Theodore Cooper

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Theodore Cooper (1839-1919) was an American Civil engineer. He may be best known as supervising engineer on the Quebec Bridge when it collapsed in 1907.

Upon receiving a degree in civil engineering in 1858, Cooper accepted a position as Assistant Engineer on the Troy and Greenfield Railroad and Hoosac (Massachusetts) Tunnel. He entered the Navy in 1861; his military career lasted over a decade and included active duty aboard the gunboat Chocorua and the Nyack in the South Pacific, as well as assignments as an instructor and engineer at the Naval Academy. After resigning from the Navy in 1872 with the rank of First Assistant Engineer, he was appointed inspector at the Midvale Steel Works by James Eads, designer of the noteworthy Mississippi River steel arch bridge (Eads Bridge) at St. Louis; he succeeded Eads as Engineer of the Bridge and Tunnel Company from 1872-75.

Cooper's designs included a broad variety of structures, ranging from the Laredo Shops of the Mexican National Railroad to the furnace plant of the Lackawanna Coal and Iron Company at Scranton, Pennsylvania, but his most memorable contributions were in the area of bridge design. His bridge-building career extended from his discharge from the Navy in 1872 until his retirement in 1907. He designed the Junction Bridges over the Allegheny River at Pittsburgh (1876), the Seekonk Bridge at Providence, Rhode Island, the Second Avenue Bridge over the Harlem River at New York City, and the Newburyport (Massachusetts) Bridge over the Merrimack River. The third Sixth Street Bridge has been identified as the only surviving structure entirely designed by Cooper, whose involvement extended even to such details as the bridge's handrail, lamps, and fascia.

During the period between 1885 and 1902, Cooper published several important works on railroad and highway bridge design. His theories strongly influenced the adoption of wheel-load analysis for railroad bridges. Also during this period he served as consultant to numerous commissions charged with the development of rapid transit systems in such cities as New York and Boston. The career of this distinguished and celebrated engineer (twice awarded the Norman Medal by the American Society of Civil Engineers) ended in tragedy when the monumental Quebec Bridge, for which Cooper was supervising engineer, collapsed while under construction in 1907 with 82 casualties.

Cooper is also responsible for developing in 1894, a system of calculations and standards for the safe loading of railway (railroad) bridges. An example would be a bridge rated as "E-70", meaning it would safely support a train being pulled by a locomotive with a 70,000 pounds single axle weight. Such a locomotive would be considered large by the standards then in existence, being a large 2-8-0 type. Today's modern railway (railroad) bridges are typically built using either an E-90 or E-95 rating.

[edit] External links

Text of 21 page HAER writeup at pghbridges.com (this text is in the public domain since it is taken from the Library of Congress, and material from this article was taken from this text)
biography at Structurae.de
Paper "American Railroad Bridges", given at an ASCE convention and reported in "Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers", 1889, n. 21 . also Reported in Engineering News—July 6, 1889 (from catskillarchive.com)
Prelude to Failure part one of a multipart article on Cooper and the Quebec Bridge
Google Books The Bridge at Quebec - by William D Middleton. Contains an undated picture of Theodore Cooper.