ABSTRACT
From the early days of the iron and steel frame there have been manuals, treatises and text books written primarily for the engineer and constructor. For the UK and the English speaking worlds they stretch from William Fairbairn’s classic of 1854, On the Application of Cast Iron and Wrought Iron to Building Purposes (second edition 1857–8 to which is added ‘A Short Treatise on Wrought Iron Bridges’) to the Steel Designers’ Manual of 1955 by Gray, Kent, Mitchell and Godfrey. The last edition of the manual appeared in 1972 and a new edition was published in 1993. Since the first edition of the Steel Designers’ Manual there have been many books and pamphlets ranging from the erudite, analytical paper to those publications verging on the ‘coffee table genre’ on the subject of the steel frame in building, but they are invariably written for the engineer. One of the most successful was the book prepared for the Deutscher Stahlbau-Verband Multi-Storey Buildings in Steel by the three Profs Dr-Ings Hart, Henn and Sonntag. An excellent book in every way but predominantly a German/American view of the multi-storey steel frame and its development.
