Today, a story of railroads and airplanes. The
University of Houston's College of Engineering
presents this series about the machines that make
our civilization run, and the people whose
ingenuity created them.
On July 21st, 2003, a tornado
touched down in north-central Pennsylvania
destroying most of the Kinzua Viaduct; and therein
hangs a tale:
Buffalo, New York, had been in dire need of more
coal in 1881. Demand had reached three million tons
per year; and the Lake Erie & Western Railroad
saw a chance to turn a big profit by shipping coal
in from the Pennsylvania fields, due south of
Buffalo.
The brilliant engineer Octave
Chanute decided it'd be cheaper to bridge the
Kinzua Valley than to build the railroad around it.
You and I know Chanute today, not for his work on
railways, but for pioneering the airplane. Chanute
did important early glider experiments and he
collaborated with the Wright Brothers.
But this was earlier. Chanute boldly let a contract
for a heroic viaduct across the valley. It was
built of steel set on stone footings. It was over
three hundred feet high and over two thousand feet
long. When it was finished, people came in from
miles away to see it. They paid a dollar for a rail
excursion across it. For a season, this was the
eighth wonder of the world.
High winds through the valley were a constant
threat. The viaduct swayed in the wind, and trains
had to slow to five miles an hour. Finally, in
1900, Chanute collaborated on the design of a new
structure, with heavier, stiffer members. That
version served until 1959. The out-of-service
bridge eventually became the centerpiece of
Pennsylvania's Kinzua Bridge State Park. Sunday
visitors picnicked there, and they walked on the
bridge.
Inspectors found serious deterioration in 2002, and
plans were being made to renovate the old viaduct.
The tornado ended that. Now all that stands is a
section on one end. But the bridge commanded such
enormous public affection and attention that people
are talking about rebuilding it. Is that
foolishness?
Maybe not. We don't blink when people reconstruct,
say, Fort Clatsop where Lewis and Clark camped at
the mouth of the Columbia, or Williamsburg, once
the seat of the Virginia Colony. And the railroads
are an essential element of the American saga, just
as surely as Lewis and Clark or the Virginia
Colony. That's why the viaduct always drew people
like a magnet.
The saga of the Kinzua Viaduct has another
dimension of poignancy for me, however. It was
destroyed just a century after its designer, Octave
Chanute, had been deeply involved in comparing
experiments and data with the Wright Brothers. For
me, this glorious railroad bridge, once soaring
across the Kinzua Valley, represents the end of the
old century and the beginning of the new.
I cannot look at it without thinking about that
remarkable engineer. Chanute was the rare person
who managed to live in both centuries -- who made
the seemingly impossible leap from rail to flight,
from steel to bamboo, from the old world to the
new.
I'm John Lienhard, at the University of Houston,
where we're interested in the way inventive minds
work.
(Theme music)
K. Jaeger, Death of a Landmark: A Tornado Does What a
Century of Hard Use Could Not. Invention and
Technology, Winter 2004, pp. 10-11.
For a fine history of the bridge and many
illustrations, see:
http://www.smethporthistory.org/kinzuaviaduct/
