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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Wobbly Bridge Notorious In Engineering Lore

Bart Ripp Mcclatchy News Service

“Engineers of Dreams: Great Bridge Builders and the Spanning of America” By Henry J. Petroski ($30, Alfred A. Knopf)

They could do anything. They could conquer the great Golden Gate. They could walk across San Francisco Bay. They could span New York’s East River and Hudson River literally over and under - on time and under budget. They were engineers. They were invincible. And then they fell into Tacoma Narrows with a splash heard around the world.

The story of the impetuous consulting engineer, Lion S. Moisseiff, his hard-earned glory shrouded by salty splashing on a stormy morning 55 Novembers ago, and tales of crisscrossing American waters are chronicled in “Engineers of Dreams: Great Bridge Builders and the Spanning of America” by Henry J. Petroski.

Petroski, 53, chair of Duke University’s department of civil and environmental engineering, recently visited Tacoma Narrows Bridge for the first time. Hardly anyone knows consulting engineer Lion S. Moisseiff, either on Puget Sound or on the teeming bridges of New York City, where he lived most of his 70 years. Moisseiff’s many triumphs and one profound failure are the reason why mangled steel sleeps 120 to 140 feet down, down, down in the dark Narrows water.

Beneath Tacoma Narrows Bridge is the wreck of the first bridge, revered as Galloping Gertie. Moisseiff was Gertie’s consulting engineer.

What Moisseiff had designed was virtually a colossal airplane wing. On Nov. 7, 1940, the wing took off. The new cables snapped in 40 mph winds. The bridge did something new. Instead of oscillating in a wave, it began to twist. Wind under the bridge tore it apart.