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In 1893 the author published a small pamphlet, now out of print, which bore the above title. Its contents are reproduced here instead of in a second edition. The various steps taken in its preparation were as follows:
In 1891 the author presented to the American Society of Civil Engineers a paper entitled "Some Disputed Points in Railway-Bridge Designing," in which he advocated the adoption of a few standard train-loads for railroad bridges, instead of the almost innumerable ones then in use, offered a set of loads for discussion, and urged that the "Equivalent Uniform Load Method" of computing stresses be adopted instead of the burdensome method of wheel concentrations that had been in vogue for the preceding ten years. This paper received a very thorough discussion, from which it was evident that bridge engineers and railroad engineers, as a whole, would be glad to settle upon a few standard loadings, and to adopt some simple equivalent method of computing stresses. Most of those who desired the abandonment of the "Concentrated Wheel-load Method," advocated the adoption of the "Equivalent Uniform-Load Method," but a few favored either the "Single" or the "Double Concentration Method," with a constant car-load.
This paper, with the discussions, was published in the February and March 1892 number of the Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, and was reviewed very generally by the technical press, attention being paid principally to the subject of equivalent loads. These reviews started
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