Published Thursday, May 10, 2007, by the San Francisco Chronicle

Golden Gate Bridge engineer finally gets recognition

By Carl Nolte
Chronicle Staff Writer

The Golden Gate Bridge District issued a formal report today on
70 years of stewardship of the famous bridge -- and decided to give
major credit for construction of the landmark to an engineer it had
ignored for years.

The engineer was Charles A. Ellis, a University of Illinois
professor. Ellis did much of technical and theoretical work that
built the bridge, but until Wednesday got none of the credit.

Chief engineer Joseph Strauss got credit for being the visionary who
built the bridge, considered to be one of the foremost construction
feats of the 20th century.

But though Ellis did much of the design work, the thousands of
mathematical calculations involved, and developed the specifications
and contract forms, he was fired by Strauss before construction began
and his name was not even mentioned in any of the dedication plaques
on the bridge.

As recently as 1994, the bridge district denied credit to Ellis,
which it said, was one of Strauss's consultants or assistants. Today,
the district changed its mind.

In a new volume called "Report of the Chief Engineer Volume II" the
district said Ellis "has never been officially recognized ... for
his leadership efforts in the design of the bridge. However, the
record clearly demonstrates that he deserves significant credit
for the suspension bridge design which we see and cherish today."

The volume, by engineers Frank Stahl and Daniel Mohn and district
Public Affairs Director Mary Currie, describes the life and times
of the bridge in the 70 years after it was opened to the public on
May 27, 1937.

According to the book the bridge has had four major modifications --
some of its deck bracing was strengthened following a wind storm in
1951, the suspender ropes, which run from the bridge cables to the
deck and hold the bridge up were replaced, a new and much lighter
bridge deck was installed and major traffic improvements made,
including one-way toll collection.

The Golden Gate also had several crises, including a celebration of
its 50th anniversary in 1987 that drew so many people -- more than
800,000 by some estimates -- that the was a visible deflection of two
of the main spans, including the 4,200-foot- long main span between
the towers and the span between the south tower and the San
Francisco.

It turned out that this celebration produced "the heaviest load that
the bridge had experienced to date."

"While this load did not exceed the load capacity of the bridge, and
deflection under load is perfectly normal for any suspension bridge,
it was somewhat alarming for those who observed it," the report says.

Other alarming moments on the bridge came on the three occasions when
it was closed because of strong winds. In 1951, again in 1982 and
1983, strong gusts caused the bridge deck to move. In the 1982 storm,
a truck blew over on the bridge and wind gusts reached 70 miles and
hour.

The next winter, an even stronger storm blew in with gusts reached
77.2 mph. The bridge itself was not damaged in the two later storms,
though there was damage in 1951.

A more hidden problem surfaced in 1969 when inspection showed serious
corrosion in the suspender ropes and some of the rivets.

It turned out that the original design of the suspender ropes, which
hold up the deck, had allowed water to collect at the point where
the rope cables meet the deck, causing the metal to corrode. There
are 250 pairs of these ropes on the Golden Gate; all of them were
replaced from 1972 to 1976.

Some of the report concerns projects that were never built. In the
1960s, there was considerable public interest in building a lower
deck on the bridge, either for rapid transit trains or cars. Several
studies, lasting up until the 1990s, looked into the possibility,
but no such deck was ever designed.

E-mail Carl Nolte at cnolte@sfchronicle.com

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