The bridge was the idea of Cecil Rhodes. It was part of his grand plan to build a railway from Cape Town to Cairo. He never visited the falls and died before the building of the bridge began. Rhodes told the engineers to "build the bridge across the Zambezi where the trains, as they pass, will catch the spray of the Falls". It was designed by George Anthony Hobson, of consultants Sir Douglas Fox and Partners, not as is often stated, Sir Ralph Freeman, the same engineer who designed the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Freeman, who also worked for Sir Douglas Fox and Partners, did the calculation of stresses for the bridge.