Everything about James B Eads totally explained
James Buchanan Eads (
May 23 1820 –
March 8 1887) was an
American structural engineer and
inventor.
Eads was born in
Lawrenceburg, Indiana, and named for his Mother's cousin, then
Congressman and subsequent
President of the United States James Buchanan. His early life was spent growing up in
St. Louis, Missouri.
Fortune
Eads made his initial fortune in
salvage, by creating
a
diving bell for retrieving goods from the bottom of rivers that were sunk there by
riverboat disasters, especially along the busy
Mississippi River. He also devised special boats for raising the remains of sunken ships from the river bed.
Civil War
In 1861, after the outbreak of the
American Civil War he was contracted to construct
ironclads for the
United States Navy, and impressed the Navy by producing 8 such ships within 100 days. He continued to produce ironclad steamships throughout the war, which greatly aided the Union.
Bridge
Eads designed and built the first road and rail bridge to cross the Mississippi River, the famous
Eads Bridge at
St. Louis, Missouri, constructed from 1867 through 1874. After destruction by a tornado in
1871, it was designed to be tornado proof and was famously struck again by a
tornado in
1896, this time surviving. Eads bridge was the first
bridge to use the
cantilever construction method. This allowed
steam boat traffic to continue using the river during construction. The bridge also was the first to be made of steel alloy.
The Mississippi in the 100-mile-plus stretch between the port of
New Orleans, Louisiana and the
Gulf of Mexico frequently suffered from silting up of its outlets, stranding ships or making parts of the river unnavigable for a period of time. Eads solved the problem with a wooden
jetty system that narrowed the main outlet of the river, causing the river to speed up and cut its channel deeper, allowing year-round navigation. Had a similar system been used throughout the entire Mississippi Valley, the
Great Mississippi Flood of
1927, the Great Flood of 1993 and
Hurricane Katrina Disaster in 2005 might have been reduced. However, top officials of the
Army Corps of Engineers lobbied Congress for levees and flood walls of their own design, which exacerbated these disasters, and against Eads' jetty system, which would have reduced these disasters.
He designed a gigantic railway system intended for construction at the
Isthmus of Tehuantepec, which would carry ocean going ships across the isthmus from the
Gulf of Mexico to the
Pacific Ocean; this attracted some interest but was never constructed.
In
1884 he became the first US citizen awarded the
Albert Medal of the Society of the Arts.
Eads died in
Nassau, Bahamas on
March 8 1887, aged 66.
Legacies
Port Eads,
Louisiana is named for him.
US Route 50 through Lawrenceburg, his hometown, is called Eads Parkway in his honor.
He has his own star on the
St. Louis Walk of Fame.
Further Information
Get more info on 'James B Eads'.
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