Golden Gate Bridge wanted it to be painted with black and yellow stripes to ensure visibility by passing ships. Senior engineer Charles Alton Ellis, collaborating remotely with Moisseiff, was the principal engineer of the project. Moisseiff produced the basic structural design, introducing his "deflection theory" by which a thin, flexible roadway would flex in the wind, greatly reducing stress by transmitting forces via suspension cables to the bridge towers. Although the Golden Gate Bridge design has proved sound, a later Moisseiff design, the original Tacoma Narrows Bridge, collapsed in a strong windstorm soon after it was completed, because of an unexpected aeroelastic flutter.
Suicides at the Golden Gate Bridge his co-workers he was leaving briefly to get coffee. Rather than doing so, he drove to the north side of the Golden Gate Bridge, parked, and jumped. Four days later, Gallagher's 24-year-old son, Charles S. Gallagher Jr., drove the same sedan owned by his father to the same area and jumped from approximately the same location. A pre-med student at UCLA, Gallagher, Jr. left a note that said, "I am sorry. . . . I want to keep dad company." Twenty-eight-year-old Marc Salinger, oldest son of former Kennedy Administration press secretary Pierre Salinger, jumped to his death from the bridge