Menai Suspension Bridge: how did Telford hang a road 30 m above the sea? | Minecraft history

Historical reconstruction, science explained. The Menai Suspension Bridge in Wales opened on 30 January 1826. Its road hangs about 30 metres above high water, so tall sailing ships could pass below. So how did Thomas Telford hang a road about 30 metres above the sea? We rebuilt the Menai Strait, the bridge, an iron works and a studio of models in Minecraft to tell the true story and the science from start to finish: the road from London to Holyhead after 1800, the ferry and the drovers' cattle swimming the strait, the need for about 30 m of clear space for tall ships, why an arch on a timber frame in the deep, fast channel was so hard, the Act of 1819, the first stone on 10 August 1819, the stone towers and the seven approach arches, the wrought-iron bars made by William Hazledine and tested one by one, the chain tunnels in the rock, the first chain hauled up from a raft in late April 1825, the last chain on 9 July 1825, the opening night with the mail coach, the storms of 1836 and 1839, the steel deck of the 1890s, the steel chains of 1938-1940, the closure of 2022-2023 and the bridge's 200th year. 0:00 A Road in the Sky 0:37 The Road to Ireland 1:56 Room for the Ships 2:56 Towers of Stone 3:55 Chains of Iron 5:06 The Big Lift 6:31 Hanging the Road 6:59 Opening Night 7:59 How It Works 8:54 Battling the Wind 9:41 Still Standing 10:47 The Answer The answer: Telford hung the road from 16 chains of tested wrought iron, in four sets of four, pulled tight over two stone towers and fixed in tunnels deep in the rock. The chains carry the road in tension; the towers are only pressed straight down (compression). Each chain's long middle part was floated out on a raft and hauled up from the towers by men at capstans, so no frame or scaffolding ever had to stand in the deep, fast channel, and the ships kept their 30 metres. The models are simplified and not to scale (the strait, the bridge, the iron works, the chain tunnel, the map, the arch and chain diagrams, the swaying road model and the next bridge). The chains are drawn as four lines, one for each set of four. Villagers stand in for the workers, drovers and crowds; no words are put in anyone's mouth. Mason, the explorer in the teal jacket, is our guide. Some numbers and dates differ between sources (the first chain went up in late April 1825; the cost is often given as about £120,000); we use rounded numbers. Series: Science Behind the Impossible. Each episode asks one question about a job that looked impossible and answers it with a Minecraft rebuild. This episode follows the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct episode, also by Thomas Telford. Planned next: the Britannia Bridge (1850), a second bridge over the same strait. How did trains cross the strait inside giant iron tubes? (planned, not yet made) The facts come from Telford's own Life (1838) and Dr Pring's account of the building printed in it, Cadw (the Grade I listing), Coflein (RCAHMW), a structural history from Princeton University, Menai Heritage, People's Collection Wales, Bangor University, the Linda Hall Library, Grace's Guide and the Welsh Government; the planned-next notes use Network Rail, Menai Heritage, Grace's Guide and the Science Museum Group. All footage is Minecraft Java Edition. The music and sound effects are original. Subtitles: English, 日本語, Español, Português, Deutsch, Français, 한국어, Bahasa Indonesia.