Charles Conrad Schneider

Charles Conrad Schneider (German: Carl Conrad Schneider; April 24, 1843 – January 8, 1916), often referred to as C. C. Schneider, was an American civil engineer and bridge designer.

Biography

Schneider was born in Apolda in the Grand Duchy of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach. He graduated from the Royal Technical School at Chemnitz, Germany, in 1864, and came to the United States in 1897. Having emigrated to the United States, he engaged in locomotive and bridge construction. He was one of the engineers that were involved in the erection of the Statue of Liberty in 1886. Among the many bridges he designed and built are the cantilever Fraser River bridge on the Canadian Pacific Railway, and the Niagara Cantilever Bridge. He was also involved in the 1906 construction of the Longteng Bridge in Taiwan, a development that was never finalized after its collapse from the 1935 Hsinchu earthquake. Schneider also was the head of the team investigating the first collapse of the Quebec Bridge in 1907, and in 1911 became a member of the board of engineers for the bridge.

He was vice president of the American Bridge Company 1900-1903. In 1905 Schneider was named president of the American Society of Civil Engineers. He was twice awarded with the Norman Medal which “recognizes a paper that makes a definitive contribution to engineering science,”^[1] in 1905 and in 1908.^[2] About 1910 he ran an engineering office together with Frederick C. Kunz in Philadelphia.

Bridges and buildings

• Niagara Cantilever Bridge, Niagara Falls (New York) / Niagara Falls (Ontario), 1883
• CPR Bridge crossing the Fraser River at Cisco (Siska), 1884
• Washington Bridge, New York City, 1886
• Railway terminal, Jersey City, 1891

Writings

• General Specifications for Railroad Bridges (1886)
• General Specifications for Highway Bridges (1901)
• General Specifications for Structural Steel Work in Buildings (1905; new ed., 1910)

Notes

References

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Rines, George Edwin, ed. (1920). "Schneider, Charles Conrad". Encyclopedia Americana.