1909/11 by
the great French inventor and engineer François
Hennebique (1842/1921)
“He first
developed his reinforced concrete system on a house project in Belgium in 1879
where he used concrete as a fireproof protection for wrought iron beams. In
1894, Hennebique built the first reinforced concrete bridge in Wiggen,
Switzerland. His business developed rapidly, expanding from five employees in
Brussels in 1896, to twenty-five two years later when he moved to Paris. In
addition, he had a rapidly expanding network of firms acting as agents for his
system. Hennebique's idea of strengthening concrete using iron and steel bars
was the forerunner to the widespread modern reinforced-concrete method used in
construction today” (National Inventors Hall of Fame - www.invent.org)
The span of
the bridge is 100 m (330 feet) and the thickness at the center is only 85 cm
(2.7 feet)
It was
built on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the unification of Italy
to link the areas set up for the international exhibition of Valle Giulia and
the Prati district
It was the
first bridge to be built in Rome with reinforced concrete and a single arch
It was
later covered with stucco in imitation of travertine and so the structures of
advanced technology with which it was built were hidden
“For
its technical characteristics is one of the most significant works produced in
the world in those years. (...) Some innovative solutions were adopted because
of the limited capacity of resistance of the ground which advised both the use
of a 'cell' structure - formed by a series of ribs orthogonal among themselves
- rigid but very lightweight and thus able to greatly reduce the loads, both
the testing of new techniques for the construction of the foundations
themselves” (Piero Ostilio Rossi)
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