1940? If memory serves me correctly, wasn’t the Tacoma Narrows Bridge incident in 1912… the same year as the Titanic sinking?
E3
Wow, I just looked it up. I sure was wrong on that one. Nov. 7th 1940.
yup.
If you’re interested in stuff like this, you might want to check out some of the books written by Henry Petroski. He’s best known for writing The Pencil, but he made a career out of studying why bridges fall down, and he’s written some other pop-oriented books on engineering design and failures.
When I was living in San Jose the Golden Gate bridge was closed for a day – I think in 1986, the 50th anniversary – so pedestrians could tromp all over it. So many showed up it set a loading record for the bridge. The slight arch in the roadway was actually flattened out and at the ends, the vertical wires connecting the deck to the suspension cables were slack. The engineers were kicking themselves for not thinking of putting strain gauges in place, but the bridge actually was in no danger of collapsing.