The Deadliest Machine on the Eads Bridge Was the Air Itself (1874)

In the summer of 1874, St. Louis walked a circus elephant across a brand new bridge over the Mississippi to prove it was safe, then ran fourteen locomotives across it at once while President Grant looked on. But the real danger that day had never been up on the deck. It was more than a hundred feet below, sealed inside a chamber of compressed air, and it had already killed at least a dozen of the men who built the bridge. Every documentary takes days of research. You can help us keep going by leaving a small donation — just click the link and support us: https://buymeacoffee.com/Construction... This is the untold story of the Eads Bridge, the first bridge to cross the Mississippi at St. Louis and the first great steel bridge in the world, told the only way this channel tells it: through the machine and the men. We follow James Buchanan Eads, the self-taught salvage diver who walked the river bottom in a homemade diving bell and built the Union's ironclad gunboats before he ever built a bridge. We open up the deadly machine itself, the pneumatic caisson, a sealed iron chamber that let men dig on the floor of the Mississippi under crushing pressure. And we tell the truth about the sickness it caused, the one that struck men only after they climbed back up to safety and gave a brand new way of dying its name: the bends. We also set the record straight on the one thing the history books still cannot agree on, which is how many men this bridge actually killed. CHAPTERS 0:00 The elephant, the locomotives, and the danger nobody saw 1:57 The salvage diver who should never have built a bridge 7:36 Inside the caisson on the bottom of the river 13:12 The sickness that killed men on dry land 19:50 The doctor who gave himself the bends 24:54 The bridge, and the reckoning SOURCES & FURTHER READING Historical and engineering record, including the American Society of Civil Engineers landmark documentation for the Eads Bridge, the National Park Service and Historic American Engineering Record, PBS American Experience, contemporary accounts of caisson disease on the project including the work of Dr. Alphonse Jaminet, and Robert W. Jackson's "Rails Across the Mississippi: A History of the St. Louis Bridge." Figures on the death toll vary between sources and are flagged honestly in the narration. Archival images and footage are used for historical and educational commentary under fair use (17 U.S.C. § 107). No copyright infringement intended. Subscribe for more forgotten machines and the men who built the modern world:    / @constructionlegends   #EadsBridge #ConstructionHistory #TheBends #CaissonDisease #EngineeringHistory #StLouis #Mississippi #IndustrialHistory #HeavyEngineering #Documentary