ABSTRACT
The cause of the Tay Bridge Disaster was the failure of the bridge's design to take into account the environment of use. There were a number of contributory factors, but the fundamental error lay in ignoring the wind pressure on an exposed bridge two miles long. In 1870 the North British Railway Company obtained the assent of Parliament to the construction of a bridge two miles long over the estuary of the River Tay. The bridge had been designed by Sir Thomas Bouch who had asked the advice of the Astronomer Royal on wind pressure, when he was making preliminary plans for a bridge across the Forth. In December 1985 Professor lain MacLeod of Strathclyde University said that new research showed that the disaster was the result of poor design, which could not have been avoided by higher standards of construction.
