After standing
there a year, it was taken down, and the materials used in building a
bridge over the river Wear at Sunderland, of two hundred and thirty-six
feet span, with a rise of thirty-four feet. This bridge is still in
use.[1]
[Footnote 1: Stephenson says, in rather bad English, (we quote from the
_Quarterly_),--"If we are to consider Paine as its author, his daring
in engineering certainly does full justice to the fervor of his
political career; for, successful as the result has undoubtedly proved,
want of experience and consequent ignorance of the risk could alone
have induced so bold an experiment; and we are rather led to wonder at
than to admire a structure which, as regards its proportions and the
small quantity of material employed in its construction, will probably
remain unrivalled,"--thus resembling the spider's web, which furnished;
the original suggestion. In 1801, when Paine had exhausted his theory
of human rights in France, he offered his plan to Chaptal, the Minister
of the Interior, who proposed to build an iron bridge over the Seine.
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