JOHN ROEBLING

Bridge Builder

John A. Roebling is most famous for building the Brooklyn Bridge, but he was largely responsible for the development of the wire rope used in bridge building as well as other industries. Much of this development came, of course, while in Pennsylvania.

John August Roebling was born in Mublhausen, Germany in 1806 to Friederike Dorothea Roebling and educated in Berlin. It was here he became an engineer, and first became interested insuspension bridges which would make him famous.

Roebling also became extremely interested in social and political reform. In 1831, he and his older brother Carl organized a group of people to come to the United States to form a community free from such tyranny. They settled in the area near Pittsburgh, and named their community Germania, but it would become known as Saxonburg. He worked for three years to get the community off to a good start before he returned to his interests in engineering.

In 1837, he took his first outside job, with the State of Pennsylvania. He saw the Pennsylvania Canal working with huge ropes to lift boats over the Allegheny Mountains. He began experimenting, in1840, with wire ropes to replace them. In 1841, he sold this rope to the state after showing that it was superior to the other rope. It was just as strong and flexible, its diameter of 1 1/4 inches made it easier to work with than the larger hemp rope, and it lasted much longer.

In 1844, he repaired a suspension aqueduct across the Allegheny River for the Pennsylvania Canal, and then in 1847 built a suspension bridge (at Smithfield Street) across the Monongahela River in Pittsburgh, both using his new wire rope. He became famous in 1855, when he built the Niagara River Suspension Bridge across the gorge of the Niagara River. The publicity from this spread his fame world wide.

In 1849, needing to expand capacity, Roebling moved his family and his factory from Saxonburg to Trenton, New Jersey, to be closer to the factory which supplied his wire. In addition to bridges, Roebling developed his wire rope to be used in electrical transmission, the elevator industry, and for marine uses. His engineering skills were helping to develop a large and varied market for his products.

John Roebling's sons joined hime the business. In 1857, Washington Roebling joined, with his main interest in building bridges, and in 1859 Ferdinand W. Roebling joined, with his main interests in sales and finance.

The most famous feat of Roebling's career was actually built by his son, Washington. John Roebling had been trying to convince people of the practicality of a suspension bridge to connect Brooklyn and Manhattan, and the traveling difficulties caused by the winter of 1866-1867 won him the award. However in 1869, while looking for the site for the Brooklyn tower, a ferry boat crashed into a pier on which he was standing and crushed his foot. He died from the tetanus poisoning that developed from the injury. John Roebling's plans were put into being by his son, with the Brooklyn Bridge opening in 1883, serving as John Roebling's most noted achievement.