Bridges presentation
A better
scientific understanding of the material by the Frenchman Vicat and the Englishman Aspdin and
discovery of the material in a natural state in 1796 on the Isle of Sheppey in the Thames estuary, by
Lafarge at Le Teil (France), and by Canvass White on the Erie Canal in New York in 1818, led to its
use in sinking foundations by the new method of direct flow into coffer dams underwater, as at the
suspension bridge at Tournon (France) in 1824. Hydraulic cement had the amazing ability to set
under water, and was consequently used in aqueducts, piers and abutments, culverts, and locks.
Following the construction of the Iron Bridge at Coalbrookdale, Thomas Telford, a gifted, self-
educated Scottish engineer, built a number of cast-iron arches throughout the British Isles. These
included canal aqueducts, which were extraordinarily innovative arrangements in which the cast iron
had real structural value
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