Narrator: Unlike Strauss, Ellis's ambition lay not in the glory of fame, but in the pure challenge of calculating every engineering detail.
John van der Zee: The bridge is like a gigantic math problem. And he had the mathematical skills to implement it. This was, in effect, 10 and a half volumes of pre-computer higher mathematics, done by one man, using a circular slide rule and a hand-cranked adding machine.
building the Golden Gate
By a Fault Line
California's ominous San Andreas Fault slashes from north to south through the Bay area, passing the Golden Gate a short distance out to sea. How would a bridge across the Golden Gate fare in an earthquake? Charles Ellis sounded a confident note in a 1929 lecture to the National Academy of Sciences:
"If I knew that there was to be an earthquake in San Francisco tomorrow and I couldn't get into an airplane and had to remain in the city, I think I should get a piece of clothesline about 1,000 or 2,000 feet long, and a hammock, and I would string it from the tops of two of the tallest redwoods I could find, get into the hammock and feel reasonably safe. If this bridge were built at that time, I would tie me to the center of it, and while watching the sun sink into China across the Pacific, I would feel content with the thought that in case of an earthquake, I had chosen the safest spot in which to be."
Joseph Strauss (Ohio) bridge "designer"
includes pictures of construction