99% Invisible - 99% Invisible-52- Galloping Gertie

Episode Date: April 18, 2012

Even during the construction of the original Tacoma Narrows Bridge, the deck would go up and down by several feet with the slightest breeze. Construction workers on the span chewed on lemon wedges to stop their motion sickness. They nicknamed … Continue reading →

We get support from UC Davis, a globally ranked university, working to solve the world's most pressing problems in food, energy, health, education, and the environment. UC Davis researchers collaborate and innovate in California and around the globe to find transformational solutions. It's all part of the university's mission to promote quality of life for all living things. Find out more at 21stCentry.ucdavis.edu. This is 99% Invisible. I'm Roman Mars. The thing about being wrong is that before you know you're wrong, it feels exactly like being right. If we knew that we were wrong, we wouldn't be wrong.

Nobody's committing intentionally to a false belief about the world. If they are, they're not wrong, they're deliberately lying. Even during the construction of the original Takoma Nero's bridge, which was to become the third longest suspension bridge in the world, it seemed like something was wrong. Well, at least in hindsight, it seems like it should have felt that way, but that's not how Bean Wrong works. If you grew up like I did watching the Warner Brothers cartoons. This is Catherine Schultz, author of Bean Wrong, adventures in the margin of error. The Sunday morning cartoon moment where the roadrunner is dashing off the cliff and the coyote is

following him and of course the roadrunner can fly and the coyote can't and there's this great moment where he's run off the cliff but he has not yet realized that you know he's there's no solid ground underneath him and the moment when we're wrong about something but before we've realized it is like that moment we think that our belief is rock solid we think we have you know all of the the fact in the world bolstering us we feel like our giant suspension bridge is not going to collapse we have all of the fact in the world bolstering us. We feel like our giant suspension bridge is not going to collapse. We have not yet looked down and realized that that's not the case. I know this sounds crazy, but even during its construction,

the deck of the Tacoma Nero's bridge would go up and down by several feet with the slightest breeze. Construction workers on the span chewed on lemon wedges to stop motion sickness, but construction continued, because the bridge had been designed specifically to withstand winds up to 120 mph. So everyone thought everything would be fine. Well, almost everyone. The original Tacoma Nero's bridge designed by Clark Eldridge was pretty conventional for a suspension bridge, but it was later modified by Leon Moisef to be slimmer and more elegant. The most notable change was the 25-foot lattice of

stiffening trusses underneath the bridge on the original drawings were replaced with an 8-foot solid steel plate girder. The new solid girder along the side and moissive design made for a much lighter, slimmer and more flexible bridge. It also got the wind like a sail, but they didn't know that. Moissive design was also two-thirds the price of the original Eldridge design, and that fact ultimately won the day. Eldridge and other state engineers were said to have protested, but it didn't matter. The original Tacoma Nero's bridge opened to the public

on July 1st, 1940. From the day it opened, it was prone to having these oscillations, these longitudinal waves of the bridge deck. That's our master of disaster, John Marr, and I write on various murders and disasters in other sundry topics. He used to publish a scene called Murder It Can Be Fun about these sundry topics. He wrote about the Tacoma Narras Bridge years ago. The workers on the bridge had nicknaded Galloping Gourdy, and that quickly kind of became the bridge's unofficial name. Even light winds caused the roadway to ripple with longitude and a wave, some five feet high.

Sato Washington was concerned about this, but not like intensely, so they were like looking at various things to reduce the motion. They tried some tight-down cables and installing a damper and various other things, none of which had worked. But again, the roadbed seemed like you could handle the waves, just fine. They're very confident in the structural integrity of the bridge. The bridge was as solid as the air underneath Wiley Coyote's feet.

When you watch film of the waves traveling down the bridge, it is stunning. And the fact the bridge stayed open at all really illustrates how local governments have changed since 1940. That thing would never stay open today. If you were sitting in a car on the bridge when the waves were going, the cars in front of you would bob up and then disappear completely from view.

Almost like it's real ride, people would actually try specifically for the feeling of riding on this bouncing bridge. The ride ended just four months later. Gone about fatal day, and the wind begins to speak with a roar that no man can fail to hear. It was clear early on the morning of November 7th that the Gail Force winds were having a greater effect on the bridge than ever before. Previously, these sort of waves on the bridge had been like a fairly transitory. It did bounce up for a couple of minutes,

but this was just going on and on, so they thought this could be a problematical, although they had seen actually deeper waves on the bridge. But then the movement changed. Things just got worse. The bridge began to twist violently along the center of the line. And that became like extremely violent. One end in the bridge deck was up at a 45-degree angle.

In a 40-mile-an-hour day, the feather span leaves like a ribbon in a swing with the two wooden-believe potholes as the bridge gyrates like a nightmare high above the river. Twisting, turning, curling. By this time, everyone had gotten off. The blunt solid edge of the bridge disrupted the flow of the strong wind, causing one part to twist up while the other section twisted down, and it continued this torsional back and forth for over an hour, so there was plenty of time for spectators to come watch, including the bridge's original designer, Clark Eldridge. A local camera store owner named Barney Elliott arrived in the scene and took the now famous

color film of the bridges for relentless gyrations. No structure of steel and concrete can stand such a flame, steel girders buckle and giant table snap like Tunie Friends. There it goes! Engineers are divided as to the cause of the disaster. Some claim it was the use of solid girders, others dipper, but whatever the reason to coma will rebuild. This time a bridge that will not provide a super-thrail in the news.

Before the collapse, bridge aerodynamics and structural failure due to torsion had scarcely been considered, or maybe those lessons had been lost in the rapid evolution of more and more slender and longer bridges. But the failure caused the study of bridge aerodynamics to take off, and any bridges that were on the drawing board in 1940 were redesigned with more conservative, deep open-trust deck structures. The lead designer, Leon Moistiff, and his solid steel eye beams received most of the blame for the disaster. He never designed another bridge again. Doing no small part of the fact that he died three years later.

No one was killed on the bridge. A few people were very lucky to get away with their lives because I just imagine you're on this bridge and is twisting it at a 45 degree angle and trying to walk off in a fairly stiff wind. The only casualty was a dog. A local newspaper man named Leonard Cotesworth drove his car just past the east tower when the twisting started. You got bouncing so hard he couldn't control his car anymore. The tilting bridge threw his car into the side- side curb. And he had his daughter's dog, a coccrospanol named Tubby with him. Coachworth gets out of his wrecked vehicle

and gets thrown face down on the curb. The dog's completely freaked out, he couldn't get the dog out. He hears the concrete cracking beneath him. And he barely makes it to safety. An engineering professor studying the bridge named Farcarson ventured out to get Tubby right when the bridge was about to fall into the sound.

But when he reached into the car, Tubby bit him. The dog was just too freaked out to leave the vehicle. There's an amazing film of Farcars and stumbling back as best he could, sticking to that middle yellow line, as the bridge rocked wildly along its center axis. So, Tubby was the only casualty, and you know, guy, I said, I don't have to tell my daughter this. Coachworth was quoted immediately after the collapse, saying, with real tragedy, disaster, and blasted dreams all around me.

I believe that right at this minute, what appalls me most is that within a few hours I must tell my daughter that her dog is dead when I might have saved him? This next bit is a completely unrelated adendum that will serve as a valuable life lesson to any 99% invisible fan. Here's John Marrigan. Several years ago, I went to the Portland Zines symposium to do a seminar on research based zines. to the Portland Zines symposium to do a seminar on research-based scenes. Research-based scenes like research-based blogs or podcasts have always been a bit in the minority. Anyway, and was held in this building

called the Michael Smith Memorial Student Union Building on the Portland State University campus. Very first thing I did, I got into the class and said, okay, this panel is being held in the Michael Smith Memorial Student Union Building. Does anyone who Michael Smith was? No one did. Michael Smith was the captain of the Portland State University College Bowl team. The College Bowl was a televised trivia competition matching teams from various

universities throughout the country. And he led Portland State University to the championship, which is just incredible accomplishments. They're beating out schools like Harvard and Yale. And this is Portland State. This is a state school. I mean, this is not the type of school that you expect to win something like this. I'm sure the Ivy League people were horribly embarrassed and it was quite a big deal at the time. He also was suffering from cystic fibrosis and he would die three years after this. So everyone agreed this was a good story. You ask me how do you find out about this? There's a plaque in front of the building. My slogan is always read the plaque. That's great.

99% invisible was produced this week by, Roman Mars, and special thanks to John Marre of Murder Can Be Fun, and Alan Bellows of the website Damn Interesting. We are a project of KLW 91.7 local public radio in San Francisco, and the American Institute of Architects in San Francisco. Support for 99% Invisible is provided in part by Tiny Letter. Email for people with something to say. My boy, Maslow, always has something to say. What do you have to say, Maslow?

What we basically talk about is world-bots and iron and tips and stuff. Robots and iron man suits. I would subscribe to that newsletter. It's free, easy, minimal, powerful, the simplest way to write an email newsletter. Online at tinyletter.com. This program is distributed by PRX, the public radio exchange making public radio more public find out more at prx.org. And while I'm talking about PRX, I have to tell you about another podcast they produce

called How Sound by the genius Rob Rosenthal. If you're a person who loves radio and is also the type of person who listens to the director's commentary on DVDs, then How Sound is the show for you. Check it out at HowSound.org. My man Sam Greenspan took off for a while to launch the Ted Radio Hour at NPR, but he'll be back. You'll be back, Green's Band. You can find the show and like the show on Facebook. I would like it if you would like us. A tweet at Roman Mars,

but you can always catch up with us online at 99%invisible.org. .