Building the Golden Gate Bridge: A Riveting Story

Mar 20

NOTE: See the bottom of these show notes for links with more information on the Golden Gate Bridge.

We start out discussing the possibility of placing bets on the Sawzall next door, which of course leads us to reflect on our experience with high school bookies.

02:25 - A Full House of Specs
Tyler mentions that his first exposure to the Golden Gate Bridge was in the opening to Full House.

The bridge’s span between towers is 4200 feet.
The towers reach 746’ height above the water.
Each tower weighs 22,000 tons.
The total length of the bridge is 1.7 miles.
80,000 miles of steel wire were used to –enough to wrap around the earth 3 times.
1 million rivets

We discuss the old-school rivets and a condition that developed among riveters. When the primer paint came into contact with the still-hot rivets, they’d release fumes that led to an odd collection of symptoms.

Eddie recalls his first trip over the bridge to Muir Woods, where the Ewok scenes in Star Wars were filmed. Tyler thought about taking a similar trip but lacked confidence in the range of his rented electric vehicle.

09:06 - Joseph Strauss
Eddie leads us into a conversation about Joseph Strauss, who headed up the construction of the bridge. Tyler goes bleepy in his review of Strauss’s character. Strauss tended to be a little praise-hungry, tending to brush aside the contributions of others who made substantial contributions to the bridge’s design and construction.

We discuss Strauss’s Renaissance-man range of interests and his death soon after the bridge’s completion. Eddie admires Strauss’s idea of creating a scale model of the bridge during the building process.

13:24 - Historical Comparisons, Objections, Divers, etc.
We discuss the history of suspension bridges and the unique challenges of constructing a bridge over this particular waterway.

Eddie recounts the history of interest in building a bridge that would save massive travel time. A drive around this bay at today’s travel speeds would take 3 hours. He lists the various parties that objected to the bridge’s construction–everything from environmentalists to citizens worried about the naval fleet being prevented from reaching the ocean. (And, of course, you can imagine how worked up the ferrymen were.)

Tyler discusses the crucial contributions of the construction divers in those old-school diving suits. We discuss the tasks they completed and the risks they took.

29:00 - Safety Performance, Cables, and AI
We express our amazement at the fact that only 11 people died during this project. Considering the safety standards of the day, that was pretty impressive–especially considering the fact that 10 of those deaths occurred in the same incident.

That means that if that incident hadn’t occurred, there would have been only a single death in a project completed when some decision-makers considered it acceptable to have one death per million dollars spent on a project. We wonder if part of the reason for that safety was hard hats, which were required for the first time on this project.

We review the specs related to the massive cables–up to 3 feet in diameter–that both support the bridge and allow it to flex. These big projects created necessities that mothered inventions.

Eddie returns to the topic of naysayers and how we approach the decisions to tackle large projects. We ponder the cost-benefit analyses done with projects like this as they relate to environmental concerns.

Tyler connects the learning that occurred and the travel patterns that shifted as a result of the Golden Gate Bridge. He links these considerations to our current perspective on AI.

32:50 - Destination Structures
We discuss the cool feelings that come with the construction of projects that have enough of a presence in the national consciousness that people travel just to see them. Tyler says the Great Wall of China is one that he’d like to see. Eddie would like to go up in the St. Louis Arch and to see the Space Needle, the Taj Mahal. He’d also love to visit some ancient ones.

This prompts us to reflect a bit–thinking that we need to take the time to appreciate the way that people use the things we build. Appreciate the fact that you’re making a difference in people’s daily lives.

If you’re interested in learning more about the Golden Gate Bridge and its construction, check out these sources: