ABSTRACT
In the second half of the nineteenth century, a very interesting cultural exchange in railroad engineering occurred between the United States and European Countries. The cultural exchange between the United States and the Russian Empire is of some importance as well: due to the transfer of knowledge between the two Countries and to the new shear theory developed by Dmitrij Ivanovič Žuravskij, Howe’s structural typology for bridges was improved and spread widely. In Central Europe, the Austro-Hungarian Empire was probably the nation most influenced by the United States’ bridge engineering. In the mid-1880s, in Galicia, at least three new bridge layouts were designed based on the Howe typology: the Ibjanski, Pintowski and Rychter systems. Based on the texts of the authors, this paper focuses on these structural systems and their behaviour and on the analysis of the technological detail of the wedge.
