John Jacob Crew Bradfield

John Bradfield

John Jacob Crew Bradfield , often called John Job Crew Bradfield , (born September 26, 1867 in Sandgate , Queensland , † September 23, 1943 in Gordon , New South Wales ) was an Australian civil engineer and responsible for the construction of the Sydney Harbor Bridge .

Origin and education

His father, John Edward Bradfield, was a Crimean War veteran who came to Brisbane from England in 1857 , and his mother was Maria Crew. Bradfield attended school in Ipswich, Queensland , won a gold medal in chemistry at the general exams in Sydney and studied civil engineering at St. Andrew`s College, University of Sydney with a bachelor's degree in 1889 (where he won the university gold medal) and a master’s degree in 1896 (also with top marks and a university medal). He later received his first doctoral degree (D.Sc.) in engineering from the University of Sydney for a dissertation on electrified rail systems and the Sydney Harbor Bridge (The city and suburban electric railways and the Sydney Harbor Bridge) . In 1910 he took part in a competition at the University of Queensland for their first professorship in engineering (with 22 letters of recommendation), which was unsuccessful. In 1895 he was one of the founders of the Sydney University Engineering Society (and its president in 1902/03 and 1919/20).

Career as an engineer

Sydney Harbor Bridge

From 1889 to 1891 he worked as a draftsman and draftsman for the Queensland Railway, after which he was in the Public Works Office of New South Wales.

In 1891 he married Edith Jenkins, with whom he had six children.

In 1909 he became an assistant engineer. In 1912 he became chief engineer of the Sydney Municipal Railway after submitting a design for the planned Sydney Harbor Bridge (as a suspension bridge). In 1914 he studied urban rail systems on a trip abroad, and in 1915 he presented a report with a large-scale design for Sydney's rail systems and the electrification of local connections to the suburbs, for a subway system and the long-planned harbor bridge. This was initially delayed by the First World War. During the First World War he founded a civil flight school with two others. In 1922, the plans for the Sydney Harbor Bridge were approved and companies were then invited to tender to submit designs. However, only parts of his plans for the railway system in Sydney were implemented (for example, the subway project in the business center, the so-called City Circle, started in 1923 and completed in 1955).

The harbor bridge was to carry four lanes for automobiles and two railway lines as well as a pedestrian path. The bridge made the connection to the north of the city (Northern Beaches). The competition for the design and construction of the bridge was won by the Dorman Long company (structural engineer was Ralph Freeman ). Construction began in 1924 and it opened in 1932. After the Second World War, however, the tram connection there proved to be superfluous due to the increase in car traffic, so new car lanes were set up on the bridge instead. The main road connection of the bridge was named after him (Bradfield Highway).

In 1930 he was unexpectedly retired by the Railway Administration, but the New South Wales government continued to employ him and he continued to oversee the construction of the harbor bridge. In 1933 he retired and worked as a consulting engineer.

At the beginning of the 20th century he was involved in dam construction (Cataract Dam near Sydney, Burrinjuck Dam) and he was a consulting engineer for the Story Bridge in Brisbane . He designed the Circular Quay train station in Sydney, which was not built until long after his death. His plan, published in 1938, for diverting some of the coastal rivers in Queensland to the west side of the great watershed was not carried out.

Controversy over the question of the originator of the structural concept of the Sydney Harbor Bridge

Controversy arose in 1929 when the Sydney Morning Herald named Dorman Long's Ralph Freeman as the bridge's design engineer in a series of articles. The building minister and engineer Richard Thomas Ball (1857–1937) said in a statement that it would be difficult to determine what was meant by the design of the bridge (designer) and that he would speak of a joint work here. Bradfield also commented on this. The cantilever design recommended by the state committee in 1913 and the subsequent design for an arch bridge with a span of 1650 feet came from him. Freeman would not have been the design engineer; the bridge would have been built by competitors based on his recommendations. The question of the author (structural engineer) was never clearly resolved in the public discussion. When Bradfield retired in 1933, his head of office said that Bradfield was undoubtedly the author of the design, but the construction company Dorman Long threatened to file a lawsuit in 1932 if Bradfield was named as the author of the structural design on a plaque on the bridge. In the publications in the Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers for the bridge in 1934 there are essays by Bradfield (the main essay, which also describes the associated transport system) and by Freeman and Lawrence Ennis, who worked out detailed plans, on the construction of the bridge and the manufacture of the steel structure and Freeman alone on the design of the structure and the foundation. Also by the engineers John Freeman Pain and Gilbert Roberts for the calculation of the steel structure,

Honors

In 1933 he received the Peter Nicole Russell Memorial Medal from the Australian Institution of Civil Engineers, which he founded in 1919. In the same year 1933 he became Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George and in 1934 received the Telford Gold Medal of the Institution of Civil Engineers in Great Britain. In 2007 he received the Queensland Institute of Engineers' Lifetime Achievement Award.

Fonts

• John Bradfield: The Sydney Harbor Bridge and Approaches, Minutes of the Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, Volume 238, 1934, pp. 310-401

Web links

Commons : John Bradfield  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

• English biography (The famous people)
• Australian Dictionary of Biography