Earlier quoted context omitted.
I enjoyed the rant nature of the essay but your comment hits the spot. We admire the Victorian era bridge still in use but forget all the bridges that long ago collapsed, and ignore the overconstruction required of the survivors because mechanical theory was still developing at the time. Also we used to have more single-application devices; while a juicer is often still a single-application device today, at the other…
>We admire the Victorian era bridge still in use but forget all the bridges that long ago collapsed, Engineers tend to put care into building bridges that don't collapse, and have been doing so for millenia so collapses can happen, but are rare. "All the bridges that long ago collapsed" is in my opinion not all that many bridges, really [1], and lots of people remember the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapse. I still reme…
Gumby's point that the Victorian era bridges we still have were over-engineered is I think a good point. However we might like to say that they were well-engineered, but I bet that even they have been in a state of on-and-off if not constant repair.