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  • Lehigh University’s Fritz Laboratory and the Five-Million-Pound Universal Testing Machine
  • Stephen H. Cutcliffe (bio)

Lehigh University’s Fritz Engineering Laboratory marks its centennial in 2010. At the heart of the laboratory has been a series of machines for testing the tensile and compressive properties of materials. For slightly more than half of its hundred-year history, Fritz Lab has been the home of what at the time of its dedication in 1955 was the world’s largest universal testing machine, a photo of which appears here and on the cover of this issue of Technology and Culture. More about that machine in a moment, but first, something about the lab itself and the man for whom it is named. John Fritz (1822–1913) initially made his mark as superintendent of the Cambria Iron Company, where in the late 1850s he introduced the concept of the three high rolling mill, which greatly facilitated the manufacture of iron railroad rail. In 1860, Fritz was hired by the fledgling Bethlehem Iron Company as general superintendent and chief engineer. Expanding rapidly under Fritz’s leadership, Bethlehem Iron would subsequently evolve into the Bethlehem Steel Corporation. Five years after he went to work for Bethlehem Iron, Asa Packer of the Lehigh Valley Railroad established Lehigh University, with Fritz among the trustees—thereby helping to establish a longstanding working relationship between Lehigh and Bethlehem.

The 1907 failure of the Quebec Bridge made it clear that better facilities were needed for testing structural-building members, and very likely this [End Page 391] disaster was on Fritz’s mind two years later when he told the president of Lehigh, Henry Drinker, that “you need an up-to-date engineering laboratory and I intend to build one for you.” At age 87, Fritz supervised the design and construction of the new laboratory, which was subsequently named in his honor. The building was a quarter-size version of one of the shops Fritz had built for Bethlehem Iron. The equipment he specified included an 800,000-pound Riehle universal testing machine, capable of testing twenty-foot structures in both tension and compression. The new Fritz Lab and its testing equipment propelled Lehigh into a position of leadership in materials testing and structural research, especially in the area of reinforced concrete, then coming into vogue, but also with regard to various new alloys of steel. For example, Fritz Lab tested various elements for a number of Bethlehem Steel bridges, including the George Washington Bridge connecting New Jersey and New York City. Bethlehem Steel had also designed the cable anchorages for the Tacoma Narrows Bridge (the infamous Galloping Gertie). The anchorages had been tested at Lehigh prior to erection, but during the subsequent investigation into the bridge’s collapse, they were tested again on the Riehle machine. Much to the relief of Bethlehem Steel, it was determined that the unstable, narrow, and shallow deck structure had been at fault, not the anchorages.

Two other examples of testing done on the Riehle machine were the steel plates manufactured by the McClintic-Marshall Construction Company for the Gatun lock gates of the Panama Canal and the structural steel used in the Golden Gate Bridge. Both Howard McClintic and Charles Marshall had been Lehigh graduates, class of 1888, and their Pittsburgh firm was described variously as the nation’s largest, or second largest, independent steel fabricator until it was acquired by Bethlehem Steel in 1931. McClintic-Marshall, operating as the Fabricated Steel Construction Division of Bethlehem Steel, also did the actual construction of the Golden Gate Bridge, using steel manufactured in Bethlehem, tested at Lehigh, fabricated and sub-assembled in Pottstown and Steelton, Pennsylvania, and shipped by rail to Philadelphia and then by boat to California through the Panama Canal—all this suggesting the close ties between the university and its graduates, its testing laboratory, and the Bethlehem Steel Corporation. For a period of time, Fritz Lab was directed by Willis Slater, who had formerly worked for the National Bureau of Standards (NBS), and there was a close working relationship between the laboratory and NBS, especially with regard to promoting research. Slater introduced the graduate civil engineering curriculum to Lehigh, with the...

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