The Golden Gate Bridge was designed by a team whose key engineer got none of the credit in his lifetime

historyWikipedia1916–1937 · San Francisco, USA

The Golden Gate Bridge was designed by a team whose key engineer got none of the credit in his lifetime

the gist

Before the bridge, the only short route between San Francisco and Marin County was by ferry, and many experts said a bridge across the strait could not be built because of strong tides, deep water and fierce winds. A 1916 newspaper proposal led engineer Joseph Strauss to lead the project, but the final suspension design came from Leon Moisseiff, who introduced a flexible deck that would bend in the wind and pass stress through the cables to the towers. Charles Alton Ellis did much of the theoretical work and was fired in 1931, and Strauss later took most of the credit. The Golden Gate Bridge District formally recognised Ellis's role in 2007. Construction began in January 1933, after the bonds were sold through Bank of America's founder Amadeo Giannini.

how it works

A suspension bridge hangs its deck from cables draped over tall towers. Moisseiff's deflection theory let the thin, flexible deck bend in the wind, so forces moved into the cables and towers rather than building up in the deck. This flexibility was key to the bridge's safety, and it was a lesson that the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, designed on similar principles, did not survive.

so what

The bridge is a landmark of American engineering, and its history shows how credit in large projects can be unfair. The deflection-theory design also held up in a way that another Moisseiff bridge, the Tacoma Narrows, did not.

the bigger pattern

Large public works often hide the contributions of their real engineers, and the Tacoma Narrows collapse showed how an untested design could fail in wind.

fun fact

The bridge's famous International Orange colour was chosen by architect Irving Morrow over a US Navy suggestion of black and yellow stripes.

D. W. Griffith’s A Corner in Wheat (1909)

the gist

In 1909 D. W. Griffith made a 14-minute film about a speculator who corners the wheat market and doubles the price of bread. A farmer sows his field while a 'Wheat King' gambles in the Chicago wheat pit; bakers raise the loaf from five cents to ten and the poor line up for bread. Griffith cut back and forth between the farm, the feast and the breadline, a technique called parallel editing, so audiences saw both ends of the economy at once. The film drew on Frank Norris's stories and on a real scheme: months earlier Chicago financier James Patten had cornered wheat, sent bread prices up and made about $5 million, roughly $185 million today.

how it works

To corner a market, a trader buys up most of the available supply and the futures contracts that promise more. Anyone who has to deliver the commodity must then buy from the cornerer at whatever price is demanded. The trader profits until the stock is released or the scheme collapses.

so what

A century on, it still shows how markets can be rigged by someone who controls supply, and how the people at either end, farmers and eaters, pay for it. It also helped establish editing as a way to argue a point, not just tell a story.

the bigger pattern

Corners have recurred whenever supply could be locked up, from the Hunt brothers' attempt on silver in 1979 to 1980 to the 'Black Friday' gold panic of 1869. Many such schemes end by collapsing, and the response is often new rules on speculation.

fun fact

In the film the Wheat King dies by falling into a grain elevator and being buried in the wheat he hoarded, an ending borrowed from Norris's novel The Octopus.

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