John Augustus Roebling (born Johann August Röbling; June 12, 1806 – July 22, 1869) was a German-born American civil engineer. He designed and built wire rope suspension bridges, in particular the Brooklyn Bridge, which has been designated as a National Historic Landmark and a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark.
Education
John Röbling was born to Friederike Dorothea Röbling (née Muelleren) and Christoph Polykarpus Röbling. Recognizing his intelligence at a young age, Roebling's mother arranged for him to be tutored in mathematics and science at Erfurt by Ephraim Salomon Unger. He went to Erfurt when he was 15. In 1824 he passed his Surveyor's examination and returned home for a year.
In 1824 he enrolled for two semesters at the Bauakademie in Berlin, where he studied architecture and engineering under Martin Friedrich Rabe (1765–1856), bridge construction and foundation construction under Johann Friedrich Dietlein (1782–1837), hydraulics under Johann Albert Eytelwein (1764–1848), and languages. Roebling also attended lectures of the philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Roebling developed an interest in natural philosophy. Many years later, he worked on a 1000-page treatise about his own concepts of the universe.
In 1825 Roebling got a government job in the Arnsberg province, and moved to Eslohe, where he worked for four years on designing and supervising construction of military roads. During this period he made sketches for suspension bridges over Ruhr- and Lenne-river, which were never built. In 1829 he returned to his home to work out his final thesis and prepare for his second engineer examination. For unknown reasons, he never took the examination.
Career
On May 22, 1831, Roebling left Prussia with a group of emigrants bound for the United States. They included his brother Carl and the older Johann Adolphus Etzler, who believed in a technological utopia. Engineers had difficulty advancing and achieving economic mobility in Prussian society, in part because of the Napoleonic Wars, which had lasted until 1815, and suppressed investment in infrastructure. During this period, Prussia also had considerable political unrest, as authoritarian governments took the places of democratic ones.
Etzler believed that they could create a technological utopia in the United States, but disputes arose among the men en route. The group split up after reaching Pennsylvania. John and Carl Roebling purchased 1,582 acres (640 hectares) of land on October 28, 1831, in Butler County, Pennsylvania with the intent to establish a German settlement, to be called Saxonburg. Most of the other settlers had remained with Etzler. In 20th-century recognition of his historic importance, the John Roebling House at Saxonburg was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976.
When the Roeblings and others arrived, the United States was in the later stages of an economic boom, but this ended in the financial Panic of 1837, reducing everyone's opportunities. Farmers were deeply affected by it as they often depended on credit to produce the next season's crops. But by the 1840s, the economy was improving and many Americans believed in the nation's manifest destiny to extend its borders and achieve greatness on the North American continent. Transportation between eastern industrial hubs and frontier farming markets had become a matter of both national and popular interest.
Many railway and transportation projects were under way near the site which Roebling chose for his colony, but instead of continuing in the engineering profession, he took up farming. After five years he married Johanna Herting, a tailor's daughter. He found agrarian work unsatisfying, and Saxonburg attracted few settlers.
In 1837, after the birth of his first child and the death of his brother Carl, Roebling returned to engineering for work. He first worked on projects to improve river navigation and build canals. For three years, he conducted surveys for the state of Pennsylvania for railway lines across the Allegheny Mountains, from the capital, Harrisburg, to Pittsburgh in the far west, at the start of the Ohio River.
In 1840 Roebling wrote to suspension bridge designer Charles Ellet, Jr., offering to help with the design of a bridge near Philadelphia: The study of suspension bridges formed for the last few years of my residence in Europe my favourite occupation ... Let but a single bridge of the kind be put up in Philadelphia, exhibiting all the beautiful forms of the system to full advantage, and it needs no prophecy to foretell the effect which the novel and useful features will produce upon the intelligent minds of the Americans.