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{{Short description|Glenn B Woodruff was a design engineer for the San Francisco-Oakland Bay and Mackinac bridges.}} |
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Revision as of 15:14, 5 November 2023
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| This article, Glenn B. Woodruff, has recently been created via the Articles for creation process. Please check to see if the reviewer has accidentally left this template after accepting the draft and take appropriate action as necessary.
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Glenn Barton Woodruff was an American civil engineer who worked as a design engineer for the 1936 span San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. He worked as a professor at the University of California, Berkeley and for the engineering firm Woodruff and Sampson[1]. He was a noted and celebrated consulting engineer of the San Francisco Bay Area from the 1930s to 1950s.
Early Life
Glenn B. Woodruff was born on February 8, 1890 in Little Meadows, Pennsylvania. He married Florence Marion Casey on January 24, 1914[2]. His son Arthur Edward Woodruff was born in 1921 and served worked as a civilian for the US Navy on Guam and was captured by the Japanese afer their invasion on December 10, 1941. He spent time in Japanese camp in Kobe, Japan for the duration of the war. While imprisoned he met a Turkish woman, Nalia. at the end of the war the two married before he returned to the United States. Thier wedding cost a reported 10 pounds of sugar and 100 yen[3].
Engineering Career
Along with lead engineer Charles H. Purcell and C. E. Andrew, Woodruff published a series of thirteen articles detailing the construction and design of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge from March 1934 to April 1937.
In 1941, Woodruff sued the state of California for $19,000 of back wages for his work designing the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge[4].
In 1940, after the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in Tacoma, Washington, Woodruff was selected for the board of engineers responsible for investigating the disaster. The Federal Works Agency administrator John M. Carmody selected Othmar H. Amman, Theodore Von Kármán, and Glenn B Woodruff to publish a report explaining the collapse[5]. The report was submitted on March 28th, 1941. Woodruff and Ammann were brought on as consulting engineers due to their extensive work on designing long suspension spans. The Oakland Bay Bridge was, at the time it opened, the longest suspension bridge from anchor to anchor, and the 3rd longest main span ever built.
Woodruff was an early and vocal opponent of the Reber Plan to reclaim 20,000 acres (81 square kilometers) of the San Francisco Bay. Woodruff prepared a report in 1946 for the plan to be "dismissed from further consideration".[1]
Woodruff also served as a design engineer for the 1957 Mackinac Bridge designed by David B. Steinman. Steinman, who had designed a bridge across the Tacoma Narrows before the design made by Leon Moisseiff, was concerned about a collapse similar to the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. Woodruff was selected as a design engineer in part because of his involvement in the Federal Works Agency investigation. In the early 1940s a design for the Mackinac bridge was abandoned because of its similarity in design to the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. The Tacoma Narrows Bridge had a width-to-span ratio of 1 to 72, while the proposed Mackinac design had a width-to-span ratio of 1 to 92[6]. It wasn't until Steinman took into account what was learned at Tacoma that plans went ahead, and with Woodruff as a design engineer, the Mackinac Bridge was finally built starting in 1954.
In 1957, Woodruff won the James Laurie Prize for his paper "The Vibrations of Steel Stacks along with Walter L. Dickey. He accepted the award in New York on October 16th[7].
Glenn Woodruff died on September 4, 1973 at the age of 83[8] in Pasadena, California.
References
- ^ a b "Dismissal Suggested". Oakland Tribute. August 12, 1946. p. 1. Retrieved November 5, 2023.
{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ "New York, County Marriages, 1847-1848; 1908-1936", , FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:V6HJ-25H : Sat Oct 21 11:29:24 UTC 2023), Entry for Glenn B Woodruff and A E Woodruff, 24 Jan 1914.
- ^ "Three Bay Prisoners Wed Turkish Girls in Japan". Oakland Tribune. September 14, 1945. p. 20. Retrieved November 5, 2023.
{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ "Sues State For Pay". Wilmington Press. December 3, 1941. p. 1. Retrieved November 5, 2023.
{{cite news}}: Invalid|url-status=liveq(help) - ^ Amman, Othmar; Von Karman, Theodore; Woodruff, Glenn B. (March 28, 1941). "The Failure of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge". doi:10.1007/bf02866750. ISSN 0971-8044.
{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires|journal=(help) - ^ Thatcher, Charles (March 7, 1942). "Mackinac Straits Bridge Proposal May Be Scrapped, Cissel Predicts". The Michigan Daily. p. 6. Retrieved November 5, 2023.
{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ "Bay Commerce And Industry". Oakland Tribune. June 27 1957. p. 62. Retrieved November 5, 2023.
{{cite news}}: Check date values in:|date=(help)CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ "Glenn B. Woodruff (1890-1973) - Find a Grave..." www.findagrave.com. Retrieved 2023-11-05.