John Alexander Low Waddell
John Alexander Low Waddell (born January 14, 1854 in Point Hope , Ontario , † March 3, 1938 in New York City ) was an American civil engineer, known for his lift bridges .
biography
Waddell attended the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy (New York) with a degree as a civil engineer in 1875. He then went back to Canada, where he first worked for the Naval Office and then for the Canadian Pacific Railway before coming back to the United States plan coal mines in West Virginia. From 1878 to 1880 he taught mechanics at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute before continuing to study at McGill University and working for a construction company in Iowa. In 1882 he came to Tokyo at the invitation of the Japanese government, where he taught at the Imperial University and acted as a consultant. In 1886 he was back in the USA and founded an engineering office in Kansas City (Missouri) .
He developed a steam-powered lift bridge, first for the port of Duluth (Minnesota) (he won with his design in 1892 the price of the city), but where the War Department objected. Instead, the Aerial Lift Bridge was built, then as a transporter bridge and only converted into a lift bridge in 1929, as originally planned by Waddell. Waddell built his first lift bridge in Chicago in 1893 ( South Halsted Street Lift Bridge , over the Chicago River). He later designed more than 70 other bridges of this type. The second he built (now demolished) in 1909 over the Mississippi River at Keithsburg after a 1907 engineering office with the machine builder John Lyle Harrington founded (Waddell & Harrington) . Its ASB Bridge from 1911 is well known. In 1914, Harrington and Waddell parted ways. Harrington founded Harrington, Howard & Ash (since 1941 Howard, Needles, Tammen & Bergendoff , HNTB ) and Waddell with his son Waddell & Son in 1917 , who designed, among other things, the lift bridge of the Fourteenth Street Bridge (1919). In 1927 he founded the engineering company Waddell & Hardesty , which designed the Dock Bridge (1935) and continues to exist today as Hardesty & Hanover . From 1920 he worked in New York City, where he advised on several bridges ( Goethals Bridge , Marine Parkway - Gil Hodges Memorial Bridge).
At times he advised the state railway in China and during this time supported the efforts of MIT and Harvard University to set up a Chinese university (National Southeastern University) based on the American model, which was then shattered by the chaos of war.
He was five times honorary doctor. On December 16, 1918 he became a corresponding member of the Académie des Sciences . In 1936 he became an honorary member of the American Society of Civil Engineers .
He wrote books on bridge building. A bridge construction for which he applied for a patent at the end of the 19th century is the Waddell A truss bridge.
Fonts
- The Designing of Ordinary Iron Highway Bridges. Wiley, New York 1884 ( digitized 2nd edition 1886 ).
- De Pontibus. A Pocket Book for Bridge Engineers. Wiley, New York 1898 ( digitized 1st edition 1898 ).
- Bridge engineering. 2 volumes, Wiley, New York 1916 (digitized 1st edition 1916: volume 1 , volume 2 )
- Economics of Bridge Work, a Sequel to Bridge Engineering. Wiley, New York 1921 ( digitized ).
literature
- Karl-Eugen Kurrer : The History of the Theory of Structures. Searching for Equilibrium. Ernst & Sohn , Berlin 2018, p. 818 a. P. 1075 f. (Biography), ISBN 978-3-433-03229-9 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ William E. Nyman: Dr. JAL Waddell's Contributions to Vertical Lift Bridge Design. Heavy Movable Structures Inc., 9th Biennial Movable Bridge Symposium, 22.-25. October 2002, tables 3a and 3b.
- ^ List of former members since 1666: Letter W. Académie des sciences, accessed on March 13, 2020 (French).
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Waddell, John Alexander Low |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American civil engineer in bridge construction |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 14, 1854 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Point Hope , Ontario |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 3, 1938 |
| Place of death | New York City |