(EIFFEL, Gustave) Nouveaux ponts portatifs économiques système Eiffel, Br.S.G.D.G. applicables au service des chemins vicinaux et ruraux à celui des armées en campagne, aux chemins de fer à voie étroite et aux routes coloniales. Notice sur les différents types des ponts de de système. Paris, 1884
Small 4to. (ii) + 23 + (1)pp, frontis and 11 litho plates (some double-page). Orig. printed wrappers, becoming detached and with delicate stitching. An exceptionally rare item. Although Eiffel and his company are renowned for spectacular structures, the everyday work of the firm tends to be overlooked. An example of this are the light-weight demountable bridges, which were shipped all over the world. The problem of rapidly establishing an infrastructure of roads or railways in hostile terrain on the other side of the world had occupied Eiffel as early as 1873 when building bridges in Bolivia. However, he only seriously turned his attention to it in the early 1880s after a conversation with the governor of Cochin-China (now Vietnam). The country was criss-crossed with small waterways which could best be crossed with simple portable bridges. Eiffel came up with the idea of a steel girder bridge with limited components, light and easy to transport, which did not need major supports and which could be assembled with bolts rather than rivets for ease of construction by unskilled workers. The components could be made up into whatever span was required. The basic system involved two side girders each made up of a pair of warren trusses set back to back and out of phase so that the cross-beams supporting the deck would be supported at half the distance betweeen the lower nodes of each half truss. This is a brilliantly simple solution which anticipated by several decades the more famous Bailey bridge of World War II. The present item is the first catalogue of these bridges that Eiffel’s firm produced. It describes and illustrates the system, including its ease of launching, showing how it could be used for narrow or standard gauge railways, either wooden or metalled roads, for footbridges and for military or agricultural uses. These briges were immediately successful and were built all over the the French Empire as well as in many parts of Europe.
£650
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