Blair Birdsall

Until his recent death at age 90, Blair was a partner emeritus in Steinman, Boynton, Gronquist & Birdsall. He studied engineering at Princeton and went to work at Roebling in 1934. In 1956 he became Chief Engineer of the Bridge Division where he remained until 1964.

On the Golden Gate Bridge: When I started with Roebling, I was the second man in a group of two doing the cable calculations on the Golden Gate Bridge. We did the calculations for the main cable, all the footbridges, the storm system and suspended ropes for the bridge. We had a Monroe calculator that we worked by hand, and finally got some electric calculators. But all the numbers were written with a regular pen with a little nib on it, dipping it into an ink well.

I started in 1934 and in August of 1935 they sent me out to the site of the Golden Gate. We lived there a year, all during the cable construction. When I got out there, I will never forget the sensation I had of walking right up to the base of that tower; the tower was practically finished then. You never forget that impression, seen as a young man, of a great structure like that.

On John A. Roebling: John A. Roebling is the only one of his contemporaries whose bridges were retired only by obsolescence. Everyone else's bridges were destroyed by wind.

On work & fun: I never had a day's work in my life until I had to take on administrative duties, worrying about hiring and firing and vacations and salaries and profit and loss and bottom line. That part of it was work. But all of my engineering work is just my relaxation, my pleasure; that's what I like to do best.

On the Roebling Company: I think Roebling was outstanding in this respect, that the personalities in charge always had that ability to induce loyalty and great pride on the part of all the people who worked there. Around the turn of the century they built the steel plant and the town of Roebling. Now that generated a lot of family spirit which you still see today. Lots of people think of Roebling in a nostalgic and loving manner.

Advice to today's youth: Find something you like to do, that you can really lose yourself in, something that you want to do, that you get great satisfaction from accomplishing, and follow that. If it doesn't produce as much salary as some other guy who's working somewhere else, don't worry about that. The satisfactions, including monetary satisfaction, will come along with it if you love what you are doing. I visualize three kinds of people in this world: One is the game player, he loves the game of buying and selling. There is someone else who gets great satisfaction in seeing something created: the painter, the sculptor, the engineer, the architect. There is a third group of people who get satisfaction in seeing their work reflected in the benefit to other people, like the doctor, the teacher. If people who are naturally one of these try to work in another field, they just have a boring and unsatisfactory life. You have got to try find the thing that you really love to do.