Who finished the Brooklyn Bridge when its chief engineer was bedridden?

The Brooklyn Bridge was finished, in large part, by Emily Warren Roebling. Her father-in-law, John A. Roebling, designed it but died of tetanus in 1869 after a ferry crushed his foot. His son Washington became chief engineer, and was then paralysed by a strange new illness caught on the job. From his bedroom he followed the work through a telescope, while Emily relayed his instructions, learned the engineering herself and, for 11 years, did much of the chief engineer's work, including day-to-day supervision.

The illness came from the foundations. To build the towers, workers dug inside giant boxes called caissons, sunk into the riverbed and filled with compressed air to keep the water out. Coming back up to normal pressure made gas dissolved in their bodies bubble out, especially in the joints, bending people over in pain: the bends. The project's doctor called it caisson disease, and treated 110 cases in a few months of 1872.

In 1882, when Washington risked losing his job, Emily defended him before engineers and politicians. When the bridge was ready, she was the first to cross it by carriage, holding a rooster as a sign of victory. It opened on 24 May 1883 as the longest suspension bridge in the world. At the ceremony, a speaker called it an everlasting monument to the devotion of a woman.