Maria Pia Bridge, Porto, Portugal Completed 1877 This is a simple diagram of necessity – a railway line had to be brought across the river Douro and it was impossible to build piers on the river bed. So Gustave Eiffel devised an arch wider than any previously built, its structure widening where the forces are greater, with the dead-straight line of the tracks above. Sometimes untested techniques were used to keep it light and to solve the problem of keeping it up during construction, before the arch was complete. Yet this work of pure engineering also succeeds in being an emblem of its city, something Eiffel would achieve later with a tower in Paris.
Posted on: Mon, 30 Sep 2013 08:34:15 +0000
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