Benjamin Baker: Forth Bridge; Author: Baker, Benjamin; Illustrator Whyte, Iain Boyd; Performer: Baxter, Colin; Hardback; Book

Author: Baker, Benjamin; Illustrator Whyte, Iain Boyd; Performer: Baxter, Colin
Series#:18; Opus; Hardback; Book; 39 Colour Photographs
64 pages
Published: October 1997
Edition Axel Menges GmbH
ISBN: 3930698188

When the Forth Bridge opened on 4 March 1890, it was the longest railway bridge in the world and the first large structure made of steel. Crossing the wide Firth of Forth east of Edinburgh in Scotland, it represents one of the greatest engineering triumphs of Victorian Britain. man's victory over the intractable topography of land and water. Not surprisingly, such a vigorous rebuff of the natural order was condemned at the time by those late Victorians who resisted the march of technology, and William Morris described the Bridge as the supremest specimen of all ugliness. In response, Benjamin Baker, the designer of the Bridge, insisted that its beauty lay in its functional elegance. Contrasting his masterpiece with the only comparable structure of the period, the Eiffel Tower,