JF Ptak Science Books  Quick Post

Jules Jaeger proposed this mammoth project for bridging the English Channel: a double-jetting/bridge structure with a 1000′-wide channel between the two. Claire Price wrote a story on the idea for the New York Times on December 6, 1925, and described the structure running straight as an arrow from Calais to an eventual terminus in London, and cost $400,000,000 (or between $4-10 billion in 2018 according to the BLS CPI computer). The two jetties would rise from the channel bottom and be wide enough to each hold a double set of railroad tracks and an upper roadway for cars and freight. Price states that the colossus would be able to handle all manner of traffic in the future, even though the motor causeway is two lanes wide, and that it would be safe during wartime as the jetties would protect against torpedoes for the inner canal, though there is no mention of aircraft or other sorts of attack. 

There’s a lot that I do not understand about the construction, not the least of which would be building a jetty 30′ wide and 150′ high/deep that was 30 miles long, times two. 

And by a stroke of serendipity, I located (stumbled upon) an illustration of Jaeger’s channel bridge in a 1936 issue of Popular Mechanics (page 500). And again poor Mr. Jaeger goes unidentified (as a “Swiss engineer”, only).  Eleven years later the channel bridge is still alive, in some way, and with a more detailed illustration:

And a detail cross section showing roadway and train tracks: