page_title: John A. Roebling
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: John A. Roebling / Career
caption_attribution_description: en:John August Roebling, Stamp, Deutschland 2006.
context_page_description: John Augustus Roebling was a German-born American civil engineer. He designed and built wire rope suspension bridges, in particular the Brooklyn Bridge, which has been designated as a National Historic Landmark and a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark.
context_section_description: On May 22, 1831, Roebling left Prussia with his brother Carl and Johann Adolphus Etzler, who believed in a technological utopia, and a group of emigrants. Engineers had difficulty advancing and achieving economic mobility in Prussian society. The Napoleonic Wars, which lasted until 1815, had suppressed investment in infrastructure. During this period, Prussia had political unrest, as authoritarian governments took the places of democratic ones. Etzler had ideas about creating a utopia in the United States, but disputes arose en route, and the group split up. John and Carl purchased 1582 acres (6.4 km²) of land on October 28, 1831, in Butler County, Pennsylvania with the intent to establish a German settlement, to be called Saxonburg. Most of the other settlers had remained with Etzler.  The John Roebling House at Saxonburg was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976.
  When the Roeblings and others arrived, the United States was in the later stages of an economic boom, which ended in the Panic of 1837. Farmers were deeply affected by it. By the 1840s, many Americans believed in the nation's manifest destiny to extend its borders and achieve greatness. Transportation between eastern industrial hubs and frontier farming markets had become a matter of both national and popular interest. Many railway and transportation projects were underway near the site which Roebling chose for his colony, but instead of continuing in the engineering profession, he took up farming.  After five years he married Johanna Herting, a tailor's daughter.
  He found agrarian work unsatisfying, and the colony attracted very few settlers. In 1837, after the death of his brother Carl and the birth of his first child, Roebling returned to engineering as a vocation. He first worked on projects to improve river navigation and build canals. For three years, he conducted surveys for railway lines across the Allegheny Mountains, from Harrisburg to Pittsburgh, for the state of Pennsylvania.
  In 1840 he wrote to suspension bridge designer Charles Ellet, Jr., offering to help with the design of a bridge near Philadelphia:
  The study of suspension bridges formed for the last few years of my residence in Europe my favourite occupation ... Let but a single bridge of the kind be put up in Philadelphia, exhibiting all the beautiful forms of the system to full advantage, and it needs no prophecy to foretell the effect which the novel and useful features will produce upon the intelligent minds of the Americans.
  Roebling began producing wire rope at Saxonburg in 1841. At that time canal boats from Philadelphia were transported over the Allegheny Mountains on railroad cars in order to access waterways on the other side of the mountains, so that the boats could continue to Pittsburgh. The system of inclines and levels that moved the boats and  conventional railroad cars was a state-owned enterprise, the Allegheny Portage Railroad. The railroad cars were pulled up and down the inclines by a long loop of thick hemp rope, up to 7 centimeters thick. The hemp ropes were expensive and had to be replaced frequently. Roebling remembered an article he had read about wire ropes. Soon after, he started developing a 7-strand wire rope at a ropewalk that he built on his farm.
  In 1844 Roebling won a bid to replace the wooden canal aqueduct across the Allegheny River with the Allegheny Aqueduct. His design encompassed seven spans of 163 feet (50 m), each consisting of a wooden trunk to hold the water, supported by a continuous cable made of many parallel wires, wrapped tightly together, on each side of the trunk. He followed this innovation in 1845 by building a suspension bridge over the Monongahela River at Pittsburgh.
  In 1848 Roebling undertook the construction of four suspension aqueducts on the Delaware and Hudson Canal. During this period, he moved to Trenton, New Jersey. In Trenton, Roebling built a large industrial complex for wire production for his growing company: John A. Roebling's Sons Company. This complex inspired the Trenton, New Jersey motto on Trenton's
caption: German stamp of 2006 commemorating Roebling
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