President: 1959–1960
With the passing of David Bernard Steinman, not this Society alone but the whole world has lost a friend and co-worker. His extraordinary capacity for work and concentration, his creative genius, and his warm interest in his fellowman—these three qualities combined in him to make for greatness. Once, several years ago, he told me that nothing he had ever done had been wasted. Perhaps here is a key to the wholeness of this unusual personality. David Steinman’s career is an American “success” story, perhaps of a kind that is now impossible to achieve. In these days of the “organization engineer,” of automation and standardization, the development of an unorthodox personality, of the “individual engineer,” is an anachronism. David was born in Brooklyn, of Lithuanian parents; his father supported half a dozen children in a three-room, cold-water apartment on the ten dollars a week he earned as a factory worker. David passed his childhood in the shadows of Brooklyn Bridge, which served as his inspiration and created the desire in him to become a civil engineer. At ten he taught himself algebra; at fourteen he was attending evening high school and spending his days scrambling around the steelwork of the Williamsburg Bridge, then under construction. He also attended Cooper Union. From City College of New York Steinman received a B.S. in 1906. He was graduated summa. cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, receiving many other honors and three scholarships which enabled him to continue his studies at Columbia. There he received the C.E. degree in 1909; the A.M. in 1909; and the Ph. D. in 1911. His thesis for the Civil Engineering degree was the “Design of the Henry Hudson Bridge as a Steel Arch a design Steinman actually built in 1935–37.” This is but one of the examples of the continuity of his life, of the fact that no idea or deed was ever abortive. Also, his doctoral dissertation, “Suspension Bridges and Cantilevers: Their Economic Proportions and Limiting Spans,” was published and two editions sold out. As a result of his own experience in acquiring an education and working his way up, Steinman and his family, in 1955, established the Steinman Foundation for the purpose of making contributions and grants to educational institutions and other worthy causes. The principal objective is to make gifts to engineering schools for establishing scholarships, awards, and loans to aid deserving students to complete their engineering studies or to pursue full-time graduate work in engineering. With his strong sense of service to man, Steinman had planned, all along, to teach; and so he became Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Idaho from 1910 to 1914, and Professor of Civil and Mechanical Engineering at City College from 1917 to 1920. In the meantime he found time to marry a schoolteacher, Irene Hoffman, who was his lifelong companion and inspiration. She bore him three children: John Francis, Alberta, and David. At this time Steinman was special assistant to Gustav Lindenthal on the design and construction of Hell Gate Arch Bridge and other notable bridges. In 1920 Steinman secured an appointment with the New York Central Railroad for designing, strengthening, and reconstructing bridges. Then, in the following year came a depression, and Steinman, laid off, walked the streets for three months searching for work. An older engineer suggested that Steinman go into private practice, and offered him desk room for ten dollars a month. His first fee was five dollars; the second month he made two hundred dollars. This was the beginning of Steinman’s practice. The firm of Robinson and Steinman was formed in 1924. Holton D. Robinson, an eminent bridge designer who had been the builder of the Williamsburg and Manhattan Bridges, called upon Steinman to collaborate in the design of the Florianapolis Bridge in Brazil. Their design won in an International Competition, and the engineers were awarded the contract. The building of this bridge marked a turning point in the science of suspension bridge technology. Its new form of stiffening truss makes the structure four times more rigid than is the conventional parallel-chord design and utilizes only two-thirds as much steel. The result was a substantial saving in cost of construction and a material increase in strength and safety. The partnership of Robinson and Steinman endured until the death of Robinson in 1945. Then Steinman carried the firm on, alone, until last year. Now the firm’s name is Steinman, Boynton, Gronquist and London. The firm has built over four hundred bridges, nine of which have received artistic bridge awards. These awards meant much to Steinman, for he waged a campaign for beauty in bridges. In his travels, lectures, and writings he stressed not only beauty of form and proportion through fitness of design to function; he also pioneered in the use of color and artistic illumination. Notable structures of his design include the Mount Hope Bridge, Rhode Island; the Waldo-Hancock Bridge, Maine; the Charter Oak Bridge, Connecticut; the Henry Hudson Bridge, New York; the Raritan River Bridge, New Jersey; Thousand Islands International Bridge, New York; The St. John’s Bridge, Oregon; the Carquinez Strait Bridge, California; the Mackinac Straits Bridge, Michigan. The importance of Dr. Steinman’s contribution to the science of bridge-building is inestimable. A recognized authority on long-span bridges, on the design of suspension bridges, on aerodynamic instability, he made many notable improvements and inventions. He simplified methods of analysis for bridge design and for indeterminate structures; he invented a new system of design loading for railroad bridges and new short-cut methods for solving higher-degree equations. Author of twelve books and 580 technical papers and articles, many of which have been translated into foreign languages, he received during his lifetime over 350 awards and citations—67 of which are from foreign countries, including the French Legion of Honor. He held 26 academic degrees, including four earned and 22 honorary ones. Twice he was awarded the Norman Medal of the American Society of Civil Engineers, the second time for his outstanding paper on the problem of bridge aerodynamics. The late Dr. Boris A. Bakhmeteff of Columbia University hailed this work as “ the crowning accomplishment of a lifetime of endeavor.” Late in life, David Steinman began to write poetry. It is significant that he first made a thorough study of English prosody and sought the criticism of authorities. Many of his poems have been published; some have been set to music; and two collected editions have appeared. Steinman even composed music, at one time in his life. As a humanitarian, much of his work remains unheralded. Besides the establishment of the Steinman Foundation, David Steinman was active in Boy Scout work, in the National Bible Week Movement, in the Madison House Settlement. Because a fresh-air camp had meant so much to him in his boyhood, he was a generous contributor for over forty years to scores of these camps and to organizations for the aid of crippled children and of the blind. In addition, he constantly encouraged young engineers and devoted time and energy to societies for the advancement of the engineer’s status. A fine sense of “ noblesse oblige “ drove him to help his fellowman in any way he could. So he united and interwove all his capabilities, talents, and energies— to make the “ complete man,” a modern-day Renaissance man, in whom were integrated the scientist, artist, lecturer, educator, poet, and humanist. The feeling of oneness in the human experience was everpresent in David Steinman, and it is this idea which I think he was expressing when he said that nothing he had ever done or thought had been lost. In his address “The Spiritual Challenge of the Atomic Age,” he speaks of himself: St. Thomas Aquinas once said that there are only three really important endeavors in life; to have faith in the right things, to hope for the right things, to love the right things in life. Our faith, hope, and love for the good, the true, and the beautiful find their expression in science, religion, and art. These are the three main pillars of civilization. For man’s highest fulfillment, we must revere all three. Religion, art, and science, representing the everlasting search for the good, the true, and the beautiful, constitute a trinity of human aspiration. All three are but different aspects of the same reality, of the same feeling for the sublime, rooted in the supreme mystery of being. It has been pointed out that there is a common and unifying element—what we identify instinctively as the divine spark—in a Raphael Madonna, a Beethoven symphony, a discovery by Copernicus, Newton, an Einstein. In each instance, inspiration was drawn from some common reservoir of spiritual vitality. . . . The experience of sudden inner illumination beyond mere intelligence, the inner light known to mystics, martyrs, and poets, is not unknown to creative scientists and inventors.
Sara Ruth Watson
Originally published as Watson, Sara Ruth. “An Appreciation of David Bernard Steinman (1886–1960).” Technology and Culture 2, no. 1 (1961): 23–27. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/895573.
Post, Robert C. “The Bridge at Mackinac Straits: Another Fiftieth Anniversary.” Technology and Culture49, no. 3 (2008): 752–63. https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/tech.0.0073.