Strauss bashing

I finally got up the courage to view the programs about Strauss that put him in ill light. Actually, the first one, an A&E video from 1994 entitled The Golden Gate Bridge was not too hard on him. He was not known to be easy to work with, given to fits of temper and insisting on having the limelight. But the tone was OK. (CAS has this video, TG25 .S225G65 1995.)

The more recent PBS video from the American Experience series is entitled Golden Gate Bridge. This was recently ordered at my request for the Langsam collection (TG25.S225G66 2004). This is the video that dramatizes the conflict between Strauss and Ellis. It gets in plenty of digs about Strauss, the cantankerous Chief Engineer "who lacked an engineering degree." They also dubbed him as feisty, conceited, runty, and insecure. His bridges heretofore were dubbed ordinary, mundane, functional, patterned bridges, with little credit given his designs. His Aeroscope, designed for the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, was written off as not a feat of engineering. To their credit, they recognized Strauss for the visionary he was, as well as a promoter and champion of the GGB. And he was recognized as a commanding ego who saw in others special talents which he empowered.

They placed some emphasis on his adding C.E. after his name, representing a "graduate certificate of engineering, a degree he never received. " They also told how he watched the construction of the Covington Bridge (I think they mean the Cincinnati-Covington Bridge) when he was laid up in college from a football injury. Note the bridge was completed in 1867 and Strauss was born in 1870. What construction was he watching ca 1890? Hard to believe this is the work of PBS....

It gets my dander up.