While employed as an engineer by the State of Pennsylvania, young John A. Roebling, the founder of John A. Roebling's Sons Company, became interested in the Pennsylvania Canal construction project, then in progress in the foothills of the Allegheny Mountains.

At various points along the route of the canal it was necessary to transport the barges across the mountains by means of portage railways. Large hempen hawsers were used to tow the boats up the sides of the hills. These hawsers were nine inches in diameter and, obviously, cumbersome to handle, as well as expensive because of the necessity of frequent replacement. This situation stimulated John A. Roebling's ingenuity and led to a development which determined the entire course of his career.

At about this time there fell into Roebling's hands an obscure German engineering paper which described the experiments that someone in Germany had been conducting in the fabrication of a rope made out of wire. Immediately the idea took root in the mind of the young engineer and he began to experiment, in Saxonburg, Pennsylvania. This was in 1840.

Approaching the State Board of Public Works, he sold them his first wire rope in 1841. With the help of farmer neighbors who were hired as workmen, the rope was made on a crude device called a "rope-walk."

There were those who belittled his attempts to make a wire rope. But the rope worked. It lived up to every promise he had made for it; it was flexible; it was strong; it weighed no more than the huge hempen cables; its diameter of 1 1/4" made it considerably easier to handle; and it long outlasted the huge hempen hawsers. in short, it immediately assured the acceptance of a wire rope as a new engineering material.

Roebling shortly thereafter adapted his new wire rope to the suspension bridge principle when, in 1844, he built an aqueduct across the Allegheny River. This achievement was a practical refutation to the numerous attacks, made by many who were considered eminent engineers, which derided the project of a suspension aqueduct.

Two years later, in 1846, he built the suspension bridge across the Monongahela at Pittsburgh, and then, in 1850, he was engaged upon a project that was to startle the world. A suspension bridge across the gorge of the Niagara River, at Niagara, had been bid upon by Roebling and an engineer named Charles Ellet, Jr., Roebling's chief competitor of the day. Ellet's proposal had been accepted and he had begun the work, which had progressed to the stage of the erection of a foot bridge. After an argument between Ellet and the Bridge Commission, which resulted in Ellet's resignation, Roebling was called upon to complete the job. After the bridge was completed, and when Roebling dared to move a fully loaded freight train across it, the accomplishment was heralded by the press as one of the wonders of the world and Roebling was rocketed to fame.

The eminent success attained by Roebling with his new wire rope, both as a haulage medium on the Pennsylvania Canal and as a suspension medium on bridges, assured its wide acceptance as an industrial tool. Much of Roebling's time and energy were consumed in compiling data on the strength of wire rope, and in experimenting with many types of ropes to meet the demands of the many who sought to buy. To keep pace with his rapidly growing markets, a formalized factory to replace the experimental "rope-walk" was built at Trenton, N. J.

As the new wire rope became more highly developed; as it could be made more flexible, easier to handle; as prices went down, and, much more important, as production capacity increased, new markets opened up rapidly. Mining was among the first, due to the fact that the Pennsylvania mines were accessible to Roebling and its miners had an opportunity to observe the performance of wire rope on the inclines of the Pennsylvania Canal.

Another important field, although extremely limited since the advent of electrical power equipment, was that of power transmission. Here wire rope's durability, strength and comparative resistance to exposure qualified it admirably for the job.

In the 1860's the Otis brothers were experimenting in a field which since has become one of the largest consumers of wire rope. (Until then, elevators had been used sparingly and mostly for industrial purposes because of their lack of a safety mechanism. The Otis brothers, however, brought out safety devices which have been largely responsible for the tremendous expansion of the elevator industry.) The advent of wire rope, which John A. Roebling designed to suit their needs, contributed greatly to this development.

In these early years, wire rope, as a stable piece of equipment, was first introduced to the Marine markets. Both rigging and tiller ropes were produced, and it is this fact-that two such extremes of flexibility and of other characteristics had been developed-that gives striking evidence of the rapidity with which Roebling experimented and improved this new engineering instrument. Records show that this development had occurred by the 1860's at the latest!

During the first few years of this evolution of wire rope, "rope-walks," on which John A. Roebling had made his first wire rope, were used to lay up the wires and strands. However, production methods as well as the quality of the product were improved immeasurably when Roebling designed vertical stranding and vertical rope laying machines. Although the "ropewalk" was not abandoned entirely until 1862, the new machines assumed more and more of the load during the several years prior to that time. That these machines were of sound design is witnessed by the fact that some of the same basic principles are used in the wire rope industry today.

There are 258 buildings in the four main plants of the John A. Roebling's Sons Company, many of them of immense size and manufacturing capacity. Approximately 217 acres of ground, and floor space of over 4,500,000 square feet, is covered by this group of factories.

The Kinkora Works is situated at Roebling, New Jersey, on the banks of the Delaware River, ten miles south of the main works at Trenton.

The Kinkora plant is the beginning of things Roebling, for it is here that Roebling steel is made and converted into wire. The Steel Mill, in which basic and acid steels are made, comprises nine open hearth furnaces. It is here that the famous `'Blue Center" Steel is made for wire rope.

Some of the other more important plants in this group are: the Blooming Mill, a number of Rod Mills, Cleaning Houses, and Wire Mills, Annealing and Tempering Departments, the Galvanizing Shop, Copper Mill, and the plant in which Woven Wire Fabrics are manufactured.

The site of this group of buildings is about a mile from the center of the City of Trenton. Here are the main rope fabricating plants in which modern machinery fabricates wires and strands into finished rope.

This is also the location of the Roebling Research Laboratory and the manufacturing plants of the Cold Rolled Products Division. The former is one of the most modern and completely equipped industrial research units, with lahoratories devoted to general physical testing, to metallurgy, and to metallography. Here too is an experimental wire mill developed by Roebling engineers. Its equipment is complete even to air-conditioned rooms, where the effects of temperature and humidity on various materials and products can be studied. In this Research Laboratory the ceaseless work of improving Roebling wire rope and other wire products proceeds. Materials are analyzed, service conditions are studied and better ways of meeting them are evolved; and new manufacturing processes are developed and tested.

The main office building is also situated at Trenton and covers approximately five floors having an area of 54,000 square feet. In this building are housed the Executive, Administrative and Sales Offices, as well as Engineering, Production, Cost and Accounting, Advertising and Printing Departments.

The Lalor Street Works is located in Trenton a short distance from the main works. ElectroGalvanizing and Tinning are processes for which this plant is used.

The Buckthorn Works also is situated at Trenton. This plant specializes in the manufacture of all forms of electrical wire and cable.

In addition to Wire Rope, Strand and Aircord, Roebling manufactures an extensive line of Fittings; Slings; Electrical Wire and Cable; Hard, Annealed or Tempered High and Low Carbon Fine and Specialty Wire, Flat Wire, Cold Rolled Strip and Cold Rolled Spring Steel; Screen, Hardware and Industrial Wire Cloth.