The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge

by David McCullough

First a powerful iron clamp would be used to bring the strands into an exactly cylindrical shape. This was composed of two semicircles that placed together formed a ring the prescribed diameter of the cable. The clamp would be screwed up tightly to compress the strands and directly behind it would come the wrapping machine, an iron cylinder—about sixteen inches long and cast in halves that were bolted together about the cable—encircled by a reel of wire that wound off the drum through a hole in the rear end of the cylinder where it passed with one turn around a small roller attached to a disk and then to the cable. The reel had handles around it, like a ship’s wheel. Men riding on a “buggy,” a small platform hung to the cable by big trolley wheels, would turn these handles, thereby revolving the reel and winding the wire onto the cable as tight and close as thread on a spool. Once the wrapping machine reached the clamp, the clamp was moved forward and the machine then advanced again, and the process would be repeated until the entire cable was clamped and wrapped. After that the cables would be oiled and a coat of white paint would be applied.