Chief Engineer: Washington Roebling, The Man Who Built the Brooklyn Bridge
- Submitting institution
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Goldsmiths' College
- Unit of assessment
- 27 - English Language and Literature
- Output identifier
- 2174
- Type
- A - Authored book
- DOI
-
-
- Publisher
- Bloomsbury
- ISBN
- 9781620400517
- Open access status
- -
- Month of publication
- June
- Year of publication
- 2017
- URL
-
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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-
- Proposed double-weighted
- Yes
- Double-weighted statement
- Chief Engineer, a cross-disciplinary work, is the culmination of decades-long investigation into the life and historical background of Washington Roebling. The work involved four extended trips to American archives (Rutgers University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute) as well as to many other Roebling-related sites. Because the author is not a trained engineer, she spoke extensively to those who were and submitted drafts of early work for assessment. The author was awarded the Eccles Centre & Hay Festival Writers’ Award by the British Library – where significant years of research were also done – in recognition of the project’s uniqueness and potential.
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Chief Engineer is a ground-breaking biography of a significant figure in the history of the United States and in the history of engineering. Washington Roebling (1837 – 1926) was chief engineer of the Brooklyn Bridge, which opened in 1883 after 14 years of construction. This icon of architecture and engineering was, in its time, an unprecedented structure, using techniques of construction that were wholly new. Early designs of the bridge were completed by Washington’s father, John Roebling, but he died in 1869 before work was begun: the task of building the bridge was left to his son. He was just 32 when he took up his post; a veteran of the American Civil War. _x000D_
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His was a fascinating life, spanning nearly a century. Yet, astonishingly, Chief Engineer is the first full biography of Roebling, and its significance was recognized in the process of writing, when I was awarded the Eccles Centre Writers’ Award in 2014 by the British Library to facilitate its completion. The book is based on original research and investigation, involving several visits to archives in the USA where primary source material – much of it never properly explored before – is held. My research demonstrated not only the full scope of Washington’s achievement, but also the way in which he struggled, all his life, to detach himself from his tyrannical father’s influence: these are new insights. Chief Engineer was widely and warmly reviewed when it appeared in publications both in the USA and the UK: my work, therefore, was effectively shared, reaching a large audience far outside the purview of those interested only in bridge-building or engineering. It is a book that encompasses both technical and psychological detail and is the more unusual for that.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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