Object number
55/23
Description
Deaccessioned. Please note that this object no longer forms part of the Museum of English Rural Life collection and cannot be accessed at our institution.
Physical description
1 note book: deaccessioned
Archival history
This note book has 20 pages and is entirely hand written and signed 'I.C. Mch, 1809 on page 2. The greater part of the note book is taken up with calculations about contemporary civil engineering developments particularly bridge building. Scale diagrams in the book include the iron bridge across the river Wear at Sunderland and the bridge across the Taff in Glamorganshire. For many years the Wear Bridge erected in 1796 was considered to be a triumph of iron work. The Taff bridge was also a remarkable achievement by eighteenth century standards, being famous for its single span. The note book also includes a memorandum from Smeaton, the builder of the Eddystone lighthouse and improver of the steam engine. A leaflet of 4 pages with a historical commentary on the architecture of some of the English cathedrals and comments on the construction of monuments such as Cleopatra's needle is the last important feature of the note book. England, as a result of contemporary industrial developments, was the first country to use iron as a building material on a major scale. The high price of the material necessitated economy in use and caused designers of iron structures to determine measurements as accurately as possible. The main interest of the note book lies in the illustration it provides of accurate structural analysis at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
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