Johann Wilhelm Schwedler

Johann Wilhelm Schwedler (23 June 1823, Berlin – 9 June 1894, Berlin) was a German civil engineer and civil servant who designed many bridges and public buildings and invented the Schwedler truss and the Schwedler cupola.

Schwedler was the son of a cabinetmaker who died when he was still in school; his brother, already a construction supervisor, made it possible for him to finish his education at the City Trade School in 1842. After a further required examination in Latin to complete the equivalent of a lower-level Gymnasium education, he spent the next ten years training as a surveyor, studying for examinations in that and in road construction, studying for a year at the Berlin Academy of Construction, and completing the examinations to be a certified building inspector and construction supervisor. One of his practical examinations was waived after he won the international competition to design a road and rail bridge across the Rhine between Cologne and Deutz. He was then required to leave on his Wanderjahre as a journeyman; he did so with his new wife, the daughter of a teacher and organist in Buckow, whom he had met through their shared love of music and become engaged to six years before.

Schwedler began publishing in engineering before he completed his training, beginning with Über die statischen Prinzipien der Konstruktion eiserner Dachgebinde über weite Räume und die Entwicklung der Konstruktionssysteme aus demselben (1846). His "Theorie der Brückenbalkensysteme", published in the first year of the Zeitschrift für Bauwesen (1851), had a revolutionary impact on the construction of steel bridges. But during his journeyman years he did not publish, concentrating instead on building. The City of Cologne employed him to build a stone bridge over the Sieg. He then supervised the first stage of construction of the railway between Cologne and Gießen. In 1848, Barmen, now part of Wuppertal, invited him to become its superintendent of construction, but he instead with some reluctance returned to Berlin to take a post in the Division of Construction of the Prussian Ministry of Trade.

...
Wikipedia