Supersized Earth TV - Nursery Rhyme - The Bridge on the River Kwai 1957 - The British TV - Lucy Worsley TV - Jeremy Clarkson TV - Mark Williams TV - Rory McGrath TV - Henry Petroski & Horizon TV - Fred Dibnah TV - Paul Simon - Monty Python and the Holy Grail 1974 - Charles Bukowski - Don Cruikshank TV - Peter Ackroyd TV - Napoleon: The Russian Campaign TV - Ken Burns TV - George Carlin - The Severn Bridge at 50: A High Wire Act TV - The Unexplained Files TV - When Bridges Collapse: The Genoa Disaster TV - Sophie Campbell: The Thames: Then & Now TV - Massive Engineering Mistakes TV - Rob Bell TV - This World: Why Bridges Collapse: The Baltimore DIsaster TV -
Florida Keys: A string of 44 islands stretching over 113 miles, and they are connected by 42 bridges from Key Largo to Marathon and all the way down to Key West. Holidaying with Jane McDonald s1e3: Florida, Channel 5 2020
The world’s highest bridge … the Siduhe Bridge. Supersized Earth II: The Way We Move, BBC 2012
China now has half of the world’s top one hundred highest bridges. ibid.
London Bridge is falling down
Falling down, falling down,
London Bridge is falling down
My fair lady. Nursery Rhyme: London Bridge Is Falling Down
You British prisoners have been chosen to build a bridge across the River Kwai. It will be pleasant work requiring skill. The Bridge on the River Kwai 1957 starring Alec Guinness & William Holden & Jack Hawkins & Ann Sears & Sessue Hayakawa & James Donald & Geoffrey Horne & Heihachiro Okawa & Keiichiro Katsumoto et al, director David Lean, camp big knob
It’s going to be a proper bridge. ibid. Guinness
24-year-old engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel designs a suspension bridge to span the gorge. The British V: Superpower, Sky Atlantic 2012
It was the scene of a huge party: the [Waterloo] bridge was opened on 18th June 1817 ... It was described as one of the wonders of the age. Lucy Worsley, Elegance and Decadence 2/3: The Age of the Regency, BBC 2011
At the heart of this extraordinary transformation is one man, Isambard Kingdom Brunel ... The Clifton Suspension Bridge ... The Great Western Railway … the Bristol & Exeter Railway … Taff Vale … South Devon … Cornwall … the Bristol & Gloucester ... Brunel built modern Britain. Jeremy Clarkson, Great Britons: Brunel, BBC 2002
In London he was building another suspension bridge over the Thames, the tunnel underneath it was inching along, he was also doing the docks in Sunderland, designing his first ship, and he got married ... ibid.
A bridge with two enormous hundred-and-twenty-foot arches ... All the experts said it would collapse ... It’s still the widest, flattest brick arch in the world: a beautiful bridge. ibid.
What fired Telford’s ambition to create this incredible structure? The answer lies in the specification for this wrought-iron suspension bridge. The iron is to be best quality Shropshire iron. The world’s first iron bridge had been constructed only forty-seven years before the Menai over the River Seven in Shropshire, the heart of the iron industry. Mark Williams, Industrial Revelations s1e5: Working Iron, Discovery 2002
An engineering triumph: the Maidenhead Viaduct ... He flattened the arches. Brunel’s secret was in the maths. His pages of sketches are surrounded by detailed calculations. He had projected the force on every part of the bridge with great accuracy. Brunel had worked out how to design arches stronger and flatter than any ones built before. Mark Williams On the Rails s1e3: Brunel, Discovery 2004
He worked it all out by hand. ibid.
The Clifton Suspension Bridge ... It was a mathematical masterpiece. ibid.
It took him nearly two years to complete his plans. ibid.
An engineering triumph: the Maidenhead Viaduct ... He flattened the arches. Brunel’s secret was in the maths. His pages of sketches are surrounded by detailed calculations. He had projected the force on every part of the bridge with great accuracy. Brunel had worked out how to design arches stronger and flatter than any ones built before. ibid.
There is something about a bridge which is a bit special: these are among the biggest man-made structures in existence ... Tower Bridge: this is the most fairytale bridge in the world ... It’s really an iron bridge clad in stone, and that’s the secret. Rory McGrath’s Industrial Revelations: Best of British Engineering s5e3: Bridges, Discovery 2008
The biggest and most expensive Meccano set ever made: the iron bridge in Coalbrookdale ... The world’s very first iron bridge ... Darby’s bridge cost £6,000. ibid.
The revolutionary Menai Straits Bridge ... a radically new way to build bridges: this is the first time anyone had tried to suspend a big road from towers using metal cable: a suspension bridge. ibid.
The Clifton Suspension Bridge. Brunel wanted to build the biggest suspension bridge in the world spanning the greatest distance. An elegant bridge that seemed almost to float across the sky ... Brunel never ceases to amaze ... What Brunel called his Little Darling. ibid.
To a bridge whose stories begins with a disaster ... What was created was the greatest civil engineering project of the nineteenth century. A marvel of girder and rivet – the Forth Rail Bridge ... The biggest rail bridge in the world ... The art critic William Morris described this bridge as ‘the supremest specimen of all ugliness’. ibid.
An engineering leviathan ... the Humber Bridge. This bridge is over two kilometres long and is made up of 27,500 tons of steel and 480,000 tons of concrete ... Opened in 1981 ... Until recently the biggest in the world. ibid.
There are plenty of other examples of innovative designs that have succeeded to become symbols of engineering excellence. The first iron bridge still stands in the valley that cradled the industrial revolution. Professor Henry Petroski, Horizon: To Engineer is Human, BBC 1987
Then in 1741 Europe’s first wrought-iron suspension bridge was built over the River Tees. Fred Dibnah’s Monuments s1e5: Bridges and Tunnels, BBC 2000
This 1,000-feet-long aqueduct which carries the Shropshire Union canal across a valley high above the River Dee. ibid.
It was the coming of the railways that really pushed forward the development of bridges. ibid.
His [Williams] Barton aqueduct which carried boats forty feet above the river was so amazing in its time it was considered one of the wonders of the world. There’s not much of it left now. Fred Dibnah’s Building of Modern Britain e5: Building The Canals, BBC 2002
Ironbridge: This is the world’s first cast-iron bridge. Iron was so important round here that this place was regarded as the beginning or the cradle of the industrial revolution. It wasn’t just bridges they made here. Fred Dibnah’s World of Steam, Steel and Stone e1: The Industrial Landscape, BBC 2006
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down. Paul Simon, Bridge Over Troubled Water, 1970 song
British bridges are world renowned. Monumental superstructures built by the best engineering brains in the country. How Britain Bridges the World, H2 2013
Gateshead Millennium Bridge ... The first and only tilting bridge in the world. ibid.
Sky Bridge in the picturesque highlands of Scotland is another groundbreaker in bridging Britain. Its arched girder pushes the free cantilever method with its incredible 250-metre span. ibid.
London's Millennium Bridge is the first new crossing over the River Thames for more than a century ... 325 metres long and 4 metres wide steel blade. ibid.
This is the Millau Viaduct in France ... the tallest towers, the highest pylons and the highest road deck. ibid.
There it is: the Bridge of Death. Monty Python and the Holy Grail 1974 starring Graham Chapman & John Cleese & Eric Idle & Terry Gilliam & Terry Jones & Michael Palin & Connie Booth & Carol Cleveland & Neil Innes & John Young et al, directors Terry Gilliam & Terry Jones
I can
almost understand
why
people
leap
from
bridges. Charles Bukowski