The Forth Bridge is a cantilever railway bridge over the Firth of Forth in the east of Scotland, to the east of the Forth Road Bridge, and 14 kilometres (9 mi) west of central Edinburgh.
The bridge was begun in 1883, took 7 years to complete, cost the lives of 98 men and nearly 58,000 tonnes (128,000,000 lb) of metal and used 10 times as much metal as the Eiffel Tower.
The use of a cantilever in bridge design was not a new idea, but the scale of Baker‘s undertaking was unprecedented. Much of the work done was without precedent, including calculations for incidence of erection stresses, provisions made for reducing future maintenance costs, calculations for wind pressures made evident by the Tay Bridge disaster and the effect of temperature stresses on the structure.
