Ferdinand Arnodin

Ferdinand Joseph Arnodin is a Engineer and industrial French born the October 9th 1845 with Holy-Foy-the-Lyon and deceased the April 24th 1924 with the Châteauneuf-on-Loire in the Loiret.

Suspended bridges and transporter bridges

Specialist in the cableway transporters, it is regarded as the inventor in the transporter bridges. One owes him 9 of them among the 18 known ones in the world. Three of them remain nowadays. They are initially transporters cableway, then with stay.

It built a great number of suspended bridges of the second generation (end XIXe - beginning XXe S.), and it also restored and consolidated quantity of old suspended bridges with cables of the first generation (before 1860): the aprons were reinforced and the old cables of wire replaced by steel wire ropes with double torsion, often with addition of stay (structural modification known under the name of " Arnodin" system;).

The industrialist

Its factory of manufacture and assembly of metal elements préconstruits was established with the Châteauneuf-on-Loire. Vestiges of this factory were still visible a few years ago, and the chimney was drawn up, with half ruined, between the Loire and railroad. The Museum of the marine of the Loire, to the Châteauneuf-on-Loire, presents memories of these workshops: old model of the Transporter bridge of Nantes, section of a steel wire rope manufactured by Arnodin, photographs.

List works of art

Transporter bridges

with cables

1893 Portugalete (Bilbao), “Bridge of Biscay”, conceived by Alberto de Palacio, built by Ferdinand Arnodin, of use. Registered voter in 2006 on the List of the world heritage of UNESCO.
1898 Rouen : destroyed in 1940
1898 Bizerte: dismounted and rebuilt in Brest in 1909
1900 Rochefort: historic building, of use limited to the pedestrians and two-wheeled vehicle

with stay and counterweight

1903 Nantes : dismounted in 1958, commemorative plaque and vestiges of piles and threadings.
1905 Marseilles : destroyed in 1944, silhouette inseparable from films of Marcel Pagnol.

with cables and stay

1906 Newport (Wales), restored, of use

end of the transporter bridges

1909 Brest: rebuilding of that dismounted in Bizerte; destroyed in 1944
1910 Bordeaux: unfinished, pillars dismounted in 1942. It would have been twice longer than the others, therefore twice slower. One thus includes/understands the abandonment of a technique become inadequate in this place.

Suspended bridges (fixed, nontransporter bridges) built or restored by Arnodin

These bridges are numerous, in all France and its old dependences. Arnodin signed its work on a cast iron plate: the list is open.

Bridge of Tonnay-Charente (Charente-Maritime);
Bridge of Parentignat, Puy-de-Dôme (1831), unused;
Bridge of Abyme ;
Suspended bridge of the River of the East , with the Meeting;
Sidi Footbridge Me Cid, Constantine, Algeria (1908), 168 m length, 175 m above the Rhummel;
Bridge of Chilhac, Haute-Loire (1883), on the To combine (river);
Bridge of Saint-Ilpize, Haute-Loire on the To combine (river)

Sources and references

Ferdinand Arnodin on ''' Structurae (Fr) '''
Ferdinand Arnodin and transporter bridges
Museum of the marine from the Loire, in the Châteauneuf-on-Loire

Random links: