science · 27 February 1794 · 230 years ago
death
Died 27 Feb 1794 at age 85 (born 8 Oct 1708).
Jean-Rodolphe Perronet was a French civil engineer who was renowned for his stone-arch bridges, especially the Pont de la Concorde, Paris. During construction of a bridge at Mantes in 1763, Perronet made the discovery that the horizontal thrust of a series of elliptical arches was passed along to the abutments at the ends of the bridge. Thus he was able to build extremely flat arches that were supported during construction by timbering (falsework) and mounted on very slender piers, which widened the waterway for navigation and reduced scour from the current.
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