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These vast, vertical grooves in the towers here,
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designed and built into the towers themselves,
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to lift the huge tubes into place.
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The jack, a simple cylinder with a piston inside,
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was connected by chains to the box girder below.
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A steam engine would inject water
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at thousands of pounds per square inch into the jack.
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That high-pressure water pushed the piston upwards,
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the chains raising the beam about two metres at a time.
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Then the tubes would be secured, the chains shortened,
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and the whole process would start again
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for the next couple of metres' lift.
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Stephenson decided to use hydraulic jacks,
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one here and one on the other side,
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they run right down to the water - the whole height of the tower.
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They're what guided the ends of the tubes
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as they were slowly lifted up.
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The pressure needed to lift the 1,500-tonne tubes
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would've been immense, even by today's standards.
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In many ways, it was like a bomb waiting to explode.
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And on the 17th of August, 1849, that's exactly what happened.
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The very first beam was only seven metres up the column
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when, bang, the entire jack exploded.
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And to show you just how big a bang that was,
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hauling on ropes to try and save the tube.
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but the risks were much higher.
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They would only be able to launch the tubes at high tide,
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but this would only give them an hour of relative calm
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before the vicious currents would sweep through the channel.
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If the tubes were not secured by then, disaster would strike.
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Thousands of people turned out to witness the event of a lifetime.
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All was going well until one of the ropes got tangled up.
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One of the anchor points on shore got ripped clean out of the ground.
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In a move that would put
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a modern health and safety officer into a cold sweat,
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the spectators were called upon to help,
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this is the remains of that very jack.
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Incredibly, it worked,
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and the first tube drifted into position
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at the base of the towers.
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And then came the next challenge -
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lifting the 1,600-tonne tube 40 metres up
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to its final resting place near the top of the towers.
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So how did they do it?
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Well, the secret is hidden
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in the remaining sections of the bridge.
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It's just that very few people get the chance to see it,
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as you need to climb below the modern railway track.
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absolutely no sign of Fairbairn.
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at the Institution of Civil Engineers in London...
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..in this great painting.
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It's a fictional scene.
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You've got Britannia Bridge in the background there,
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Stephenson right in the middle
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holding court,
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surrounded by his contemporaries.
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And even his good friend Brunel
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makes an appearance,
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who had absolutely nothing to do with the bridge.
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But, astonishingly, there's
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The first clue to the dispute can be found here
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It's as if he'd been airbrushed from the whole story.
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And there's a reason for his absence.
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Fairbairn and Stephenson fell out publicly
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over ownership of the box girder.
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It was a fight that even today
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is considered one of the biggest bust-ups in engineering history.
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Hidden within the institution's own library
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are a series of correspondence between the two men
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which clearly sets out the disagreement.
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And this is a real privilege here.
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These are the original letters, Fairbairn's letters to Stephenson.
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The setback meant it took another eight weeks
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The centre, that would be hollowed out.
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That's where the piston would be driven up and down by the hydraulics.
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But it's the thickness of the walls
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of the cylinder that gets me.
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You can see this is where it's broken,
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this is where it's failed,
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but that thickness, it's about a foot there.
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It just goes to show the phenomenal pressures involved
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to break this.
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One man died in the accident,
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and the damage caused brought the entire bridge build to a halt.
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these monsters would be floated into position,
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to get the tube positioned at full height,
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but it was soon joined by another tube on the other side,
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and the Menai Strait was spanned.
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Stephenson himself hammered in the final rivet,
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and his revolutionary plan for a railway tunnel in the sky
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had worked.
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And for the next 120 years, trains would thunder across
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Robert Stephenson's Britannia Bridge day and night.
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But the success was also to lead to a very public and bitter fight -
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one that would take almost 170 years to resolve.
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to bear the weight of the massive box girders -
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Tie bars provide lateral support to the external walls,
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stopping the external walls from spreading.
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It travels from one wing wall to the other and keeps them in situ.
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It just amazes me that after all this time,
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almost 170 years,
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all of this is still doing its job, taking the weight of the trains,
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and now the cars as well.
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It's amazing.
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The foundations for these towers were laid in 1846,
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and it took Stephenson three years to finish them.
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But by 1849, the towers were ready
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that'd be needed to fill this sort of space.
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thousands of wrought iron plates
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held together by over two million rivets.
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But no-one had ever made a bridge like it before -
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and the risks were phenomenal.
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The legendary engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel,
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a rival and friend of Stephenson,
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is said to have told him that, "If your bridge succeeds,
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"then mine have all been magnificent failures."
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Which is one of the reasons why Stephenson decided on a rehearsal
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and built this.
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The Conwy tubular bridge,
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I did not expect, when I walked in, that this was what was awaiting me.
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Are you ready, Rob? Here we go. Yeah.
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And that means you can go inside.
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These magnificent structures are normally closed to the public,
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but I've been given the chance to join Network Rail,
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owners of the bridge,
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as they give the 176-year-old towers a health check.
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Gary, I'm still getting over how surprising, magnificent...
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Kind of lost for words just how amazing it is in here.
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Yeah, Rob, this is Anglesey railway abutment.
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It's the biggest of the two aptly named cathedral abutments.
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As you can see, the sheer size of it. It's enormous.
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about 20 miles down the line from the Britannia Bridge,
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It's huge. 33 metres high,
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55 metres long from abutment face to back wall,
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and around 20 metres wide.
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This cathedral abutment is held up by three enormous arches,
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which in turn have 14 smaller arches sitting on top of them
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holding up the rail track.
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It's like a giant wedding cake,
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with each tier supporting the one above.
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Essentially, this big space is saving on material.
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You can imagine the volume of material
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so Stephenson decided to cross it in two sections,
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it was nothing compared to what faced him
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when he tried to cross the Menai Strait.
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Unlike the relatively calm waters at Conwy,
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the currents in the Menai Strait are much fiercer
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because the strait isn't a river, it's sea.
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Twice a day, tidal currents sweep through this narrow strait
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in both directions,
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creating dangerous and unpredictable conditions.
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Admiral Horatio Nelson described this
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as one of the most treacherous stretches of sea in the world.
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Not only is it more dangerous, it's also much wider than at Conwy,
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But if Stephenson thought that was hard,
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each one 140 metres long.
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Early on a June evening in 1849,
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they started to float the first tube down the strait
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on pontoons controlled by ropes from the bank.
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It was launched from the riverbank right behind me here,
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and at 140 metres in length,
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it was longer than any ship that had been built at the time.
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About half as wide as the Menai Strait itself,
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it would span the gap between the Anglesey side
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and the central tower here.
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Just like the tubes at Conwy,
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almost 170 years after this was built.
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which opened in 1849.
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The crossing here is less than half the span of the Menai
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and not nearly as high,
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but it was, in many ways, a dry run for the Britannia Bridge.
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Passengers travelling by train will barely notice it,
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little more remarkable than passing through a rather short tunnel.
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But from the outside, you can appreciate its magnificence.
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From underneath here, along the length of the bridge,
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you can see where those cells, developed by Fairbairn, run,
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giving the bridge its strength.
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It's still taking the weight of around 50 trains a day
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And this is engineering history right here.
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In many ways, there's no better testament
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to the box girder than this.
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The massive girders were constructed on the banks,
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then the huge 400-foot structures were floated on rafts downriver
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to be jacked up to their final resting place.
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The idea of floating an 1,100-tonne beam along the river
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and then lodging it exactly in place between these two huge stone towers
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seems bonkers even by today's standards.
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Against all the odds, it worked,
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and the Conwy Bridge was up and running.
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You were down by the water. Yeah, as close as practical.
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Wow.
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There was no way at all you'd go into the tunnel.
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Mm. At all. You'd have been roasted alive.
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Also there on that night were two local cameramen
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who rushed to the scene to cover the fire.
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So, you were both there with your cameras?
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Yes, indeed. Yes, indeed. Yeah.
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So, filmed it and took photographs.
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There's the pictures of the actual fire.
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You can see the amount of material that's falling off it. It was incredible.
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So, you were underneath the bridge then, were you?
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it turned into steam, so it didn't do much work.
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Very, very noisy. Was it? Incredibly noisy.
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Absolutely, yeah.
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Bits flying down. What kind of noise?
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Just crackling and burning.
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This is debris just dropping down. That's falling off it.
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That's the debris that's on fire. Absolutely, yeah.
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And this was the most spectacular fire.
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Debris was falling off in great big chunks,
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and where it landed in the strait, of course, it was still alight.
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The next morning, the bridge was still smouldering
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and the damage was obvious.
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we could have tackled it from four corners and perhaps from above,
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and once the highly flammable mix of tar and wood was ablaze...
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..the fate of the bridge was sealed.
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Two of the firemen who were on duty that night still live in the area,
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and it was a night they'll never forget.
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When you first arrived there and both saw what was in front of you,
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what were your reactions?
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What did you think? "Wow." (LAUGHS)
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There was no saving the bridge.
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Really? You could tell straightaway?
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It was like fighting a chimney fire, if you like, on its side.
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If it was building on fire,
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It burnt well into Sunday, about four o'clock, didn't it?
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but because of the location of the bridge,
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you could only tackle it from this end of the tunnel
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to the Anglesey side.
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In-between, it just burnt.
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But that fire was spreading away from you? Yes.
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There was no saving the bridge at all. It was just an inferno.
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Could you feel how hot it was?
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Could you kind of sense how hot it was?
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Very, very. The radiated heat was terrible.
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When you projected water into the tube
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designed and opened in less than two years.
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a plan was agreed and was rushed into construction.
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And it's that bridge that still stands here today.
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The new bridge is not spectacular or revolutionary,
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but practical and efficient.
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It carries both trains and cars, split on two levels.
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It uses the same towers built by Stephenson almost 170 years ago,
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but now its weight's taken by its two great arches.
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Ironically, a more traditional way of crossing a river,
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but as there are no tall naval ships around any more,
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it was the simplest option.
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The new bridge was commissioned,
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In a matter of weeks,
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As a rushed job, it doesn't look too bad,
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and despite the arches,
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it still bears considerable resemblance
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to Stephenson's masterpiece.
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As an engineer, I feel sad that the key component
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of the Britannia Bridge - the tube that changed the world -
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00:42:20,970 --> 00:42:23,690
was sent to the scrap heap in the 1970s.
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And for me it's important to remember its inventors,
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Robert Stephenson,
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and William Fairbairn - one of the forgotten greats of engineering.
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Captions by Ericsson Access Services (c) SBS Australia 2017
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but with it gone, a more immediate nightmare was unfolding -
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Oh, yes. It burnt itself out.
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And all you could do was... Just keep damping down.
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It was a token gesture, wasn't it? Yes, that's all.
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Stephenson's revolutionary tubes were sagging by over half a metre,
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suggesting temperatures inside the tube
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must have exceeded 1,000 degrees Celsius,
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and they were now resting so precariously in the towers,
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it was feared they could fall at any moment.
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The historic box girders were utterly destroyed.
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The destruction of the bridge
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was without doubt an historical engineering tragedy,
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but these embers caused Clark's roof to catch fire,
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one that threatened the livelihood of the whole island of Anglesey.
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Thanks to the success of the railway,
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an important and prosperous container port
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was operating at Holyhead.
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A new power station and aluminium smelter
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was under construction.
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The island was booming.
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But without this bridge,
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Anglesey would become an economic disaster zone.
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A replacement bridge had to be designed - and quickly.
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Fairbairn formally resigned,
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"I had satisfied myself that the thing was practicable,
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"and I stood by it.
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"In order most thoroughly to test experimentally
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"the theory I had formed..."
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It's all beautiful Victorian language.
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"..it was then that I called in the aid of two gentlemen -
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"eminent, both of them, in their profession -
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"Mr Fairbairn and Mr Hodgkinson.
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"They were well qualified to aid me in my research."
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For Fairbairn, the amount of "me" and "my" and "I" in that speech
295
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must have been just too much.
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And he goes on.
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and spent the next year writing a book to set the record straight.
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Straightaway, on page one,
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he sets out his intention,
300
00:34:27,370 --> 00:34:30,090
"To establish my claim to a considerable portion
301
00:34:30,250 --> 00:34:34,530
"of the merit of the construction of the Conwy and Britannia bridges.
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00:34:34,690 --> 00:34:38,090
"The various public statements which were made at different times
303
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"by different individuals which either entirely passed over
304
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"or concealed the real nature of the services I had rendered."
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The whole thing was a right old ding-dong between the two of them.
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Not necessarily what you'd expect from two well-mannered,
307
00:34:52,650 --> 00:34:54,490
proper Victorian gentlemen.
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00:33:04,050 --> 00:33:08,370
Now, in it, he refers to Hodgkinson, the mathematician he worked with,
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00:32:27,650 --> 00:32:30,490
This letter here is the first time
310
00:32:30,650 --> 00:32:33,530
that he sets out the results of his tests,
311
00:32:33,690 --> 00:32:38,010
and where he suggests the idea of the cellular tubes
312
00:32:38,170 --> 00:32:41,290
along the top and on the bottom as his idea,
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his solution for the Britannia Bridge.
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00:32:43,770 --> 00:32:49,290
So here we go. Written in Millwall, September the 20th, 1845.
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"It is more than probable that the bridge in its full size
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"may take something of the following sectional shape."
317
00:32:57,090 --> 00:32:58,410
And there it is.
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00:32:58,570 --> 00:33:00,290
There is his cellular idea,
319
00:33:00,450 --> 00:33:03,890
with those smaller tubes across the top and the bottom.
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Almost 200 years later,
321
00:33:08,530 --> 00:33:12,050
but there's absolutely no doubt Fairbairn was instrumental
322
00:33:12,210 --> 00:33:14,210
to this idea.
323
00:33:14,370 --> 00:33:19,170
But three years later on, on the 17th of May, 1848,
324
00:33:19,330 --> 00:33:23,130
Robert Stephenson made a speech that seemed to make plain
325
00:33:23,290 --> 00:33:24,610
that the idea was his
326
00:33:24,770 --> 00:33:27,370
and that Fairbairn had played little part in it.
327
00:33:28,650 --> 00:33:32,130
And this is a copy of Stephenson's speech here.
328
00:33:32,290 --> 00:33:33,650
Stephenson's words.
329
00:33:33,810 --> 00:33:37,370
"It is now upwards of six years since I entertained the idea
330
00:33:37,530 --> 00:33:41,450
"of constructing bridges with wrought iron plates riveted together."
331
00:37:08,410 --> 00:37:11,410
and was left in charge for the final few weeks of construction,
332
00:36:20,410 --> 00:36:24,130
connecting the rest of the UK to the strategic port at Holyhead
333
00:36:24,290 --> 00:36:26,410
for 120 years.
334
00:36:26,570 --> 00:36:31,010
But on the 23rd of May, 1970, that link was severed,
335
00:36:31,170 --> 00:36:33,010
putting the whole port out of action.
336
00:36:34,690 --> 00:36:38,570
It was 9:43 in the evening when the fire brigade received reports
337
00:36:38,730 --> 00:36:40,730
that Stephenson's great bridge was ablaze.
338
00:36:43,410 --> 00:36:46,930
The fire was destroying one of the most significant innovations
339
00:36:47,090 --> 00:36:49,410
in engineering in over 200 years.
340
00:36:51,650 --> 00:36:54,450
But how could a wrought iron bridge catch fire?
341
00:36:56,250 --> 00:37:01,570
The answer is because of a mistake made by this man, Edwin Clark.
342
00:37:05,530 --> 00:37:08,250
He was one of Stephenson's key engineers on the project
343
00:36:18,130 --> 00:36:20,250
It towered over the Menai Strait,
344
00:37:11,570 --> 00:37:16,050
and it was his bright idea to add a roof.
345
00:37:16,210 --> 00:37:20,250
He added an arched timber roof covered in a tarred hessian,
346
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which he hoped would protect the iron from the weather.
347
00:37:24,050 --> 00:37:27,130
My guess is it was some kind of early roofing felt,
348
00:37:27,290 --> 00:37:29,890
but it perhaps wasn't the cleverest of ideas,
349
00:37:30,050 --> 00:37:34,530
because, unlike iron, this stuff burns really well.
350
00:37:38,650 --> 00:37:40,170
On that fateful night,
351
00:37:40,330 --> 00:37:42,530
a group of local lads entered the tube.
352
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Without any torches they lit some paper,
353
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and the burning embers dropped to the floor.
354
00:37:49,330 --> 00:37:51,330
It's not exactly clear how,
355
00:35:29,490 --> 00:35:31,170
Fairbairn deserves his recognition.
356
00:34:58,450 --> 00:35:01,010
many in the Institution of Civil Engineers
357
00:35:01,170 --> 00:35:04,170
have come to realise Fairbairn's true importance.
358
00:35:05,250 --> 00:35:07,890
In this, the Stephenson Room,
359
00:35:08,050 --> 00:35:10,770
Fairbairn's portrait now hangs opposite the scene
360
00:35:10,930 --> 00:35:12,530
he should be portrayed in.
361
00:35:12,690 --> 00:35:15,450
Now I like to think this helps set the record straight.
362
00:35:15,610 --> 00:35:17,530
Equal status for them both.
363
00:35:17,690 --> 00:35:21,730
We'll never know why Stephenson felt so sure he should take major credit
364
00:35:21,890 --> 00:35:24,490
for the box girder and the cells across the top
365
00:35:24,650 --> 00:35:27,810
that gave the Britannia Bridge its great strength,
366
00:35:27,970 --> 00:35:29,330
but, in my view,
367
00:21:54,250 --> 00:21:57,690
may look solid, but in fact they're hollow.
368
00:35:31,330 --> 00:35:34,690
He ought to be remembered amongst the great Victorian engineers
369
00:35:34,850 --> 00:35:37,530
alongside the likes of Brunel and Stephenson.
370
00:35:39,610 --> 00:35:43,130
For over a hundred years, trains hurtled over their bridge,
371
00:35:43,290 --> 00:35:47,210
keeping the vital link to Ireland open day and night.
372
00:35:48,290 --> 00:35:51,050
But on the 23rd of May, 1970,
373
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something happened that no-one could've imagined.
374
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The bridge caught fire.
375
00:36:06,570 --> 00:36:09,770
Right from the very start, Stephenson's Britannia Bridge
376
00:36:09,930 --> 00:36:12,770
was more than just another bridge crossing.
377
00:36:12,930 --> 00:36:16,090
It was a vital link between London and Dublin.
378
00:07:38,200 --> 00:07:40,160
..it just about takes my weight,
379
00:07:06,720 --> 00:07:09,680
was to rely on the oldest type of bridge in the book -
380
00:07:09,840 --> 00:07:11,760
the simple beam bridge.
381
00:07:14,600 --> 00:07:16,040
It doesn't get much simpler, really.
382
00:07:16,200 --> 00:07:18,360
Two supports and a beam across the top.
383
00:07:18,520 --> 00:07:21,640
As a solution, it would keep the Royal Navy happy because
384
00:07:21,800 --> 00:07:23,600
it'd be the same height above the water
385
00:07:23,760 --> 00:07:25,960
right the way across its length.
386
00:07:26,120 --> 00:07:30,960
But it has a fairly major drawback. It's not very strong.
387
00:07:31,120 --> 00:07:33,120
I'll show you what I mean.
388
00:07:33,280 --> 00:07:35,880
If I stand roughly in the middle here...
389
00:07:36,040 --> 00:07:38,040
Ooh!
390
00:07:05,160 --> 00:07:06,560
The only other option
391
00:07:40,320 --> 00:07:41,640
but only just.
392
00:07:41,800 --> 00:07:43,440
You can see how much that's bending.
393
00:07:45,160 --> 00:07:49,320
If I add another plank, let's see what happens now.
394
00:07:51,000 --> 00:07:53,840
There we go. Instantly much stronger.
395
00:07:54,000 --> 00:07:58,520
But with each plank I put on, it gets heavier.
396
00:07:58,680 --> 00:08:00,400
And that's the problem.
397
00:08:00,560 --> 00:08:02,800
My bridge here is a couple of metres in length
398
00:08:02,960 --> 00:08:05,560
and I'm adding about 80 kilograms on top.
399
00:08:05,720 --> 00:08:09,600
And you can see the amount of wood we need to make it strong.
400
00:08:09,760 --> 00:08:12,880
Scale that up to what Stephenson had planned,
401
00:08:13,040 --> 00:08:16,680
beams to span over 450 metres in length,
402
00:06:21,400 --> 00:06:24,240
They demanded that any bridge left two clear channels,
403
00:05:42,120 --> 00:05:46,160
was the bridge over this treacherous stretch of water.
404
00:05:47,800 --> 00:05:50,000
The obvious solution would be to build a bridge
405
00:05:50,160 --> 00:05:51,800
with two big arches -
406
00:05:51,960 --> 00:05:53,280
one arch from the mainland
407
00:05:53,440 --> 00:05:55,240
to the rocks in the middle of the strait,
408
00:05:55,400 --> 00:05:58,280
then a second arch over to Anglesey.
409
00:05:58,440 --> 00:06:02,920
Stephenson himself came up with a design to do just that.
410
00:06:03,080 --> 00:06:06,040
But there was a problem - the Royal Navy.
411
00:06:10,720 --> 00:06:14,240
Back in the 1840s, the Navy ruled the waves...
412
00:06:15,440 --> 00:06:17,600
..and they weren't going to have a railway bridge
413
00:06:17,760 --> 00:06:20,200
stopping them from ruling the Menai Strait.
414
00:08:16,840 --> 00:08:20,280
taking weights of hundreds of tonnes at a time.
415
00:06:24,400 --> 00:06:28,880
each over 400 feet wide and a whopping 100 feet high
416
00:06:29,040 --> 00:06:31,640
to allow tall sailing ships to pass through unhindered.
417
00:06:32,920 --> 00:06:35,040
You might think that Stephenson
418
00:06:35,200 --> 00:06:37,720
could have simply copied Telford's suspension bridge,
419
00:06:37,880 --> 00:06:39,720
which lies about a mile to the east
420
00:06:39,880 --> 00:06:43,320
and built almost a quarter of a century before.
421
00:06:43,480 --> 00:06:47,440
But that's a road bridge. This needed to be a rail bridge.
422
00:06:49,120 --> 00:06:52,120
Suspension bridges and trains simply do not mix.
423
00:06:52,280 --> 00:06:57,120
The massive weight of the train can cause it to flex and sway so much
424
00:06:57,280 --> 00:07:00,760
that it becomes a real danger the train itself could derail.
425
00:07:02,480 --> 00:07:05,000
So the suspension bridge was out.
426
00:10:36,330 --> 00:10:37,930
let's see what happens.
427
00:09:52,970 --> 00:09:56,050
you can see it's actually hollow through the middle.
428
00:09:57,370 --> 00:09:59,210
And it's that hole all the way through
429
00:09:59,370 --> 00:10:02,770
that gives the plant its strength and rigidity.
430
00:10:03,930 --> 00:10:08,370
And it's this clever trick of nature that the Britannia Bridge exploited.
431
00:10:11,450 --> 00:10:14,370
This is a solid aluminium rod.
432
00:10:14,530 --> 00:10:18,050
This is aluminium, it's exactly the same length,
433
00:10:18,210 --> 00:10:20,370
but it's a hollowed out tube.
434
00:10:21,610 --> 00:10:26,010
Now, they both contain the exact same amount of material,
435
00:10:26,170 --> 00:10:28,690
they weigh exactly the same,
436
00:10:28,850 --> 00:10:32,130
so you might expect they'd have the same strength.
437
00:10:32,290 --> 00:10:36,170
But if I add on equal weights in the middle,
438
00:09:49,370 --> 00:09:52,810
Now if I cut open the stem of this plant,
439
00:10:39,730 --> 00:10:41,090
Look at that.
440
00:10:41,250 --> 00:10:43,330
Look at that bend under the weight of that
441
00:10:43,490 --> 00:10:45,450
almost-full bucket of water.
442
00:10:45,610 --> 00:10:47,810
Right, watch this.
443
00:10:49,010 --> 00:10:52,370
I'll now add on exactly the same weight to the tube.
444
00:10:53,730 --> 00:10:55,770
Something quite remarkable happens.
445
00:10:55,930 --> 00:10:59,250
The tube hardly bends at all compared to the solid rod.
446
00:11:01,210 --> 00:11:05,730
And it was this phenomenon that was the key to designing the bridge.
447
00:11:05,890 --> 00:11:07,690
Rather than a simple solid beam,
448
00:11:07,850 --> 00:11:10,490
the whole bridge would become a massive tube.
449
00:11:13,370 --> 00:11:18,090
Three towers would support two 140 metre-long tubes
450
00:08:59,010 --> 00:09:02,050
wasn't supported by these huge arches we see today,
451
00:08:20,440 --> 00:08:23,280
The sheer volume, and thus weight of material required,
452
00:08:23,440 --> 00:08:25,760
just made it a nonstarter.
453
00:08:25,920 --> 00:08:28,880
The solution he came up with wasn't just clever,
454
00:08:29,040 --> 00:08:30,720
it would change the world.
455
00:08:32,280 --> 00:08:35,000
And it was a solution borrowed from nature.
456
00:08:42,210 --> 00:08:46,170
At 460 metres long and around 40 metres high,
457
00:08:46,330 --> 00:08:48,450
nowadays a bridge like the Britannia here
458
00:08:48,610 --> 00:08:50,490
is nothing special really,
459
00:08:50,650 --> 00:08:52,330
but around 170 years ago
460
00:08:52,490 --> 00:08:56,010
it pushed engineering to its absolute limits.
461
00:08:57,170 --> 00:08:58,850
Back then, this great span
462
00:05:37,320 --> 00:05:41,960
Possibly the hardest part of the entire 260-mile route to construct
463
00:09:02,210 --> 00:09:05,050
because the Navy had demanded nothing should obstruct
464
00:09:05,210 --> 00:09:07,570
the masts of their tall ships.
465
00:09:07,730 --> 00:09:11,530
Instead, the entire bridge was to be formed from great beams
466
00:09:11,690 --> 00:09:15,970
which ran as a straight line right across the Menai Strait.
467
00:09:17,210 --> 00:09:19,570
As a concept, it sounds simple,
468
00:09:19,730 --> 00:09:24,450
but the entire span of the bridge would need to be 460 metres long,
469
00:09:24,610 --> 00:09:28,490
and it would need to support trains weighing hundreds of tonnes.
470
00:09:28,650 --> 00:09:32,250
No-one had done anything like this before.
471
00:09:39,570 --> 00:09:43,210
Luckily, the solution to the problem was right in front of them.
472
00:09:43,370 --> 00:09:45,610
They just needed to know where to look.
473
00:02:11,440 --> 00:02:14,120
constructed using a straight wrought iron beam
474
00:01:29,920 --> 00:01:36,240
had a span of over 460 metres and weighed more than 4,500 tonnes.
475
00:01:36,400 --> 00:01:38,720
It was built to cross the Menai Strait,
476
00:01:38,880 --> 00:01:41,480
a dangerous tidal channel between North Wales
477
00:01:41,640 --> 00:01:43,760
and the island of Anglesey -
478
00:01:43,920 --> 00:01:46,160
a stretch of water so hazardous
479
00:01:46,320 --> 00:01:48,960
that even Admiral Nelson was said to fear it.
480
00:01:51,440 --> 00:01:54,840
Sadly, much of what you see today is a rebuild.
481
00:01:55,000 --> 00:01:59,280
A lot of the original bridge was lost to a devastating fire.
482
00:02:02,480 --> 00:02:07,240
The first Britannia Bridge didn't have these magnificent arches.
483
00:02:07,400 --> 00:02:09,360
In fact, it didn't even have a road.
484
00:02:09,520 --> 00:02:11,280
It was just a rail bridge,
485
00:01:25,520 --> 00:01:29,760
Opened in 1850, this game-changing wrought iron bridge
486
00:02:14,280 --> 00:02:16,640
supported by three great towers.
487
00:02:16,800 --> 00:02:20,800
And it's that beam which made the Britannia Bridge so special.
488
00:02:20,960 --> 00:02:23,480
But why?
489
00:02:23,640 --> 00:02:25,320
Well, it's the way it was built,
490
00:02:25,480 --> 00:02:30,520
using this unlikely-looking lump of iron - the box girder.
491
00:02:33,920 --> 00:02:36,160
Unglamorous as it may appear,
492
00:02:36,320 --> 00:02:41,160
this small piece of what was once a giant, long tube
493
00:02:41,320 --> 00:02:44,000
is one of the most important advances in engineering
494
00:02:44,160 --> 00:02:46,320
in the last 200 years.
495
00:02:46,480 --> 00:02:49,840
It changed the modern world in ways that Robert Stephenson,
496
00:02:50,000 --> 00:02:53,360
the designer of the bridge, could never have dreamed of.
497
00:00:40,360 --> 00:00:42,240
Stopping traffic.
498
00:00:04,720 --> 00:00:06,640
spanning our most dramatic landscapes,
499
00:00:06,800 --> 00:00:10,120
have not only linked our island, but made it great.
500
00:00:10,280 --> 00:00:13,360
These are the bridges that are known around the world,
501
00:00:13,520 --> 00:00:16,920
built by visionaries like Stephenson and Brunel,
502
00:00:17,080 --> 00:00:19,320
who are famous even today.
503
00:00:20,720 --> 00:00:22,520
Look at this!
504
00:00:22,680 --> 00:00:25,560
From the banks of the Tyne to the mighty Thames,
505
00:00:25,720 --> 00:00:29,160
from the Firth of Forth to the Menai Strait...
506
00:00:30,400 --> 00:00:34,840
..I'm on a journey to discover how those great bridges were built...
507
00:00:35,000 --> 00:00:36,800
Here we go.
508
00:00:36,960 --> 00:00:40,200
..and the sweat and sacrifice that went into their constructions.
509
00:02:53,520 --> 00:02:56,600
Your car, your TV, the sofa you're sitting on,
510
00:00:42,400 --> 00:00:46,360
I'll uncover the huge egos, flawed geniuses and jealous rivalries
511
00:00:46,520 --> 00:00:48,440
behind their creation.
512
00:00:48,600 --> 00:00:51,480
It's as if he'd been airbrushed from the whole story.
513
00:00:53,680 --> 00:00:56,440
These are Britain's Greatest Bridges.
514
00:01:01,840 --> 00:01:05,240
Britain's great bridges changed our country,
515
00:01:05,400 --> 00:01:08,360
shrinking distances and boosting trade.
516
00:01:08,520 --> 00:01:11,800
But there's one bridge that not only changed Britain,
517
00:01:11,960 --> 00:01:13,640
it changed the world,
518
00:01:13,800 --> 00:01:18,040
and it's a bridge that you may never have heard of.
519
00:01:18,200 --> 00:01:21,920
This one - Robert Stephenson's Britannia Bridge.
520
00:04:57,960 --> 00:04:59,640
which back in the 1840s
521
00:04:21,240 --> 00:04:23,480
not just to the history of engineering
522
00:04:23,640 --> 00:04:25,440
but to the history of the modern world?
523
00:04:25,600 --> 00:04:31,080
Well, the answer is twofold - the Royal Navy and politics.
524
00:04:32,200 --> 00:04:34,240
In 1845, Robert Stephenson,
525
00:04:34,400 --> 00:04:36,840
son of the railway engineer George Stephenson,
526
00:04:37,000 --> 00:04:39,960
was employed to build the Chester to Holyhead railway.
527
00:04:41,920 --> 00:04:44,560
Part of the job was to connect the island of Anglesey
528
00:04:44,720 --> 00:04:46,200
to the Welsh mainland.
529
00:04:48,160 --> 00:04:50,160
But it's what lay to the west of Anglesey
530
00:04:50,320 --> 00:04:53,040
that made the bridge so important.
531
00:04:53,200 --> 00:04:57,800
Beyond Anglesey is the Irish Sea and then Ireland itself,
532
00:04:17,720 --> 00:04:21,080
ended up with a bridge that's so incredibly important,
533
00:04:59,800 --> 00:05:02,520
was a turbulent part of the British Empire.
534
00:05:02,680 --> 00:05:05,440
The need for a fast connection
535
00:05:05,600 --> 00:05:08,640
wasn't so that tourists could paddle on the beaches of Anglesey.
536
00:05:08,800 --> 00:05:11,680
It was to speed up the vital strategic route
537
00:05:11,840 --> 00:05:13,240
between London and Dublin,
538
00:05:13,400 --> 00:05:15,760
which prior to the Britannia rail bridge
539
00:05:15,920 --> 00:05:20,160
had to stick to the slow routes via Thomas Telford's suspension bridge.
540
00:05:21,920 --> 00:05:24,520
But with the Industrial Revolution taking hold,
541
00:05:24,680 --> 00:05:28,800
faster railways were expanding across the width and breadth of the UK.
542
00:05:28,960 --> 00:05:31,080
But to reach the port at Holyhead,
543
00:05:31,240 --> 00:05:34,320
they needed to cross the dreaded Menai Strait.
544
00:03:41,640 --> 00:03:43,480
And call me a geek, but as an engineer,
545
00:02:56,760 --> 00:02:58,640
perhaps even your clothes,
546
00:02:58,800 --> 00:03:00,920
there's a good chance they were transported
547
00:03:01,080 --> 00:03:04,960
across the globe in a giant floating box girder...
548
00:03:05,960 --> 00:03:09,680
..because it was this innovation, pioneered on the Britannia Bridge,
549
00:03:09,840 --> 00:03:12,360
that helped us to build the huge cargo ships
550
00:03:12,520 --> 00:03:16,960
that crisscross the world's oceans, in effect shrinking the planet.
551
00:03:21,080 --> 00:03:25,040
Today, box girder technology is everywhere,
552
00:03:25,200 --> 00:03:29,800
making even the most unexpected structures a reality, like this.
553
00:03:29,960 --> 00:03:33,800
The Infinity Bridge here in Stockton-on-Tees.
554
00:03:33,960 --> 00:03:37,200
Just look at it. It's fantastic, isn't it?
555
00:03:37,360 --> 00:03:41,480
It kind of flows and skips across the water.
556
00:11:18,250 --> 00:11:23,170
40 metres in the air, each weighing 1,500 tonnes.
557
00:03:43,640 --> 00:03:47,000
I love a structure like this because it does its job.
558
00:03:47,160 --> 00:03:51,280
It's robust and it gets people from one side of the river to the other,
559
00:03:51,440 --> 00:03:54,200
but it does it with grace and style.
560
00:03:54,360 --> 00:03:56,680
Visually, it's about as far as you can get
561
00:03:56,840 --> 00:03:58,880
from the Britannia tubular bridge,
562
00:03:59,040 --> 00:04:03,280
but at its heart is the very same simple box girder.
563
00:04:03,440 --> 00:04:05,720
It's smaller and more crafted,
564
00:04:05,880 --> 00:04:09,160
but it still relies on the same hollow tube technology
565
00:04:09,320 --> 00:04:13,600
pioneered by Stephenson almost 170 years ago.
566
00:04:14,880 --> 00:04:17,560
So how was it that a far off corner of Wales
567
00:18:42,050 --> 00:18:44,170
The results were always disappointing.
568
00:18:09,850 --> 00:18:12,570
Together, their task was to experiment
569
00:18:12,730 --> 00:18:14,210
with different designs of tubes
570
00:18:14,370 --> 00:18:17,650
until they discovered ones strong enough to span the strait.
571
00:18:19,010 --> 00:18:20,330
I say together,
572
00:18:20,490 --> 00:18:22,690
but Stephenson was actually away a lot,
573
00:18:22,850 --> 00:18:25,450
doing other gigantic projects across Europe.
574
00:18:25,610 --> 00:18:28,970
Still, the other two got stuck in.
575
00:18:30,010 --> 00:18:31,730
Taking their inspiration from nature,
576
00:18:31,890 --> 00:18:35,130
the team started with cylindrical and elliptical tubes,
577
00:18:35,290 --> 00:18:39,010
building lengths almost 10 metres long and loading them with weights
578
00:18:39,170 --> 00:18:40,650
until they broke.
579
00:18:05,930 --> 00:18:09,690
was a mathematician by the name of Eaton Hodgkinson.
580
00:18:44,330 --> 00:18:49,090
Try as they might, their oval beams were never going to span the straits.
581
00:18:49,250 --> 00:18:51,370
But then they switched to oblongs,
582
00:18:51,530 --> 00:18:55,490
which is when Fairbairn had the idea that would change the world.
583
00:18:58,050 --> 00:19:00,050
And this is it.
584
00:19:00,210 --> 00:19:04,410
Rather than just one big tube, and it is enormous,
585
00:19:04,570 --> 00:19:07,890
Fairbairn suggesting using multiple cells.
586
00:19:08,050 --> 00:19:09,370
These smaller tubes
587
00:19:09,530 --> 00:19:10,850
across the bottom and the top
588
00:19:11,010 --> 00:19:13,370
sandwiching the main central tube,
589
00:19:13,530 --> 00:19:16,890
and the effects of this relatively small change were incredible.
590
00:19:17,050 --> 00:19:18,970
Suddenly they were experimenting
591
00:17:35,810 --> 00:17:38,130
Iron was Fairbairn's forte.
592
00:16:57,210 --> 00:16:59,650
But there was an even bigger problem.
593
00:16:59,810 --> 00:17:04,770
Up until now, the longest wrought iron span was under 10 metres,
594
00:17:04,930 --> 00:17:08,170
more than 14 times shorter than the 140 metres
595
00:17:08,330 --> 00:17:10,250
Stephenson was proposing.
596
00:17:12,970 --> 00:17:15,490
Stephenson was in unchartered waters,
597
00:17:15,650 --> 00:17:17,850
using a new technique and a type of iron
598
00:17:18,010 --> 00:17:20,050
never used before on this scale,
599
00:17:20,210 --> 00:17:23,130
so to help him he brought in two of the unsung heroes
600
00:17:23,290 --> 00:17:24,850
of Victorian engineering -
601
00:17:25,010 --> 00:17:27,690
a move that would result in a bitter feud.
602
00:17:30,170 --> 00:17:32,530
The first was William Fairbairn.
603
00:19:19,130 --> 00:19:21,850
with hollow tubular beams 20 metres in length
604
00:17:38,290 --> 00:17:39,810
His background was in shipbuilding,
605
00:17:39,970 --> 00:17:42,690
and he had a works on this site here in Millwall
606
00:17:42,850 --> 00:17:44,370
near the River Thames in London.
607
00:17:44,530 --> 00:17:47,010
If anyone could find out the best way
608
00:17:47,170 --> 00:17:51,010
to make gigantic tubes out of wrought iron, it was him.
609
00:17:51,170 --> 00:17:52,970
Fairbairn stood out from his peers
610
00:17:53,130 --> 00:17:55,210
because he was one of the first engineers
611
00:17:55,370 --> 00:17:59,570
to actually try and understand and analyse why structures failed,
612
00:17:59,730 --> 00:18:03,090
which, believe it or not, was unheard of at the time.
613
00:18:03,250 --> 00:18:05,770
The second member of the Britannia team
614
00:21:13,970 --> 00:21:18,090
Back in 1849, Stephenson's Britannia Bridge
615
00:20:32,450 --> 00:20:34,330
navigate the world's oceans.
616
00:20:34,490 --> 00:20:37,970
Some are as long as the Britannia Bridge itself.
617
00:20:38,130 --> 00:20:41,850
And it was only possible because of the humble box girder,
618
00:20:42,010 --> 00:20:45,770
designed to cross a small strait in North Wales.
619
00:20:45,930 --> 00:20:48,730
But coming up with the means to cross the Menai Strait
620
00:20:48,890 --> 00:20:51,330
was only part of the solution.
621
00:20:51,490 --> 00:20:55,810
Designing a beam that could span these great distances was one thing.
622
00:20:55,970 --> 00:21:00,650
Building it across this deadly stretch of water would be far harder,
623
00:21:00,810 --> 00:21:02,210
and in the end, it would result
624
00:21:02,370 --> 00:21:04,570
in one of the biggest bust-ups in engineering history,
625
00:21:04,730 --> 00:21:09,090
denying William Fairbairn the limelight he so deserved.
626
00:20:28,170 --> 00:20:32,290
Today, thousands of massive cargo ships and oil tankers
627
00:21:18,250 --> 00:21:20,890
was one of the biggest civil engineering projects
628
00:21:21,050 --> 00:21:22,530
in the world.
629
00:21:24,130 --> 00:21:26,250
Huge stone towers holding up
630
00:21:26,410 --> 00:21:29,890
a 460-metre-long hollow beam of wrought iron
631
00:21:30,050 --> 00:21:32,530
across one of the most dangerous stretches of water
632
00:21:32,690 --> 00:21:35,010
in the British Isles.
633
00:21:35,170 --> 00:21:38,370
One of the truly brilliant features of the Britannia Bridge
634
00:21:38,530 --> 00:21:41,090
was that Stephenson and his colleagues found a way
635
00:21:41,250 --> 00:21:46,330
of making that beam incredibly strong but also incredibly light.
636
00:21:46,490 --> 00:21:50,170
But that weight-saving concept didn't end there.
637
00:21:50,330 --> 00:21:54,090
The central towers and huge stone structures at each end
638
00:19:52,250 --> 00:19:54,930
those tubes along the bottom and on the top -
639
00:19:22,010 --> 00:19:24,690
that could support around 80 tonnes in weight.
640
00:19:25,930 --> 00:19:28,530
It was a giant leap forward,
641
00:19:28,690 --> 00:19:32,730
but there's a big difference between a 20-metre prototype
642
00:19:32,890 --> 00:19:35,610
and a 460-metre bridge.
643
00:19:35,770 --> 00:19:38,410
This is just a small piece of the full-size beam
644
00:19:38,570 --> 00:19:39,930
they ended up making.
645
00:19:40,090 --> 00:19:43,650
You can just imagine it stretching right out across the Menai Strait.
646
00:19:43,810 --> 00:19:46,010
It was revolutionary.
647
00:19:46,170 --> 00:19:48,170
Of course, modern bridges look nothing like this
648
00:19:48,330 --> 00:19:49,650
great lump of iron,
649
00:19:49,810 --> 00:19:52,090
but it was Fairbairn's simple innovation,
650
00:16:50,730 --> 00:16:56,050
making it possible for the first time to use wrought iron on a large scale.
651
00:19:55,090 --> 00:19:57,410
a key to so many bridges around the world.
652
00:19:57,570 --> 00:20:00,930
And it would prove to be even more important than that.
653
00:20:01,090 --> 00:20:03,010
In the 1840s,
654
00:20:03,170 --> 00:20:07,130
the longest ships in the world were only around 80 metres.
655
00:20:07,290 --> 00:20:11,290
Any longer and they tended to snap in the middle in heavy seas.
656
00:20:11,450 --> 00:20:14,530
But the box girder helped change all that.
657
00:20:14,690 --> 00:20:18,930
It gave us the ability to construct a rigid beam hundreds of metres long,
658
00:20:19,090 --> 00:20:22,330
and it's that that's allowed us to build the huge ships
659
00:20:22,490 --> 00:20:24,130
that have shrunk the world.
660
00:20:24,290 --> 00:20:28,010
And by huge, I mean HUGE.
661
00:13:23,490 --> 00:13:28,930
And that's exactly what happens on the cast iron as well.
662
00:12:43,570 --> 00:12:46,890
Just watch what happens when I give this bar here
663
00:12:47,050 --> 00:12:48,970
even a mild tap with the hammer.
664
00:12:51,250 --> 00:12:53,130
(LAUGHS) Look at that.
665
00:12:56,490 --> 00:12:58,090
That's gone right through.
666
00:13:00,130 --> 00:13:03,770
I can demonstrate what happens using this twig.
667
00:13:03,930 --> 00:13:05,650
Now, if I bend it down in the middle,
668
00:13:05,810 --> 00:13:10,450
the bottom surface is being pulled, it's being stretched.
669
00:13:10,610 --> 00:13:13,970
It's what's called coming under tension.
670
00:13:14,130 --> 00:13:19,010
And it stretches and stretches until eventually it cracks
671
00:13:19,170 --> 00:13:21,330
and then breaks all the way through.
672
00:13:21,490 --> 00:13:23,330
Here we go.
673
00:12:41,130 --> 00:12:43,410
It's actually extremely brittle.
674
00:13:29,090 --> 00:13:31,450
This deadly characteristic
675
00:13:31,610 --> 00:13:34,330
was to result in the deaths of five people,
676
00:13:34,490 --> 00:13:37,930
and almost stopped the Britannia Bridge in its tracks.
677
00:13:38,090 --> 00:13:40,930
On the 24th of May, 1847,
678
00:13:41,090 --> 00:13:43,530
a year after construction had started on the Britannia,
679
00:13:43,690 --> 00:13:48,370
the bridge over the River Dee, another Stephenson design, collapsed,
680
00:13:48,530 --> 00:13:51,930
causing a train to derail and crash into the water below.
681
00:13:53,090 --> 00:13:56,050
The accident almost cost Stephenson his career
682
00:13:56,210 --> 00:13:59,730
when he was hauled before the court on a negligence charge.
683
00:13:59,890 --> 00:14:02,690
He was eventually cleared, as the collapse was blamed
684
00:14:02,850 --> 00:14:07,210
on the insufficient strength of the girders, not his design.
685
00:12:01,490 --> 00:12:05,570
In many ways, this bridge kicked off the Industrial Revolution.
686
00:11:23,330 --> 00:11:25,530
Two smaller spans of 70 metres
687
00:11:25,690 --> 00:11:27,730
would then sit between the outside towers
688
00:11:27,890 --> 00:11:29,610
and the abutments on the banks.
689
00:11:29,770 --> 00:11:32,650
When completed, the tube would be large enough for trains
690
00:11:32,810 --> 00:11:38,210
to run inside them, across the entire 460 metre span.
691
00:11:38,370 --> 00:11:42,690
Whatever that tube was made from, it had to be very, very strong.
692
00:11:42,850 --> 00:11:46,490
Today, we take metal as a construction material for granted,
693
00:11:46,650 --> 00:11:49,930
but in Stephenson's day it was still something of a novelty.
694
00:11:51,130 --> 00:11:54,490
This is the famous Iron Bridge near Telford.
695
00:11:54,650 --> 00:11:59,290
Built in 1777, it was the first really large construction
696
00:11:59,450 --> 00:12:01,330
made from cast iron.
697
00:14:07,370 --> 00:14:09,610
But the disaster made people realise that cast iron
698
00:12:05,730 --> 00:12:09,730
Beforehand, cast iron was mainly used for small things, like pots and pans
699
00:12:09,890 --> 00:12:13,490
and knives and hinges, but this bridge changed that.
700
00:12:13,650 --> 00:12:15,250
Suddenly it announced to the world
701
00:12:15,410 --> 00:12:19,170
that cast iron was the building material of the future.
702
00:12:20,210 --> 00:12:22,050
Compared to wood or stone,
703
00:12:22,210 --> 00:12:24,610
you get a lot more strength per pound of weight,
704
00:12:24,770 --> 00:12:28,330
but iron's main advantage over its traditional rivals
705
00:12:28,490 --> 00:12:31,970
was that you could cast it into any shape you like.
706
00:12:32,130 --> 00:12:34,130
It really was revolutionary.
707
00:12:35,330 --> 00:12:39,650
But as strong as it is, it does have a fundamental weakness.
708
00:16:12,290 --> 00:16:13,730
Let's see what we can do here.
709
00:15:36,170 --> 00:15:38,530
crystalline structure that cast iron has.
710
00:15:38,690 --> 00:15:41,770
In fact, it's almost got a grain to it.
711
00:15:41,930 --> 00:15:44,410
It's got a lot more structure, and, as such,
712
00:15:44,570 --> 00:15:47,530
it behaves very differently to its cousin, cast iron.
713
00:15:47,690 --> 00:15:50,890
Let's give it the same test here with the hammer.
714
00:15:53,490 --> 00:15:54,970
(CLANGING)
715
00:15:55,130 --> 00:15:57,250
Oh! Yeah, that was very different.
716
00:15:57,410 --> 00:16:00,210
The sound's different, the feel's different in the hammer.
717
00:16:02,250 --> 00:16:03,890
Now I'm really giving that some wellie,
718
00:16:04,050 --> 00:16:06,650
and I've put a bit of a kink in it.
719
00:16:06,810 --> 00:16:10,010
I mean, if I really want to go for it, I can pop it in the vice here.
720
00:15:32,930 --> 00:15:36,010
It's got virtually no carbon in it and it's lost that gritty,
721
00:16:13,890 --> 00:16:16,570
Alright, if I really try and bend this...
722
00:16:18,090 --> 00:16:20,370
..let's see if I can actually break it.
723
00:16:20,530 --> 00:16:22,250
(GRUNTS)
724
00:16:23,850 --> 00:16:26,090
It's bending.
725
00:16:26,250 --> 00:16:30,130
You can see I'm putting a lot of effort into that.
726
00:16:30,290 --> 00:16:34,610
This behaves extremely differently to cast iron.
727
00:16:35,970 --> 00:16:38,370
Of course, when you're building a bridge,
728
00:16:38,530 --> 00:16:41,810
the sheer volume of wrought iron needed to be vast.
729
00:16:41,970 --> 00:16:45,570
But, thankfully, this was the Industrial Revolution,
730
00:16:45,730 --> 00:16:48,770
and there was access to massive steam hammers
731
00:16:48,930 --> 00:16:50,570
and rolling mills to work the iron,
732
00:14:52,970 --> 00:14:55,930
yet crucially without reducing its strength.
733
00:14:09,770 --> 00:14:13,010
wasn't the wonder material they'd thought.
734
00:14:13,170 --> 00:14:16,570
But there is a way of stopping cast iron from shattering,
735
00:14:16,730 --> 00:14:21,970
and that's to hit it hard - turning cast iron into wrought iron.
736
00:14:23,330 --> 00:14:25,610
Traditional blacksmiths Duncan and Jack
737
00:14:25,770 --> 00:14:27,570
have set me up with a furnace,
738
00:14:27,730 --> 00:14:32,170
a hammer, an anvil, and a white-hot piece of cast iron -
739
00:14:32,330 --> 00:14:35,250
everything I need to show how wrought iron was made.
740
00:14:36,530 --> 00:14:39,050
Cor, look at that. That's a beaut. MAN: Give it a brush.
741
00:14:43,530 --> 00:14:46,450
Heating cast iron, then hitting and rolling it,
742
00:14:46,610 --> 00:14:49,330
realigns the internal structure of the metal,
743
00:14:49,490 --> 00:14:52,810
making something that's rigid and brittle more flexible
744
00:00:02,640 --> 00:00:04,560
ROB BELL: Britain's iconic bridges,
745
00:14:56,090 --> 00:15:01,010
It also helps remove impurities like carbon and sulphur
746
00:15:01,170 --> 00:15:03,570
that weaken its structure.
747
00:15:05,450 --> 00:15:07,250
So, when you see a blacksmith hammering away
748
00:15:07,410 --> 00:15:09,450
on the anvil here in the workshop,
749
00:15:09,610 --> 00:15:12,650
it's not just about shaping the material.
750
00:15:12,810 --> 00:15:16,370
It's giving it strength, adding structure.
751
00:15:18,450 --> 00:15:21,970
At the end of this incredibly intensive process,
752
00:15:22,130 --> 00:15:26,050
you end up with a piece of iron with very different properties.
753
00:15:27,930 --> 00:15:30,130
Now, this is a piece of wrought iron.
754
00:15:30,290 --> 00:15:32,770
It's been through that hammering and rolling process.
63096
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