Tung-Yen Lin

Born in Shanghai, Lin trained as an engineer. His passion was bridges, and to make them better he used prestressed concrete, which uses embedded high-tension steel cables to allow more economical and better-looking building techniques. During his career, he oversaw the constructions of thousands of bridges, including a thousand in China alone. His ideas spread when he turned to teaching: he was a professor at the University of California in Berkeley from 1946 to 1976 -- his alma mater (he got a graduate degree there in 1933). He also designed an elevated roadway into San Francisco International Airport. When President Ronald Reagan presented Lin the National Medal of Science in 1986, he shocked the President by presenting him with a design for an "Intercontinental Peace Bridge" across the Bering Strait, linking the U.S. with the USSR. "You spend money on bombs, and in 10 years they're out of date," he said later. "But you build bridges, they last forever." He died November 15 at home in El Cerrito, Calif. He was 91. From This is True for 16 November 2003 Suggestions for further reading: Adobe Photoshop CS5 Revealed by Elizabeth Eisner Reding Amazon Price: $62.95 Customer Review: Adobe Photoshop CS5 Revealed is the required textbook for a class I am currently enrolled in. The book is newly released and wasn't available at the college book store. This is where Amazon pre-order comes in handy. The good: Step by ...   Bridges: Amazing Structures to Design, Build & Test (Kaleidoscope Kids) by Carol A. Johmann, Elizabeth Rieth Amazon Price: $9.32 Customer Review: This book is great- Good explanations on the building and design of bridges. I am using it in a homeschool co-op for activities for our group of kids. I saw it when I want to purchase The Art of Construction: Projects and Principles for Beginning Eng...   Design of Highway Bridges: An LRFD Approach by Richard M. Barker, Jay A. Puckett Amazon Price: $98.93 Customer Review: It took almost 21 days to receive the order, i.e., a book. That is a SNAIL SERVICE. No satisfaction to the customer!   Adobe InDesign CS5 One-on-One by Deke McClelland, David Futato Amazon Price: $31.49   Golden Gate Bridge: History and Design of an Icon by Donald MacDonald, Ira Nadel Amazon Price: $11.53 Customer Review: It's quite cheeky of architect Donald MacDonald not to include a single photograph of the Golden Gate Bridge in his little 128-page book about what is considered one of the modern wonders of the world. Instead, he provides seventy of his own color il...   Newsfeed display by CaRP

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