Interest in caring for our engineering history and heritage first started to grow in Britain during the 1950s and 1960s, due the development of industrial archaeology. Since then, interest in this field has fallen behind the thriving activities of building conservation and preservation of architectural heritage; however there is reason to believe that things are now changing.
The last few years have seen the formation of several new organisations in a number of countries concerned with engineering history and the care and restoration of our engineering heritage; the latest is the Gesellschaft für Bautechnikgeschichte (Society for the History of Construction Engineering) in German-speaking countries (http://www.bautechnikgeschichte.org). The inaugural meeting was in Berlin on June 2013, and the first congress will be held in Aachen this November. The objectives of the society include
the promotion and encouragement of the study of the history of construction, both in teaching and research, at universities and among the wider public
establishing construction history in the curricula of engineering courses
maintaining scientific exchange and the promotion of the scientific work of civil engineers, architects, preservationists and historians of science and technology in the field of construction history, in particular the support of young researchers
promoting the preservation, as well as the documentation of tangible and intangible structures, practices and methods in the history of construction, as well as the care of related heritage monuments
the representation and promotion of the integration of German-speaking education and research in the field of the history of construction in an international context.
Just a few months earlier, the long-established International Association for Bridge and Structural Engineers (IABSE) formed its own Construction History Working Group (WGCH), dedicated to the care of existing structures and civil engineering works (for further information contact Eberhard Pelke at secretariat@iabse.org). At the first meeting, the following general objectives of the WGCH were agreed as follows
to increase awareness among structural engineers of the historical and cultural aspects of structures and structural engineering
to illustrate and propagate the social and technical achievements of civil engineering
to improve methods and practices in structural engineering by showing ways for the systematic and targeted integration of historical and cultural aspects in intervention projects to adapt or modify structures of high cultural values for future demands.
Another way in which care for engineering heritage has lagged behind care for architectural heritage is in establishing courses and departments in universities dedicated to the subject. Again, however, things are changing. For example, in Germany, the University of Cottbus is one of several which has established a Chair with an engineering-historical focus – the Department for Construction Engineering History and Preservation of Structures (Bautechnikgeschichte und Tragwerkserhaltung) (http://www.tu-cottbus.de/fakultaet2/en/construction-history.html). At undergraduate level, civil engineering students have compulsory courses on civil engineering history, the history of theory of structures, and project work on the documentation and assessment of a historic structure. Within the master courses “Structural Engineering” and “Building and Conservation” there are courses on historical methods of design and construction as well as specific engineering methods of assessment, preservation and strengthening of structures. The department also undertakes research in the history of construction engineering, including the following among its current and recent projects
the construction and structural behaviour of flying buttresses in Gothic Cathedrals
the surveying, analysis and assessment of the iron floor and roof structures of the State Hermitage in St. Petersburg
the development of, and options for restoring iron and steel bridge bearings
the life, works and impact of Franz Dischinger (a pioneer of concrete shells in the 1920s) and
“Great Engineers” - an online encyclopaedia of civil engineers.
Details of other research projects can be found on the department's website (http://www.tu-cottbus.de/fakultaet2/en/construction-history/research/projekts.html)
In Engineering History and Heritage we are keen to encourage the development of the growing engineering community that is concerned with restoration and lengthening the lives of existing engineering works, especially as a contribution to preserving our civil engineering heritage. The papers in this issue are drawn from both the university-based research community and the world of practical restoration, representing four countries.
Catherine Isaac (2013) tells us a story of eighteenth-century masonry bridges in France that is still familiar today – the divergence of opinions regarding the costs of the projects. Several bridges came under criticism for both their highly inaccurate estimated costs, and the cost overruns that occurred as construction progressed, due to difficulties with foundations and the cost of formwork. In the following century, as engineers were gaining more experience of delivering large infrastructure projects, opinion regarding the bridges changed and they came to be recognised for the significant achievements they had been, helping them take their rightful place in our engineering heritage.
John Rennie (the Elder)'s Lune aqueduct has long been recognised as a classic engineering work, but since its opening in 1797 it had leakage problems, largely due to the differential settlement of the stiff structure and the soft embankment and subsoil. Leslie Clarke (2013) describes the recent restoration of the aqueduct, which has virtually eliminated leakage and certainly reduced it to a level that will have no adverse impact on the structure for the next 200 years of its life.
Charles Birnstiel (2013) has discovered a remarkable amount of detail surrounding the collapse of a very early cable-stayed bridge in Germany. Like many light-weight bridge structures, it suffered vibration problems which led to its collapse and the loss of 55 lives when a large number of young men were celebrating on the bridge. As is often the case with the benefit of hindsight, the accident might have been avoided, and readers must make up their own minds in this regard.
Gustav Eiffel needs little introduction as a great engineer and contractor, but his interest in the pressure of wind is not so well known. He favoured lattice girders over solid-sided beams for his railway bridge because they offered less resistance to wind. A year after the Tay bridge disaster (1879) Eiffel was designing his spectacular Garabit viaduct and undertook some tests to measure the pressure of the wind. The 55 m-high lattice arch widens towards its springings to provide greater stability – a response to wind loading made famous in the shape of his tower in Paris. Stuart Durant (2013) reveals some of the story of how Eiffel followed up his interest in wind resistance in his 60 s and 70 s, erecting instruments at the top of his tower to measure wind speeds, measuring the wind resistance of simple shapes by dropping them from the first stage of the tower and finally building wind tunnels to test models – including models of wing sections for pioneer aviators such as Blériot.
Finally in this issue, we have the remarkable story of the Boulder Dam, which, when it was built in the 1930s, was the largest mass-concrete structure ever built. Fredric Quivik (2013) tells us how the engineers building concrete dams in the early 1920s had discovered the difficulties that arose due to the heat generated during the hydration reaction in concrete, in particular the considerable amount of internal cracking that resulted. They realised that this problem could be reduced if the concrete were artificially cooled as it cured, and devised suitable solutions which they successfully tested in the construction of the Owyhee Dam in 1931 and used again, with some improvements, for the construction of the massive Boulder Dam three years later.
