John A. Roebling

The story of the John A. Roebling's Sons Company is the story of the romance of industry; the saga of a great family. It is the story of a mother's ambition realized.

It begins not one hundred years ago, when John A. Roebling sold America's first wire rope. Rather it begins in the closing years of the 1700's, when there lived in the quiet town of Mublhausen, Germany, a tobacconist and his wife, Roebling by name.

Typical of the traditional mother, Friederike Dorothea Roebling had great dreams about the future of her children. In 1806, a son, John August, was born to her, and before the boy was many years old she recognized that his quick intelligence and nervous energy were fertile fields for the cultivation of her ambition.

By dint of stringent economies and efficient management of the family's financial affairs, she managed to send the boy to the best schools of the neighborhood, and later to the great University of Berlin.

It was during his years at the University and the Polytechnic Institute in Berlin that the young man first became interested in the study of suspension bridges, in which field he was tutored by the celebrated Professors J. F. Dietleyn and J. A. Eytelwein. Of even greater importance, however, in shaping Roebling's future, was the influence exercised upon him by the world-famous philosopher, Hegel.

In Hamilton Schuyler's book, "The Roeblings," in a short character sketch written by a friend of the Roebling family, the dominant influence of the Hegelian philosophy in Roebling's intellectual life is referred to:

"It is impossible to study him (Hegel) diligently and not be profoundly influenced by his teachings, and for a youth like John A. Roebling to have been brought into intimate contact with his dominating personality, was . . . a privilege, because it opened the boy's eyes to the spiritual reality back of the change and decay of material phenomena . . . a privilege, because he was taught to think independently, and rely upon the validity of his own conclusions."

After receiving thorough qualification as an engineer, however, John A. Roebling became interested in the social problems of the day, and eventually this interest transcended his engineering ambitions. Political and religious tyranny were even then rampant, and Roebling, probably spurred by his whole-hearted acceptance of the Elegelian creed, rebelled. He and his younger brother, Karl, organized in 1831 a small group of the younger people of the neighborhood and undertook to lead their emigration to the United States.

Although their goal was the highly romanticized plains of the West, where, they had been told, the real promised land awaited them, certain financial and political exigencies led to the final adoption of a site near Pittsburgh for their proposed community. The town was at first called Germania, but later became known as Saxonburg.

At first there were many problems to be solved. The soil was none too fertile; it was not easy to clear the ground and erect houses; the winters were cold and long, and money was scarce. However, after three years, the resourcefulness of the Roebling brothers and the thrift and tenacity of their followers had produced a substantial community.

It was then, after the difficulties had been settled and comparative prosperity and ease were assured, that John A. Roebling's active mind became discontented with the complacency of the life of a farmer and turned once again to engineering matters.

Original Roebling Factory--Saxonburg, Pennsylvania

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 frequency with which they had to be replaced.

A Typical Portage Railway

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

He approached the State Board of Public Works with the plan to substitute his wire rope for the hempen hawsers on the canal. There the reception accorded him was cool.

He did, however, finally sell them his first wire rope in 1841. The rope had been made in the meadow behind his Saxonburg farm, on the crudest sort of equipment, with the help of his farmer neighbors as workmen.

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 hemp cables; its diameter of 1 1/4 inches made it considerably more convenient to work with; and it long outlasted the hemp. In short, it immediately assured the acceptance of wire rope as a new engineering material.

It was shortly thereafter that Roebling adapted his new rope to the suspension bridge principle. And again it was the construction of the Pennsylvania Canal that presented him with the opportunity. It was necessary to carry the canal across rivers by means of aqueducts. Roebling claimed that he could build an efficient and inexpensive suspension aqueduct across the Allegheny River, and once again he fulfilled his promise.

This aqueduct was built in 1844, when the young engineer was 38 years of age, and portended his future achievements which were destined to be among the greatest in the engineering world.

Three years later, in 1847, he built the wire rope 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 Ellet, 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.

An argument (the records do not indicate what it was about) between Ellet and the Bridge Commission in charge of the job took place and Ellet resigned. Roebling was called upon to complete the job. When it was finished, and when Roebling dared to move a fully-loaded freight train across it, the accomplishment was heralded by the press of the day as one of the wonders of the world and the engineer was rocketed to fame.

Allegheny Aqueduct

Pittsburgh Bridge

Niagara Gorge Bridge

The eminent successes attained by Roebling with his new wire rope, both as a haulage medium on the Pennsylvania Canal and as a suspension medium on bridges, made certain its wide acceptance as an industrial tool. Much of Roebling's time and energy were consumed in compiling data on the strengths of wire rope and in experimenting with new types of ropes to meet the demands of the many who sought to buy. During the first seven years he was engaged in the manufacture of wire rope, his markets grew so rapidly that it became necessary to expand the business and to set up a formalized factory to replace the experimental "rope walk" on which the early ropes were made.

Consequently in 1848, John A. Roebling purchased a three acre tract of land in Trenton, N. J., there to set up a wire rope factory. He had chosen Trenton for a number of reasons, the principal ones being that it was near the Cooper Iron Works, his source of supply of wire; it was well equipped with transportation facilities of all sorts, roads, railroads, and canal and river boats; and it was readily accessible to the thriving eastern markets. In 1849 his family moved from Saxonburg and the humble beginnings of the present Roebling plants were established. Today's main office building, the older section, stands on the land occupied by these first buildings.

First Trenton Factory

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