I once had the privilege of walking across the Brooklyn Bridge with a civil engineer who had studied it. He mentioned the caissons (and the problems resulting from workers suffering the bends), and pointed out a lot of “double-safety” features on the bridge; meaning that if Part X failed, Part Y would hold until Part X could be repaired. I’m no engineer, but it was a fascinating walk across the bridge spent with him; and McCullough’s book, which I read subsequently, confirmed what he said.
Its an amazingly good book. I own it and a good number of other by McCullough. He made a book about building a bridge fascinating. Not an easy task as it should be an extremely dry topic.
Good question. I voted for Tower Bridge for vague reasons such as age and also trying to look at it from a non USA centric viewpoint. If “famous” means iconic, I vote Golden Gate.It’s also the first one that comes to mind.
Absent any other context, the Tower Bridge is clearly the most visually unique of those four choices, even if people don’t know its correct name. Everyone knows “Big Ben,” but I doubt 1 in 10 random people know exactly what part of that tower is “Big Ben,” or the official name of the actual tower (it’s Elizabeth Tower, BTW).
As a Brit who regularly uses an iconic bridge (the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol), I went for Golden Gate. But I was answering based on what I thought was best-known globally. Sydney Harbour came a close second in my thinking. Oddly, I didn’t think of Tower Bridge, possibly because to me it’s ‘part of the furniture’ rather than being an iconic tourist attraction.
Had this been an open-ended poll, I’d have said the same, but since there was a list I went with the bridge that’s actually been in London since the 19th century. I figured that the two USA contenders would split the votes, and since Australia is less visited/populated than the UK, the English span would be the winner.