Saturday, January 1, 2022

Those 19 guys should have gotten together and arranged it so Strauss never had to buy his own beer at the bar again (reality check: he probably drank bourbon).

 


Joseph Strauss, the chief engineer of the Golden Gate Bridge, ordered that a safety net be installed under the bridge during construction. For the time, it was a revolutionary thing. The net "captured" 19 men who had fallen, saving them all from certain death.


4 comments:

  1. worked hights, never liked it. a net would have made it possible for me to quit sliding on my butt, and relieve the bellows, get up and get to work, ha

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  2. I agree.
    Did the net bounce them back up on the bridge?

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  3. Knew a man who fell off a bridge without a safety net. Survived the fall but stuck in the mud at the bottom of the river. Luckily, someone on the safety boat while flailing around managed to hit him with an oar. He grabbed hold and got pulled out like a cork in a bottle.

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  4. Strauss was in a race with a competitor who was building the Bay Bridge to Oakland. His insistence on safety precautions slowed down construction so much that it likely caused him to "lose" that race. He was an early pioneer in workplace safety practices and a lot of people lived full lives because of his innovations.

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