The Jarnac Bridge

In the late 18th century, to reduce the long and costly construction time of masonry bridges and do away with their arches, limited to 30 metres, engineers began designing metallic suspension bridges. Influenced by the bridges built first in the United States then in England, the Seguin brothers developed their own original technical solution. Instead of suspending the deck on chains, they used specially made iron cables and built their first bridge in 1825, over the Rhône at Tournon. A year later, Jacques Pierre Quénot, a classmate of the Seguin brothers, began building a suspension bridge over the Charente. When construction was halted by severe winter weather, the project’s foreman, Mr François, continued the construction … in miniature! This model, shown at the Exhibition of Products of French Industry in 1827, publicised the technique with which Quénot went on to construct some twenty bridges. Donated to the Conservatoire by the engineer’s heirs in 1863, it is the only three-dimensional representation of the bridge, which was destroyed in 1875.