Bridges as Technology
Bridges are a technology that allows traffic to move over an obstruction. The obstruction is most often water, but sometimes it is the valley the water has made over the centuries that is the obstruction.
Clapper bridges are simple slabs of rock across a ditch. The plank bridge shown here allows walkers and cyclists to get over Brownwich Outfall, where the stream is held back by a shingle bank. Here the water seeps through the shingle to get to the Solent: over recent decades this shingle bank has built higher.
This brick arch bridge is ironic, in that one technology replaces another. The bridge has its central pier in the middle of a disused canal. This canal was once wide and deep enough to allow sea-going ships continued access from the Solent to Titchfield, as the river Meon has gradually silted below Titchfield. This area is prone to flooding, particularly in the winter. This makes for lush grazing for cattle and quite unsuitable for building. The lower reaches are referred to as “Tichfield Haven” and are given over to a nature reserve.
Viaducts span more than just the water: this viaduct at Tufton has the River Test passing through one arch. That there is more than one arch can be just determined by the lightness behind the trees on the right. Such a construction needed vast quantities of bricks and labour: both were in plentiful supply during the Victorian era. Viaducts such as these, and deep cuttings, were needed for the railways, as the train engines were not yet powerful enough to handle steeper inclines.
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Tall stone arch bridges appear to be a simple technology: gravity says the middle of the arch should fall in, but it is “load compression” that keeps them in the air, as stone bridges need not use mortar. Some 4½ millennia ago, in India, this was an innovative technology. So Solutions Focus offers a simple and direct technology for overcoming communication problems in organisations.