鈥淲e have it in our power to begin the world overagain,鈥� proclaimed revolutionary firebrand Thomas Paine in his pamphlet Common Sense, published in 1776. Newly arrived from England, Paine鈥檚 writings helped to convince the downtrodden American colonists to revolt against Britain. So once the war was won, you might have expected him to do his bit to remake the world in the traditional way-by runningfor office, perhaps, orta king a diplomatic post. But Paine had a different plan. 鈥淎s one amongthousands who had borne a share in that memorable Revolution,鈥� he wrote later, 鈥淚 returned with them to the re-enjoyment of quiet life, and, that I might not be idle, undertook to construct a bridge of a single arch.鈥� Paine鈥檚 鈥渜uiet life鈥� was to prove anything but.
WHEN the American Revolution ended in 1783, the newly emerged nation found itself with a backlog of civil projects. Timber once requisitioned for warships now flooded the market, and the former colonies could throw themselves into rebuilding. In Pennsylvania, the state government wanted a bridge over the Schuylkill river 鈥� one that could withstand the force of winter ice. One would-be builder found inspiration in an unexpected place: a spider鈥檚 web. Thomas Paine, fiery pamphleteer and self-taught inventor with a smokeless candle to his credit, had been struck by a web鈥檚 resemblance to bridge supports, and decided to follow its light and flexible example.
鈥淭he European method of bridge architecture, by piers and arches, is not adapted to many of the rivers in America on account of the ice in the winter,鈥� Paine observed in a letter to elder statesman and fellow inventor Benjamin Franklin in 1786. Paine envisioned a 400-foot long single-span arch, supported by eight curved iron ribs resembling a sliced-away portion of a circle, cast 4 inches deep by 1 inch thick. These would be placed at four-foot intervals across the width of the bridge and linked by a lattice of cast-iron tubes. Eliminating piers, Paine suggested, would make a bridge less vulnerable to the Schuylkill鈥檚 harsh winter conditions.
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Iron was a new material for American bridges but, Paine argued, it 鈥渨ill stand four times as long or as much longer as iron is more durable than wood鈥�. The strength of iron also meant the bridge could be slender, eliminating the crisscrossing forest of struts and piers characteristic of many wooden bridges, allowing ships to pass beneath more easily.
Neither the single span nor iron construction was unprecedented. The Romans perfected single-span stone arches, and as early as 1755 there had been a French attempt at a single-span iron bridge: one rib was assembled in Lyon before the project was abandoned as too expensive. More than 30 years later, Paine鈥檚 idea still looked newfangled, and the Pennsylvania Assembly seemed to favour a tried and tested three-span wooden bridge.
Undeterred, Paine constructed a 13-foot scale model in iron, though not without mishap. It turned out lopsided, and Paine and his assistant John Hall angrily accused each other of screwing it up. 鈥淚 at length swore by God that it was straight when I left it,鈥� wrote Hall. 鈥淗e replied as positively to the contrary.鈥� They hurriedly repaired it, and Paine had the model dragged to Philadelphia on a sled to present to Franklin. On New Year鈥檚 Day 1787, it was moved into the State House, where a curious public could see what their famous rabble-rouser had been up to lately.
They were impressed. Yet Paine鈥檚 daring proposal languished in the Pennsylvania Assembly. Perhaps the French would try it, Paine wrote to Franklin: 鈥淚f they will undertake the experiment of two ribs, it will decide the matter and promote the work here.鈥� He sailed for Paris, but while the French Academy endorsed his design, the government dismissed it as too costly.
If France wouldn鈥檛 build it, perhaps Britain would. Given his part in losing Britain its American colonies, one might have expected Paine to return home either at the head of a new insurrection or in chains. But America and Britain were now at peace, and Paine seemed to have mellowed. His patent for 鈥淐onstructing Arches, Vaulted Roofs, and Ceilings,鈥� issued in 1788, begins: 鈥淲hereas, His Most Excellent Majesty King George III鈥id give unto me, his special license鈥︹�� Strange words for a man who鈥檇 previously addressed the king as 鈥渢he Royal Brute鈥�.
Things were looking up for Paine, with a patent under his belt and London investor Peter Whiteside backing the creation of a prototype. Better still, a Mr Foljambe, an MP from Yorkshire, needed a 90-foot bridge across a river near his house. 鈥淭hese circumstances determined me to begin an arch of 90 feet,鈥� Paine wrote to his friend Thomas Jefferson, then ambassador to France.
鈥淚n point of elegance and beauty it far exceeded my expectations,鈥� Foljambe gushed when he saw a rib. But like everyone else, he eventually got cold feet. Paine pressed ahead anyway, and in April 1789 he erected the three-ton rib between an iron furnace and a workshop at Joshua Walker & Co ironworks in Rotherham. Here he faced another problem. The gap between the buildings was 4 feet longer than the rib. This was filled with chunks of wood which served as abutments. As they swelled or contracted with the weather, they proved a reassuring measure of the rib鈥檚 flexibility. There was no doubt about its strength either, which Paine and his workers tested by piling on impressively heavy loads of pig iron.
Presenting the Royal Society with a description of his 鈥淎merican arch鈥�, Paine boasted that 鈥渢he whole of it might, when put in pieces, be put into an ordinary stage waggon and sent to any part of England鈥�. This proved useful. Paine鈥檚 backer, his own business affairs in disarray, soon landed in debtor鈥檚 prison. Paine made one last desperate attempt to find a buyer by moving to London and exhibiting an entire small bridge of two ribs and decking. Bad weather caused numerous delays, and rain made the scaffoldings so slippery that the foreman himself fell off, hitting his leg on a projecting piece of metal so that it 鈥渢ore the flesh of it up seven or eight inches鈥�.
It was an inauspicious start. But by 1791 the prototype was complete. That year it attracted a steady stream of admirers willing to pay a shilling to view what Paine now touted as a potential toll-bridge for the Thames. But it still had no takers. By now, though, Paine had other things on his mind. When the MP Edmund Burke, a former friend, published an attack on the revolution in France, Paine responded with the The Rights of Man. Charged with treason for his revolutionary manifesto, Paine escaped to France.
Paine鈥檚 bridge was a dead loss. But he never stopped pondering it. While he was staying with his friend Nicholas de Bonneville in Paris he even cast a small model of a new design. Paine was fond of testing its strength by enthusiastically pounding it with a sledgehammer. Late one night, a sleepy Madame Bonneville came out to see what the racket was, and reported of Paine and his sledgehammer: 鈥淎fter much exultation: 鈥楴othing in the world,鈥� said he, 鈥榠s so fine as my bridge,鈥� and seeing me standing by without uttering a word he added, 鈥榚xcept a woman!鈥� which happy compliment to the sex he seemed to think a full compensation for the trouble caused by this nocturnal visit to the bridge.鈥�
鈥淣othing in the world is so fine as my bridge鈥xcept a woman!鈥�
Rather fittingly, pieces of his London prototype were reused in 1796 by Walker & Co in an innovative single-span iron bridge over the river Wear in the north of England. Although the design was different, engineer George Stephenson later noted that Paine had paved the way for such bridges. 鈥淲e must not deny Paine credit of conceiving construction of iron bridges of far larger span than had been made before his time.鈥� But memory of Paine鈥檚 bridge faded. What remained were radically democratic writings deemed so dangerous that, for decades after his death in 1809, British booksellers were prosecuted for selling them. The British government might have wished that, with a little money and iron, they鈥檇 kept Paine the bridge-builder occupied in some quiet corner of the countryside instead.