Joseph Chaley

Joseph Chaley, also Challey written. (* 1795 in Ceyzérieu, Ain department, France, † April 15, 1861 in Tunis, Tunisia) was a French civil engineer and pioneer of the construction of suspension bridges.

Life

Joseph Chaley joined at the age of 17 years in Napoleon's honor guard and took part in the unsuccessful campaigns of 1813 and 1814. After Napoleon's return from Elba he followed him into the Battle of Waterloo and was injured. During his long hospitalization, he was initially interested in medicine, but soon turned to the newly created suspension bridges to.

As an employee of Marc Seguin, he was at the Pont de Beaucaire over the Rhone (1829 ) and the suspension bridge of Chazey -sur- Ain (1829 ) worked.

In 1830 he moved to Fribourg and presented its bid for the first Zaehringen bridge (Le Grand Pont Suspendu ) before, with which he succeeded against the Geneva General and engineer Guillaume -Henri Dufour, who had in 1823 the Passerelle de Saint -Antoine built. From 1832 to 1834 Joseph Chaley directed the construction of the bridge with the longest span in the world at that time. This was followed by the Pont du Gottéron / bridge over the Galternschlucht, the bridge of Corbières FR and the suspension bridge of Angers ( Pont de la Basse- Chaîne ). After the collapse of the bridge in 1850 with 226 deaths, the biggest bridge disaster, he withdrew from the bridge all the way back and turned to the construction of port facilities to. After working on the Bassin Joliette in Marseille in 1848, he worked in Tunis, where he died on 15 April 1861 of cholera.