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Tacoma Narrows Bridge Collapse (Galloping Gertie)

submitted by Stingray

1 decade 5 years 10 months 2 weeks ago

Original historic video reel of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. There is no sound with this video.

The collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge was recorded on film by Barney Elliott, owner of a local camera shop, and shows Leonard Coatsworth leaving the bridge after exiting his car. Elliot's original films of the construction and collapse of the bridge were shot on 16mm Kodachrome film, but most copies in circulation are in black and white because newsreels of the day copied the film onto 35mm black and white stock.

Galloping Gertie is the nickname given to the original Tacoma Narrows Bridge, which opened on July 1, 1940 and dramatically collapsed into Puget Sound on November 7 of the same year. The suspension bridge spanned the Tacoma Narrows strait between Tacoma and the Kitsap Peninsula.

The bridge's collapse had a lasting effect on science and engineering. In many physics textbooks the event is presented as an example of elementary forced resonance with the wind providing an external periodic frequency that matched the natural structural frequency (even though its real cause of failure was aeroelastic flutter). Its failure also boosted research in the field of bridge aerodynamics/aeroelastics, the study of which has influenced the designs of all the world's great long-span bridges built since 1940.

Information taken from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galloping_Gertie