Abstract

This collection contains the technical and professional documents of consulting engineer Blair Birdsall. Most of the collection are documents pertaining to the multitude of bridges he worked on, including the Golden Gate, Chesapeake Bay, and Brooklyn Bridges, as a consulting engineer or as a design engineer. The collection spans from 1900 to 2002 covering his entire career and also early Steinman Boynton Gronquist & Birdsall and John A. Roebling Sons Engineering companies.

Abstract The collection of photographs illustrate various types of civil engineering works including the Whipple through truss railroad bridge, Pennsylvania through truss bridge, suspension bridges, cantilever bridges, reinforced concrete arch bridges and buttress dams. Among the bridge photographs are included the Brooklyn Bridge, the Firth of Forth Bridge, the Tay Bridge and Niagara Falls “Honeymoon” Bridge collapses, the Pecos River railroad trestle bridge and the “Luten Design” reinforced...

Abstract

The lecture notes reflect an interesting view into the field of civil engineering at the turn of the twentieth century. The notes indicate that a student in civil engineering was expected to have a multidisciplinary diversity. Some examples given in the lectures illustrate the broad field of knowledge possessed by Professor Mansfield Merriman.