12th November 2010
Engineers & Engineering
John Augustus Roebling was born in Muhlhausen in Prussia (now Germany) in 1806. He and his brother Karl emigrated to the United States in 1831 fleeing the unrest in Europe. He bought an area of land in Pittsburgh and developed a settlement which he named Saxonburg. His first engineering projects were improving river navigation and canal building and in 1841 from his workshop in Saxonburg he began producing wire rope. It was his patent in 1840 for spinning wire rope in-situ that proved one of the decisive developments in the building of modern suspension bridges. His major engineering work was the designing and of the Brooklyn Bridge in 1867. ( Timeline for Roebling and Brooklyn Bridge )
John Augustus Roebling 1806 - 1869
Brooklyn Bridge 1900
Roebling Suspension Bridge - Ohio
Brooklyn Bridge
