contractors to build it and the The U.S. provides the materials. Men of six companies were hired to build the dam in 7 years or penalties will ensue; the men were called, Six Companies, Inc. Remarkably, the contractors banded together to build the dam because of the immense size of the structure, one contractor cannot do the task alone (America's Experiences). The Dams magnificent feat in becoming USA’s greatest dam inspired the same contracting firm to work on a certain bridge in the west (Hiktzik). During the time Hoover Dam was being constructed, out in the west, another architectural feat was occurring. In 1933 San Francisco, California, construction starts on what will soon to be one of America’s greatest landmarks, The Golden Gate Bridge. One of the bridges architects, Joseph B. Strauss, a man who built many bridges across the U.S., was involved in the bridge project. Strauss and his colleagues had to deal with many problems about the bridge such as people saying it had to be impossible or it was expensive and a hazard to the environment (History.com). Once the bridge was funded with thirty-five million dollars,

The first completed steel bridge was the Eads Bridge, in St. Louis Missouri. Steel was a very new material and was just starting to become commercially available. Steel was a smart choice to use because it is extremely hard and resists rusting. The Eads Bridge was the longest arch bridge in the world, of 510 feet long. St. Louis became a very important city in the midwest and had to really compete with Chicago during the Civil War. After the Civil War, St. Louis started growing in all directions. “.... the city of St. Louis wanted to reestablish its prewar dominance as the economic powerhouse of the midwest” (Ostrow 75). The main reason to build the Eads Bridge was to connect settlers from the East to the lands of the West. At the time there

Ten miles up from the navigation lock, they thought the sediments were firmer so they dug into a piece of dry ground and built what looked like an incongruous, waterless bridge. Five hundred and sixty-six feet long, it stood parallel to the Mississippi and about a thousand yards back from the water: between its abutments were ten piers, framing eleven gates that could be lifted or dropped, opened or shut like

Later on Phoenix Bridge Company was chosen as promised and it was stated that their tender is the “best and cheapest” offer. The project began in October 1900. Cantilever design was the best fit and it would be the longest cantilever structure in Canada.

In the past construction also took less time. One reason for this is that safety regulations were not nearly as strict then as they are now. It was understood 80 years ago that any major construction project would come with the loss of life. According to Lisa Vorderbrueggen from Contra Costa Times, for every $1 million to be spent on a project regarding high steel work, there would be one death. In total the bridge cost was $77 million (equivalent to about $1.3 billion in current dollars) and resulted in 24 deaths (Vorderbrueggen).

Four months prior to the collapse, a similar design of bridge, also designed by Freeman Fox & Partners, collapsed in Milford Haven, Wales, killing four workers. Understandably, there was a lot of industrial unrest on the construction site of the Westgate Bridge, although workers had been assured by Freeman Fox & Partners that the design of the Westgate was perfectly safe, but was not supported by any relevant or sufficient calculations.

Following the end of World War I, San Francisco city engineer Michael O’Shaughnessy began challenging engineers to design and construct a bridge across the Golden Gate. Due the location’s geography, most claimed that such a project would cost no less than $100 million. Others claimed that construction would simply be impossible.

Washington Roebling started the construction of towers in late 1872 after the completion of the foundations. The two towers were made by stone masonry which were provided by Quarries of J.R. Bodwell, Hallowell, Maine. The two towers were designed to be high and bulky, which both supports the enormous weight of the roadway and cables. The deck and the towers were high so they will not interfere with the traffic on the river. The mass of the anchorages has to be sufficient to hold the tension of the cables. As a result, the towers had to be able to sustain the colossal downward pressure of the cables. The Brooklyn and Manhattan towers were completed in June 1875 and July 1876 , after three years of construction. (Y L Cheng, 2007)

The basic design of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge itself was a suspension bridge with a center span of 2800 feet and two side spans of one 1100 feet (Farquharson, 1950, p. 17). Its two lane, reinforced concrete roadway was twenty-six feet wide with two 5 foot, 9 inch sidewalks (Farquharson, 1950, p. 19). Overall the superstructure was 5939 feet, including the suspension structures, approach spans and anchorages (Farquharson, 1950, p. 19). Anchorages were made of solid concrete and were fifty feet by 170 feet and were fifty feet high (Farquharson, 1950, p. 19). The main towers which the cables saddle were 425 feet in height and with a spacing of thirty-nine feet at the top and fifty feet at the bottom (Farquharson, 1950, p. 19). Each cable consisted of nineteen strands of galvanized wire and totaled a diameter of seventeen inches. The design of the bridge may sound rather large and structurally stable but as mentioned before the bridge was designed to be very sleek looking. By

The history of building truss bridges in the United States goes back to the late eighteen century, when in 1792, Timothy Palmer built in Massachusetts, his Newburyport Bridge, across the Merrimack River, thus proving the possibility of “fast and inexpensive” construction of a bridge. Very quickly, the “new” idea of bridge design was incorporated into repertoire of many designers, and a number of truss bridges, mostly across the Eastern coast of a country, was built. The majority of early truss bridges were single span, statically determinate structures, built out of timber, with the design aspect based mostly on the engineering intuition of their creators. Throughout the next two centuries, many types of truss bridges were designed and built,

On October 17, 1989, an earthquake hit San Francisco, California, killing at least fifty people and injuring several others. This earthquake registered as a 6.9 on the Richter scale, the largest since 1906. Not only did this earthquake devastate numerous families’ homes, it also collapsed the Oakland Bay Bridge. The damage due to the earthquake resulted in a cost of around ten billion dollars. The top section of the bridge collapsed, leading to a massive. To prevent similar disasters in the upcoming few decades, engineers launched an effort to upgrade other bridges in the area. Scientists say there is a possibility of another earthquake similar to Loma Prieta, the earthquake in 1989, in the next fifteen years. The key difficulty engineers reflected upon was the

Along with bridge design, he also created a plan for the Lincoln Tunnel construction. He also opened New York and heaviest suspension bridge of the world in New York. That bridge named as Verrazano-Narrows Bridge also has the 8th position among the longest span on the globe. His contribution to the building of Golden Gate Bridge enabled it to rank at 9th placed among the best buildings in the

In spite of their appearance, these massive spans serve no practical function. They are strictly ornamental and do not help support the structure, which was the first object built to withstand the forces of the wind as well as gravity. Only now, more than one hundred years later, can we see the tower in context. It has aged gracefully and no longer stands in contrast to the ornate architecture that has survived in modern Paris. Once the exposition was over, plans were made to destroy the Eiffel Tower. The monument that brought so much displeasure because it represented that which was modern, new, and very un-Parisian, was actually saved by technological advances. Engineers realized that the structure would make a perfect broadcasting tower.