Background

John Alexander Low Waddell was born in Port Hope, Ontario, Canada, the oldest of nine children (six girls and three boys) of Robert Needham and Angeline Esther (Jones) Waddell. His father, a native of Newry, Ireland, had come to Canada in 1829; his mother was the daughter of a New Yorker. In 1865, when his father became high sheriff of the United Counties of Northumberland and Durham, the family moved to Cobourg, Ontario.

Education

In poor health during his early teens, Waddell received much of his education from private tutors. After attending Trinity College School in Port Hope and, for five months, a business college in Toronto, he entered the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N. Y. , from which he graduated with the degree of civil engineer in 1875.

He received honorary degrees from McGill University, the universities of Missouri and Nebraska, the Imperial University of Japan, and the University of Puerto Rico.

Career

Waddell gained his first engineering experience in Canada as a government draftsman and in connection with the location and construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway. In 1878 he returned to Rensselaer to spend two years on its faculty. Because of his frail health his family had sent him to China and back aboard a clipper ship the year before he entered college, and the interest in the Orient which this trip had aroused led him to accept the position of professor of civil engineering at the Imperial University of Tokyo, 1882-86. Meanwhile he had already established contact with what was to be his specialty, bridge engineering, as chief engineer (1881 - 82) of a bridge-building firm in Council Bluffs, Iowa. On his return from Japan he opened an office in Kansas City, Mo. , as bridge designer and consultant. For the next half-century Waddell followed an active career that made him one of the best-known bridge engineers in the United States. Until 1899 and again from 1920 to 1927 he practised alone; for the rest of the time he worked in partnership, his principal partners being Ira G. Hedrick, John Lyle Harrington, and Shortridge Hardesty. He moved his office to New York City about 1920. Among the many bridges he designed or supervised were: the Red Rock cantilever bridge for the Atlantic and Pacific Railway across the Colorado River between Arizona and California; a double-track railway bridge across the Missouri River at East Omaha, Nebr. , with two 520-foot swingspans (1893); the Grand Island highway bridges across the Niagara River near Buffalo, N. Y. ; the Mississippi Highway Bridge, a 3, 720-foot cantilever at Cairo, Ill. , across the Mississippi; and the Anthony Wayne High Level Bridge at Toledo, Ohio, a suspension span across the Maumee River. Waddell was also one of the consulting engineers on several major bridges in the New York City area, among them the Outerbridge Crossing and the Goethals Bridge, connecting Staten Island with New Jersey (1928), and the Marine Parkway Bridge across Rockaway Inlet, with a 540-foot lift span. He had earlier served as consulting engineer on the building of an elevated railroad system in Chicago, his investigations doing much to set the subsequent standards for this type of construction. In his bridge work Waddell was noted for his boldness in innovation combined with a careful attention to detail. He also took a prominent part in the development of materials suitable for large-span bridges and pioneered in the use of nickel steel in heavily stressed girders. His most important contribution, however, was as the originator of the modern vertical-lift bridge. This is a type that has been widely used, especially for railroad crossings over waterways where a movable bridge is required to provide at intervals the necessary clearance for navigation. Although European developments anticipated his, Waddell independently invented and successfully introduced the large-scale high-clearance vertical-lift bridge, the first of his many structures of this type being the South Halsted Street Bridge in Chicago (1893). Waddell wrote extensively on engineering matters, particularly on bridge design. A thorough and indefatigable researcher, he published a great many technical papers and a number of books, the earliest being The Designing of Ordinary Iron Highway Bridges (1884). He had a special interest in the economics of design, in the most effective and efficient use of materials and labor, an interest that is reflected particularly in his Economics of Bridgework (1921), a supplement to his earlier Bridge Engineering. His handbook De Pontibus (1898) was also well known. In addition, two collections of his lectures and papers were published, The Principal Professional Papers of Dr. J. A. L. Waddell (1905) and Memoirs and Addresses of Two Decades (1928). The latter contains a number of papers on the training of engineers and the improvement of the engineer's professional status, subjects to which he gave much thought. Besides his work in the United States, Waddell designed bridges in Canada and Mexico, in Russia, and in China, Japan, and New Zealand. His overseas work brought him a variety of foreign decorations; his penchant for displaying such honors often amused his fellow engineers.

His boyhood journey to China had left him with a robust constitution which withstood the rigors of field work and enabled him to live to the age of eighty-four. He died in New York City a few months after suffering a stroke. His ashes were buried in Fairview Cemetery in Council Bluffs.

Achievements

• Waddell’s work set standards for elevated railroad systems and helped develop materials suitable for large span bridges. His most important contribution was the development of the steam-powered high-lift bridge. His design was first used in 1893 for Chicago's South Halsted Street Lift-Bridge over the Chicago River; he went on to design more than 100 other movable bridges, and the company he founded continues to make movable bridges of various types. Waddell was a widely respected writer on bridge design, and an advocate of quality training of engineers. Many of Waddell's surviving bridges are now considered historic landmarks. One of his most notable works is the ASB Bridge in Kansas City Missouri. It is only one of two of this design ever built, and is in use as a railroad bridge for the BNSF. In his own profession he received the Clausen Gold Medal of the American Association of Engineers (1931) and was three times awarded the Norman Medal of the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Engineering Contracts: A Lecture Delivered in the Spring of 1905 to Students of Engineering (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from Engineering Contracts: A Lecture Delivered i...)

  • The Compromise Standard System of Live Loads for Railway Bridges: And the Equivalents for Same

    (This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)

  • The Designing of Ordinary Iron Highway Bridges

    (This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)

  • De Pontibus: A Pocket-Book for Bridge Engineers

    (This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)

  • Specifications for steel bridges

    (This book was digitized and reprinted from the collection...)

  • Engineering economics (Vol-1)

    (This book was digitized and reprinted from the collection...)

  • American Versus English Methods Of Bridge Designing (1886)

    (This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)

  • Addresses to Engineering Students

    (This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)

  • Specifications and Contracts: A Series of Lectures Delivered by J.A.L. Waddell ... Including Examples for Practice in Specifications Writing, Togeth

    (This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)

  • De Pontibus: A Pocket-Book for Bridge Engineers

    (This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)

  • The Principal Professional Papers of Dr. J. A. L. Waddell, Civil Engineer (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from The Principal Professional Papers of Dr. J. ...)

Views

Quotations: "One does not know a foreign language unless on is able to think in that language; one does not know mathematics unless one is able to think mathematically. "

"Mathematics is to an engineer what anatomy is to a surgeon, what chemistry is to an apothecary, what the drill is to an army officer. "

"Mathematics higher than the calculus is of small value to the engineer, except possibly as a training for the mind. .. "

Connections

On July 13, 1882, Waddell married Ada Everett of Council Bluffs, by whom he had three children: Needham Everett, Leonard, and Ethel.

Father:

Robert Waddell

Mother:

Angeline E. Jones

Spouse:

Needham Everett

Spouse:

Ethel

Spouse:

Leonard

Spouse:

Ada Everett