The Forth Bridge/Mr. Benjamin Baker
Mr. Benjamin Baker.
The career of Sir John Fowler, which we have endeavoured to sketch in the foregoing columns, may be regarded as a contribution to the early history of the profession rather than as a biographical notice. When Mr. Baker began his career, Sir John Fowler had been actively engaged in a variety of important work for more than twenty years. The great pioneers of the profession had, most of them, either passed away, or had retired from active service, their work having been continued by those who had served with them, benefiting by their experience, and enlarging it with their own. Engineering had, in fact, been reduced to a science that replaced the more or less experimental pursuit which had occupied the previous generation, and the foundation ad been securely laid for the development which to-day distinguishes the profession throughout the world. But it was not alone the early engineers who bequeathed a rich inheritance of experience to their successors. Industry and applied science in every direction which could be useful to constructive work were progressing steadily and with rapidity. Especially this was the case with the manufacture of iron, which rendered undertakings easy that would have been impossible to the older engineers, who had little at their disposal except timber, stone, and brick. And later, when, in the march of progress, iron had to give way to steel, engineers were enabled to undertake and carry out successfully, undertakings which their immediate predecessors could not seriously consider for want of the proper materials.
In the atmosphere of enthusiasm that naturally surrounds the successful completion of so vast a structure as the Forth Bridge, one is too apt to forget, in presence of the stupendous work, how much is due to the great army of workers who have laboured—blindly in some cases—since the beginning of the century, and to ascribe some of the credit to its creators which is really due to the general advance in mechanical science characteristic of the age. As Lord Brassey said on a recent public occasion, "I like to remember that if my father had not laboured I should not be Lord Brassey." In his many public utterances on the subject of the Forth Bridge Mr. Baker hat always brought this fact prominently before his audience, Speaking at Southampton seven years ago, he said: "The merit of the design, if any, will be found, not in the novelty of the principles underlying it, but in the resolute application of well-tested mechanical laws and experimental results to the somewhat difficult problem offered by the construction of so large a bridge across so exposed an estuary as the Firth of Forth." At Montreal, two years later, when the works were in full swing, he said: "If I were to pretend that the designing and building of the Forth Bridge was not a source of present and future anxiety to all concerned, no engineer of experience would believe me. Where no precedent exists the successful engineer is he who makes the fewest mistakes." At Newcastle, last year, when delivering the workmen's lecture of the British Association to an audience of 4000 men, he remarked that the success of the work was due as much to the individual and collective pluck and ingenuity of the workmen as to the scientific labours and organisation of the engineers and contractors; and as President of the Mechanical Science Section of the Association at Aberdeen, he said: "I have no doubt that as able and enter- prising engineers existed prior to the age of steam and steel as exist now, and their work was as beneficial to mankind, though different in direction." It is quite clear, therefore, that Mr. Baker does not labour under the common illusion that a very great undertaking must necessarily be the work of very great men; and, indeed, he told the Mechanical Engineers at Edinburgh that he would be sorry not to believe that there were plenty of engineers and contractors in England, Europe, and America capable of building a Forth Bridge, if called upon to do so; and that, in his opinion, if the engineers and contractors of the Forth Bridge deserved the praise which had been so liberally awarded them, it could only be on the grounds that they had done their work as well, probably, as any one else would have done it.
Sir John Fowler's professional training began with level and theodolite in the north of England, and Mr. Baker's with hammer and chisel in one of the oldest ironworks in South Wales. After the usual preliminary training of an engineering student, Mr. Baker was articled to Mr. H. H. Price, civil engineer, in whose workshops and drawing-office he acquired practical experience in foundry, forge, and manufacturing processes, and the designing of machinery and ironwork of all kinds. At the works referred to were made, a hundred years ago, Trevithick's first Cornish pumping engines; and long before the eve of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, strange locomotives, with spur gearing and racks, and others with double bogies, some of which have been illustrated by us, were turned out of the works, together with marine engines and steamboats of the earliest type. The portfolios of working drawings thus embodied the whole history of the development of the steam engine in its application to railways, navigation, mining, smelting and rolling metals, and to other purposes. After three years practical work at this branch of engineering, Mr. Baker then underwent a further period of training elsewhere in surveying, levelling, and the designing of works in masonry and brickwork. Shortly after his arrival in London, Mr. Baker entered Sir John Fowler's office, and then gradually took a more and more active part in the many important engineering works then being carried out and proposed, including amongst others the Metropolitan Railway, and other railways in and around London.
Mr. Baker was at that time a constant contributor to the columns of Engineering, and his articles on "Long-Span Bridges," first published by us, twenty-three years ago, were soon after republished in America, Germany, Austria, and Holland. From these early days to the present time, Mr. Baker has been associated, in one capacity or another, with important bridges too numerous to mention in different parts of the world; the latest and biggest of which, the Channel Bridge, Mr. Baker, as stated at the Society of Arts, undertook to investigate as an interesting scientific problem, out of consideration to the high position of its promoters and designers, Messrs. Schneider and Hersent, and not as a promoter of the project himself in any sense of the word, but confining himself entirely to the consideration of the question of the best design, and the probable cost of Messrs. Schneider and Hersent's bold project. Whilst on the subject of bridges it may be interesting to recall Mr. Baker's statement at the Institution of Civil Engineers, that it had fallen to his lot to repair and strengthen the three great historical bridges of their first President, Telford; namely, the Menai Suspension Bridge, the Buildwas cast-iron arched bridge, and the Over masonry arch bridge across the Severn near Gloucester, and that he had succeeded in restraining the local authorities from pulling two of them down, or doing anything which would affect the appearance of these works as left by his great predecessor Telford.
Although in connection with the subject of the Forth Bridge it is fit that we should refer at some little length to Mr. Baker's connection with bridge engineering, the Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, the "Encyclopaedia Britannica," and many other publications, and our own columns, bear witness that he is no less interested professionally in tunnelling, ship railways, or other classes of work offering the fascination of novelty and difficulty. Mr. Baker holds an official position under the War Department as a civil member of the Ordnance Committee, to whom all questions affecting the design of guns are referred. He has also advised the Metropolitan Board of Works during the past twelve years, and many other public bodies, on important engineering works of a varied character projected or undertaken by them.
Mr. Baker is a Member of Council of the Institution of Civil Engineers; of the Society of Arts; of the British Association for the Advancement of Science; and also Past-President of the Mechanical Science Section of the latter Association. He is an Honorary Member of the Society of Engineers; of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and of other scientific and literary bodies; and a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Engineer and Railway Volunteer Staff Corps.