LAFAYETTE -- Bill Bardet doesn't remember what he had for lunch or exactly what he wore on May 28, 1937,
when he was one of the first people to walk across the newly completed Golden Gate Bridge.
But the Pleasant Hill resident will never forget what was in his hand.
"I had my first girlfriend with me," he boasted, 75 years after the momentous day,
"I wasn't thinking about eating because I had my girl with me."
At the Lafayette Library and Learning Center on Feb. 28, a sold-out Science Café presentation by
American Society of Civil Engineers' chairman and Lafayette resident Paul Giroux stirred up memories
for Bardet and his wife Joan.
"Every Sunday we went to the bridge to watch it being built," she recalled. "Afterwards, we'd
take cardboard boxes and slide down the sand dunes."
Years later, the fascination with the Bay Area's iconic symbol of contest, collaboration and conquest has yet to fade,
as Giroux's hours of research and the packed Community Hall attested. The 75th anniversary itself is May 27.
"It's a remarkable story of triumph in the face of amazing odds," Giroux began.
Catapulting backward into history, the screen behind him filled with grainy black-and-white photographs
of the major players alternating with 21st century graphics. The mix of visuals was half the fun as shots of
boater-hatted men standing in their best suits next to trucks and concrete barrels dissolved into
Minecraft-like animations of construction materials floating easily into position.
But there was nothing particularly easy about building the actual bridge, which Giroux made
plain in his 75-minute beat-the-clock lecture.
Opposition to the bridge -- despite the fact that by the 1930s ferries had to make 170 trips a day to
accommodate the demands of increasing traffic -- came from ferry personnel, engineers and politicians.
Joseph Strauss, who Giroux said had a yearning to be known throughout posterity as one of the great bridge
designers of his time, offered a hybrid model and enough determination to land the position of chief engineer for the project.
Having battled through highway acts, bridge district incorporation and board approvals, the Golden Gate Bridge
received a go-ahead in 1929. At 4,200 feet, its span was the largest at that time.
The rock into which it would be anchored invited argument.
"The debate about the integrity of the rock was no less than the Cal and Stanford game rivalry," Giroux quipped.
The soil, from serpentine to sandstone to basalt, required massive investigation. The reality of
earthquakes meant the bridge had to flex and maneuver to avoid overloading any stable element.
The price, a $35 million dollar bond, was hefty.
The community rallied, supporting the measure with 145,657 votes, easily surpassing 46,954 naysayers.
But the designers were less cooperative.
Charles Ellis, who was never recognized for his contributions as the structural designer (an error Giroux
was thrilled to announce he will correct at an upcoming commemorative ceremony), began to differ with Strauss,
who told Ellis to take a vacation and promptly fired him.
Legal battles of all kinds ensued, and it was 14 years after Strauss began his work when the bridge was
approved in January 1933.
Giroux's list of facts caused a stir, with numbers like $4 per day for unskilled laborers, 390,000 cubic
yards of concrete, 107 tons of steel in the foundation alone, and 15-foot waves slamming down upon deep sea divers.
There wasn't a single fatality or major setback during the first three years of construction. But all
that changed when a ship plowed through a trestle, storms caused engineers to abandon and dynamite a
10,000-ton floating caisson, and tower construction sent 12 men "into the hole."
The term, referring to falling into a $130,000 safety net the project leaders had supplied, saved Golden Gate Bridge
workers from the industry average of one life lost per million dollars of project cost, but couldn't withstand
the crushing load of an enormous tower structure that fell into the net and took 12 men, 10 of them to their deaths.
Still, the bridge's circus-wire act of cabling was completed three months ahead of schedule, and in 1937,
through the efforts of countless people and with the passion of brilliant engineers, courageous ironworkers like
Al Zampa, and millions of dollars, the Golden Gate Bridge allowed Bardet to take a fine walk from San Francisco to Marin.
Giroux told the audience that the bridge's balance of function, structural efficiency and economy of design means the
elegant structure was built to last as long as there are funds to support its maintenance.
摘自http://www.contracostatimes.com/