The use of models in nineteenth-century British suspension bridge design

In the nineteenth century the suspension bridge became a prominent feature of bridge-building on both sides of the Atlantic, especially in Great Britain, France and the United States. In Great Britain the first half of the century promised more, both in terms of theoretical ideas and practical techniques, than was to be sustained after about 1870 by which time the suspension bridge had failed to establish itself in the British bridge builders' repertoire.France was a prolific builder of suspended bridges in the 1830s and 1840s but the effort petered out after 1850 following the collapse of the Pont de Ia Basse-Chaine at Angers which killed two hundred and twenty-three people.