Charles Brenner

Born in 1915 in Trenton, Charles studied engineering at Rutgers. He joined Roebling in 1946 and remained for 22 years

On designing and modifying machines: The 80 Ton Rope Machine was designed by John A. Roebling's son Charles in the early 1890's. It was built to furnish the cable for the San Francisco cable cars. They needed approximately 7 miles of rope in one length. It was an inch-and-a-half diameter rope, which amounted to 80 tons. That's how they got the name of the machine. The Roebling people designed practically all the machines back in those days. And they built their own machines. They designed them, then they acquired all the materials, and with their own machine shop they would fabricate the parts and assemble the machine.

I had two engineers plus a design draftsman working for me plus a secretary. With my supervision of these people we did all the design and maintenance of the equipment here. Major design and things like that, design of a whole machine would be done up in the central engineering office. But then we would take it from there and acquire all the material and equipment that was needed to produce a new machine. In this case, we had to purchase all the materials and equipment that were required in alteration of this machine in order to produce the five inch diameter rope.

On sports teams at Roebling:For many years they had a bowling league here. Now that was mostly the office people. There were probably 32 or 36 men's teams broken up into different divisions and then the women had a league of their own. They had 4 or 6 teams or something like that. They all bowled on Monday night down at Whitehorse. They had a bowling banquet at the end of the year and gave out trophies for various accomplishments.

They had a Roebling baseball team. They competed in the industrial league around here. Roebling, Hills, De Laval, etc. We had a regular athletic department in the Roebling Company to supervise all the activities. There would be a golf tournament in the springtime and anybody could play in that. There was a basketball team which Roebling sponsored.

On the company's relationship to the community: My experience at the Roebling company was a great experience in my life. I worked with some very fine people. The company was a community-oriented company. They supported community projects. When they started the Community Chest in Trenton, the Roebling company was very supportive of it. We were sent out to solicit other small businesses on company time. The company did a lot of the data processing to keep the records for the Community Chest. So as I said, it was a community-orinted company and it was a great pleasure for me to work with them.

On the uses of wire rope:Wire rope is used on a suspension bridge like the George Washington or the Brooklyn Bridge. You have wire rope that's used to lift elevators. I don't know if you remember steam shovels, but there was wire rope used on those. Wire rope was used in the oil fields to drill wells. Wire rope is used to moor ships. Super tankers would have a seven inch diameter wire rope which they use for mooring. They also used to use wire ropes on the controls on airplanes.