NFR Project: 'Tacoma Narrows Bridge Collapse' (Nov. 7, 1940)

 

NFR Project: ‘Tacoma Narrows Bridge Collapse’

Shot by Barney Elliott and Herbie Monroe, owners, The Camera Shop, Tacoma; Arthur Leach

Filmed November 7, 1940

Various minutes

These films fascinate engineers, physicists, mathematicians – and weirdos like me. This may be the earliest footage placed in the National Film Registry because it looked COOL.

You’ve all seen it – the undulating, mis-engineered bridge, twisting and warping as a sole abandoned car jiggers frantically back and forth at its middle, until finally it oscillates itself out of existence, fracturing and crashing apart, the central span plummeting into the river.

Leon Moisseiff's design was, in a clinical example you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy, faulty.

The Tacoma Narrows Bridge was opened on July 1, 1940. It crossed the Puget Sound in Washington State, and was the third-longest suspension bridge in the world by main span when it was completed. On Nov. 7, in a high wind of 40 miles per hour, its deck began to oscillate radically and in ever-increasing arcs from side to side, prompting several to flee on foot for their lives. (A three-legged cocker spaniel named Tubby died when the bridge collapsed. You can see three different attempts to go back and get him out of the car in which he was trapped. Read Sara Kay’s story in Grit City Magazine here.)

The mathematics and the physics of the bridge’s self-canceling strategy has fascinated the brainy ever since. Me, I know nothing about it but I am enlightened by the insanely extensive and detailed analysis of what happened on Wikipedia, which you canconsult here. Evidently, the bridge was already known as “Galloping Gertie” by all before the accident happened. We couldn’t see it coming.

Well, one guy did. David B. Steinman, noted bridge engineer. Again in Wikipedia it states that “At the 1938 meeting of the structural division of the American Society of Civil Engineers, during the construction of the bridge, with its designer in the audience, Steinman predicted its failure.”

Elliott, Monroe, and Leach were simply prepared, in the right place at the right time. Their records of the bridge’s aberrant behavior remain a classic and graphic commentary on the best-laid plans of men.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: Tarantella.