Benjamin Baker, Forth Bridge

When the Forth Bridge opened on 4 March 1890 it was the longest railway bridge in the world and the first large structure in Europe to be built of steel. Crossing the Firth of Forth east of Edinburgh, it represents one of the greatest engineering triumphs of Victorian Britain, man’s victory over the intractable topography of land and water. Not surprisingly, such a vigorous rebuff of the natural order was condemned at the time by those late Victorians who resisted the march of technology, and William Morris described the Bridge as the 'supremest specimen of all ugliness'. In response, Benjamin Baker insisted that its beauty lay in its functional elegance. Contrasting his masterpiece with the only comparable structure of the period, the Eiffel Tower, he concluded: 'The Eiffel Tower is a foolish piece of work, ugly, illproportioned and of no real use to anyone.' But the beauty and fascination of the Forth Bridge lies not simply in its functional performance, but in its scale and power. Over a mile long and higher than the dome of St. Peter’s in Rome it rivals the natural phenomena that the philosophers of the 18th century identified as sources of sublime beauty. Immanuel Kant pointed to hurricanes, boundless oceans, and high waterfalls as objects of sublime contemplation, 'because they raise the forces of the soul above the heights of the vulgar commonplace, and discover within us a power of resistance of quite another kind, which gives us courage to be able to measure ourselves against the seeming omnipotence of nature.' In the 19th century the awe-inspiring feats of nature were rivalled by the inventions of the engineers, and the thrill of the waterfall or the lightning flash was eclipsed by the sight of the roaring locomotive dashing across the majestic span of the Forth Bridge. Iain Boyd Whyte is an architectural historian specializing in the architecture of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Angus J. Macdonald is a structural engineer with particular research interests in the relationship between structure and architecture. Both teach in the Department of Architecture at the University of Edinburgh. Colin Baxter is one of Scotland’s most celebrated photographers. '. The selection of titles is determined simply by quality, of which he [Axel Menges] is the judge. Luckily, he has an inquisitive mind and a keen eye, and the series avoids duplicating what is readily available elsewhere. Each volume begins with an illustrated essay written by a scholar which is – remarkably – articulate and accessible.' (Steven Spier on the Opus series in The Architects’ Journal, London, 11 April 1996.)