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 bridge. Originally surviving a fall from the Golden Gate in 1988, Paul Aladdin Alarab died on March 19, 2003 when he jumped from the bridge in protest of the United States' invasion of Iraq. Alarab, whose father was born in Iraq, was a 44-year-old real estate agent from Kensington, California who climbed over a railing on the east side of the bridge, mid-span. Tying one end of a rope to the bridge and wrapping the other end of the rope around his arms, Alarab then demanded to talk to media. Law enforcement tried to talk him back over the railing