Mondo Knows Facts
The Brooklyn Bridge was built on compressed air
Workers dug the foundations inside pressurised caissons, and many were crippled by decompression sickness The caissons were inverted boxes sunk to the riverbed and filled with compressed air so men could excavate without water flooding in. Washington Roebling, who took over from his father, was badly affected and directed the work from his home with a telescope. The condition, then called caisson disease, was caused by nitrogen bubbles forming too quickly on leaving the pressurised space. It sits in Mondo's technology collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.
Where this comes from
Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.
Go further
More facts like this
โ โ to keep reading, or swipe
Tags: bridges, caissons, engineering
The Brooklyn Bridge was built on compressed air: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- Workers dug the foundations inside pressurised caissons, and many were crippled by decompression sickness. The figure is taken from Britannica, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a technology fact?
- Yes. It sits on the Technology shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
- What else can I read about it?
- The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.