Mathematical Bridge have been directly involved since he died in 1727, twenty-two years before the bridge was constructed. Mathematical Bridge The Mathematical Bridge is the popular name of a wooden footbridge in the southwest of central Cambridge, United Kingdom. It bridges the River Cam about one hundred feet northwest of Silver Street Bridge and connects two parts of Queens' College. Its official name is simply the Wooden Bridge. It is a Grade II listed building. The bridge was designed by William Etheridge, and built by James Essex in 1749. It has been rebuilt on two occasions, in 1866 and in 1905, but
Mathematical Bridge entirely of straight timbers built to an unusually sophisticated engineering design, hence the name. A replica of the bridge was built in 1923 near the Iffley Lock in Oxford. The original "mathematical bridge" was another bridge of the same design, also commissioned by James Essex, crossing the Cam between Trinity and Trinity Hall colleges, where Garret Hostel Bridge now stands. The arrangement of timbers is a series of tangents that describe the arc of the bridge, with radial members to tie the tangents together and triangulate the structure, making it rigid and self-supporting. This type of structure, technically tangent and