The desire for the construction of a bridge in this location dates back to 1889 with a
Northern Pacific Railway proposal for a trestle bridge; however, it was only in the late 1920s that interest in this project was revived. In 1937, the Washington State legislature created the Washington State Toll Bridge Authority and appropriated $5,000 to study the request by Tacoma and
Pierce County for a bridge over the Narrows. The bridge was designed by
Leon Moisseiff and cost $6.4 million. The first Tacoma Narrows Bridge opened to traffic on July 1, 1940. Its main span collapsed into the Tacoma Narrows four months later on November 7, 1940, at 11:00 a.m. (Pacific time) possibly as a result of
aeroelastic flutter caused by a wind. The bridge collapse had lasting effects on science and engineering. In many undergraduate physics texts, the event is presented as an example of elementary forced
resonance, with the wind providing an external periodic frequency that matched the natural structural frequency; It was the first suspension bridge to utilize these solid I-beams as a form of support for the road deck, as other bridges would incorporate trusses in their designs in order to catch the wind. Its failure also boosted research in the field of bridge aerodynamics and aeroelastic fields which have influenced the designs of all the world's great long-span bridges built since 1940. There were no human deaths in the collapse of the bridge. The only fatality was a
Cocker Spaniel named Tubby, who perished after he was abandoned in a car on the bridge by his owner, Leonard Coatsworth. Professor Frederick Burt Farquharson, an engineer from the University of Washington who had been involved in the design of the bridge, tried to rescue Tubby but was bitten by the terrified dog when he attempted to remove him. The collapse of the bridge was recorded on
Kodachrome 16 mm film by Barney Elliott and Harbine Monroe, owners of The Camera Shop in
Tacoma, and shows Farquharson leaving the bridge after trying to rescue Tubby and making observations in the middle of the bridge. The film was subsequently sold to
Paramount Studios, who then duplicated the footage for newsreels in black-and-white and distributed the film worldwide to movie theaters.
Castle Films also received distribution rights for
8 mm home video. Elliott and Monroe's original films of the construction and collapse of the bridge were shot on 16 mm
Kodachrome color film, but most copies in circulation are in black and white because
newsreels of the day copied the film onto 35 mm black-and-white
stock. There were also film speed discrepancies between Monroe and Elliot's footage, with Monroe filming his footage in 24 fps while Elliott had filmed his footage at 16 fps. As a result, most copies in circulation also show the bridge oscillating approximately 50% faster than real time, due to an assumption during conversion that the film was shot at 24 frames per second rather than the actual 16 fps. In 1998,
The Tacoma Narrows Bridge Collapse was selected for preservation in the
United States National Film Registry by the
Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". This footage is commonly shown to
engineering,
architecture, and
physics students as a means to teach about
engineering disaster. The dismantling of the towers and side spans — having survived the collapse of the main span, but being damaged beyond repair — began shortly after the collapse and continued into May 1943. The United States' participation in
World War II, as well as engineering and finance issues, delayed plans to replace the bridge. ==Westbound bridge (1950)==