Transitions in Engineering: Guillaume Henri Dufour and the Early 19th Century Cable Suspension Bridges

Ci ...il engineering has but few admirers. Its works person groped and battled with unique problems, are regarded as feats of prowess and are either he rediscovers and in a certain sense accomplishes admired or abnarred. They are considered to be an -archeological"' survey of his subject for the apart from normal concerns and incomprehen- first time. A Dufour arises from these pages who sible. like works of architecture and city planning, is no longer the General according to Swiss they are absent from our general cultural aware- legend, but who is formed through the fluctuating ness. On the other hand, engineering does not processes of reflection and experimentation attrad popularizers (in the most lofty sense of the before our ...ery eyes, by the transformation of term) either, so perhaps the two observations are thought into adion. Dufour thus attains a surpris- in fact mutually explicatory. ing modemity and resembles those among us who And yet, from time to time someone appears who are not sotisfied by pat answers and who, instead can lead the layman through the maze of con- of avoiding the questions they encounter, use cepts and objeds, can explain them without them as a means to produce novel instruments.