By Tom Whelan
INTRODUCTION
We are fortunate to live in an era when the name “Tom Paine” is well known to virtually every high school and college student in America, and to a great many more students throughout the English speaking world, and the empire of France, parlayed into a worldwide reading public. Paine was a confidant and advisor to George Washington, Napoleon, and Thomas Jefferson. As the author of well respected books and pamphlets, letters and moral essays, Paine offers generation after generation his fiery eloquence, hammering away at vital issues of the American War for Independence, and then for the issues surrounding France’s revolutionary and post-revolutionary governments. Paine’s biographers, from Thomas Clio Rickman, 1819,1 and Calvin Blanchard, 1885, to the latest biographical work, that is John Keane’s award winning A Political Life” of 1995,3 have captured the basic facts of Paine’s writing life, that is, that he was not wholly a geopolitical writer, not entirely a social philosopher, and not just a highly accomplished author of pamphlets, but that Paine should have been credited with innovations and ingenious applications of wrought iron and cantilevered bridging techniques that are worthy of respect, and professional accreditation by constructors, engineers and architects, from his day to ours.
TABULATING PAINE’S ARCHITECT-ENGINEER ACHIEVEMENTS
When surveying Paine’s many non-engineering writings, from among the titles that made him famous, such as Common Sense, The Crisis, his other pamphlets, Rights of Man – Parts 1 & 2, Age of Reason – Parts 1 & 2, and other writings, it is evident that his massive political and philosophical accomplishments have tended to submerge and thus overshadow his work in the world of technology.
It is unfortunate in the 21st Century that Paine’s technical writing skills have gone unrecognized. Intellectual stimulus was certainly in the air. From 1750. until 1772, L’Encylopedie edited by Denis Diderot with conspicuous help from Voltaire, brought a watershed of technology,
watershed of technology, intellectual property, manufacturing, crafts and trades into public view.
We can imagine with what delight Paine would view L’Encyclopedie, rich with engineering knowledge as well as the rational new wealth of philosophy from Voltaire. Here, in these pages, where the focus and emphasis will be on Paine’s scientific technical work –that is his architectural and engineering skill we will sort out and identify how Paine’s technical life was over-laid on the political. If a mental picture of this division of his mental capacity would be helpful, we can imagine the plans of an iron ship, each space compartmentalized and shut off from the others for Paine’s intellectual life, there are whole years where his intense bridging building and metallurgy innovations at the iron works seem to determine the direction of his life.
Yet in other sealed off compartments, we see more years where the turbulence and mayhem from the American Revolution simply seized the rudder of his life. And then – just when he was back on track with his bridge building and engineering, Paine was again pulled asunder and thrown headlong into that most dangerous compartment of his life, the French Revolution.
The Paine biographers cited above are generally well aware of his trip to France and England starting in 1787, Paine’s up and down popularity amidst the Revolutionary French, his imprisonment, with his freedom gained through Ben Franklin’s intervention, and at last a safe passage bound for America in 1794. What is not well spelled out and documented are the interim years of Paine’s European Voyage 1787 – 1794, and his later years in the French legislature. By early 1787, Paine had prepared himself exceptionally well for his European Voyage by making three scale model miniature bridges of his iron bridge, over the Schuylkill River, in Philadelphia, to both serve as demonstrations of what his actual bridges would look like. These models were also to file with English and French government agents whom we would today call Patent Officers, along with his applications to be granted copyrights and trade mark patents – where the models would be lawful requirements – to accompany the paperwork for official study and review. In England, the topic of bridges was hot – the stately Blackfriars Bridge had fallen into the Thames, along with two older and lesser bridges. Iron bridging technology was a welcome topic when Paine landed in England.
The first model bridge Paine exhibited was made in wood, that is mahogany of the finest quality, workmanship and lustre. This is the model left with the French where it was displayed with great admiration and interest at the Louvre for technical assessment, and for public display. The mahogany model was the one chosen to show to the French Academy of Science, where many of the eminent scientific intellectuals of French society had offices. Quoting Calvin Blanchard,
“This model received the unqualified approbation of the Academy, and it was afterwards adopted by the most scientific men of England.”
Thanks to Paine, the history of iron bridges can thus be dated to begin in England in 1787. He reserved the other two bridge models for later use, the one in cast iron being next placed with the English authorities for patents and trademarks in London, also in 1787. This model was another mandatory submittal for the patent application process, thus leaving its creator with only one model left, which was made of wrought-iron, connected with blocks of wood shaped and painted to emulate cast-iron blocks. He carried this model about for some time as a talking piece when queried by learned constructors and engineers. The mahogany bridge model at the Louvre was proposed for an arch bridge, with a 400 foot span. In England, Paine contracted for and had built the bridge after his cast iron model, made from five cast-iron arch ribs, each of 110 feet in length, on a site outside London. In 1789, he designed, fabricated and load-tested another bridge trial rib. By 1790, a complete wrought iron and cast iron bridge of Paine’s design of some 36 tons was assembled and on display on Paddington Green, for a period exceeding a year, but with Paine by then stranded in Revolutionary France and committed to a post in the French government, the financing and business management arrangements of his engineering projects went askew, and the wrought iron and iron segments of Paine’s bridge were sold for the benefit of creditors.
Nonetheless, Paine’s iron achievements at Paddington Green had become the prototype for other iron bridges, the best known of which is the well known Wear Bridge at Sunderland, England in 1796. Bridge architects and engineers are also beholden to Paine for cantilevered bridging techniques, which have been widespread since the 1800’s in England first, then all of Europe and the US. Today, there are several collections of wrought iron and iron bridges that have been named as historic structures after the Paine concepts, the most numerous in England, some in France and Spain, six have been itemized in the USA, and many in Russia by special selection by Czarina Catharina, the former German princess Katharina, called “The Great” for her technical choices and innovations and for her artistic patronages. Last, in the legacy and heritage of Paine’s bridge thinking, typifying cantilevered principles, there is the first iron bridge in America, constructed in 1839 – and still in service – the Dunlap Creek Bridge, Brownsville, Pennsylvania.7
WE DIGRESS PAINE’S ROOTS IN AMERICA & HIS EDUCATION
Paine’s bridge story does not simply go to England, then France, then return, a mere exodus back to America. Not unexpectedly, it would be back home in these new United States where Paine would reinvigorate and regain his engineering and planning momentum for iron bridges, but did culminate in his proposals to President Jefferson and the Continental Congress to install iron bridges, along with their accompanying canals and roads – a virtual road map for invigorating a new nation with a vigorous commercial transportation network. In his notes on his 1803 proposals to Congress, he mentions that he had requested without response the prompt return of his iron, and wrought iron models from England for illustrative demonstrations in America. It is generally believed that his mahogany bridge model still resides in the Louvre, in Paris.
It remains for Paine scholars, probably focused at the Pennsylvania universities, to pursue the whole of Paine’s writing from The Library of Congress, Office of Patent & Trade Mark, Smithsonian Technical and Scientific Museum, Thomas Jefferson Presidential Papers and archives, Ben Franklin papers and archives, British Engineering Society, and the records of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania bridge contracts and construction work centres. Likewise, French scholars of technology may want to sift Paine’s bridge technology work out from his political activities, and using official records, account for marks of Paine’s technical skill sets on the French nation, and its bridges, canals and road networks.
Other Paine-inspired projects were built in later years after his death in the United States. John Keane, Paine’s excellent biographer, credits Paine with bringing the engineering for cantilevered bridges to the new world. One such example was built at Bordentown, New Jersey in 1820, and served as a model for cantilevered techniques for a century. Paine has been praised for his foresight as “the father of all great structures that now serve human convenience everywhere.”
A lot of ink has been splashed about with special regard to Paine’s parents, upbringing, family trade, schooling, and expertise in youth without focusing these diverse factors into a harmonic blend of what made up Paine’s intellectual character, his work ethos, and his broad and deep knowledge of the arts and sciences. Mr. Rickman holds that Paine’s attendance at a respectable Latin School was the only formal education he received in England. This may be so, but better Latin schools of the day also had roots and channels to the study of algebra and geometry beyond simple mathematics; and with Latin comes the language masters like Virgil, historians like Seneca, political genius such as Julius Caesar – whose wooden and rope bridge across the Rhine River sparkles among Caesar’s achievements from The Gallic Wars; and then, numerous translations of Vitruvius’s technical text book, De Architectura, were in circulation. Budding mathematicians and bridge builders and architects would have certainly taken Vitruvius to heart in their youth and studied his works throughout life. To think Paine a man of limited intellect, stamina or drive would be to grossly underestimate him. As Blanchard tells us, “During his suspension [of 1764] from [his job as an excise officer] that he repaired to London, where he became a teacher in an academy kept by Mr. Noble of Goodman’s Fields; and during his leisure hours, he applied himself to the study of astronomy and natural philosophy. He availed himself of the advantages which the philosophical lectures of Martin and Ferguson afforded, and made the acquaintance of Dr. Bevis, an able astronomer of the Royal Society.”
The University of Philadelphia recognized Paine’s technical knowledge with the award of a Master’s Degree in 1787, and he was also admitted to Membership in the Philosophical Society that year, 1787, shortly before he embarked with his bridge models to France and England. By this time, thanks to his editing and writing, he was very popular among the public and quoting Blanchard, “[Paine] enjoyed the esteem and friendship of the most literary, scientific and patriotic men of the age.”
It is noteworthy that both British and French formal educational institutions made good and sufficient distinguished awards to him as to any learned professor, master, or doctor of arts & sciences in his era. That the British patent office granted him the British patents on his iron bridge by 1789 is a hallmark distinction before all of Britain’s industry and the law, recognising him the legitimate inventor and owner of the technologies described by Paine and modelled by him for the British patent office.
It would seem that Paine was one of those technocrats whose education never stopped, and that he absorbed a great deal of geopolitical and diplomatic knowledge from his writing and editing of the revolutionary materials for the American war for independence, then embellished his mind and pragmatic skills the upper mathematics and construction sciences, to rank amongst the most skilled engineers of his era, be it London, Paris or Philadelphia. It is ironic that Paine’s skill and determination in engineering, architecture, science and technology, iron mongering, smelting the well hammered bolts and rivets, hot & sweaty, from the grimy anvil was precisely what brought Paine to England and France, not his pamphlets and politics. Here is truly an original genius worthy of the rank and title of professional engineer.
PAINE’S LETTER TO GEORGE WASHINGTON OF MAY 1st, 1790
This letter is from London, to Paine’s Commander, Benefactor & Friend, further FROM LONDON A TRANSMITTAL LETTER TO PAINE’S COMMANDER, BENEFACTOR & FRIEND, further, promises the Key to The Bastille to Washington; and important bridge news. An unusual and brief letter of only five paragraphs and a footnote tell us today so much about the relationship between Washington and Paine, what made them compatriots, kindred spirits, and Amici, in revolutionary French terms, that we pause here to read with Washington these words of Paine:
“Sir: Our very good Friend, the Marquis de la Fayette has entrusted to my care the Key of the Bastille and a drawing handsomely framed, representing the demolition of that detestable prison as a present to your Excellency, of which his [Marquis de la Fayette] letter will particularly inform [you].” [This is the one and the same key had shut up from freedom, and sent to torture and death so many brave revolutionaries and persons of free thought in France for generations. This key, in and of itself is emblematic of the worst elements of kingship, aristocracy, faux aristocracy, and the engines of the police state which whip and flog, hang and guillotine, pull the teeth and nails of the plebiscite, and the fact that Paine has successfully argued for its disposition to be made not only in The New World, but in the American hands of General Washington this is no small miracle. The Louvre or other museums or national galleries in France, Britain would have been worthy repositories, then and now.] The letter continues:
“I feel myself happy in being the person thro’ whom the Marquis has conveyed this early trophy of the Spoils of Despotism and the first ripe fruits of American principles transported into Europe to his great Master and Patron. He [the Marquis] mentioned to me the present he intended [to] you [that] my heart leaped with Joy – It is something so truly in character that no remarks can illustrate it and is more happily expressive of his remembrance of his American friends than any letter can convey. That the principles of America opened the Bastille is not to be doubted, and therefore the key comes to the right place [that is, to General George Washington.] We are advised that ” Mr. West wishes Mr. Trumbull [the noted British painter) to make a painting of the presentation of the Key to you.”
Never bashful, having used the first four of the five paragraph epistle of this 1790 letter to describe the gift of the key to the Bastille to Gen. Washington, Paine proceeds in a personal tone, that is news promptly and bluntly delivered, as from one soldier or sailor to another. Paine’s news:
“I have manufactured a Bridge (a Single arch) of one hundred & ten feet Span, and five feet high from the Cord of the Arch It is now aboard a vessel coming from Yorkshire to London where it is to be erected. It is this only which keeps me [in] Europe…” Fate and the French Revolution would of course change Paine’s plans, yet here in this letter of May the first, 1790, the reader is favoured with the news of the Key to the Bastille, and a tidy progress report on the iron bridge. There were only two persons in Europe or America who had these facts, and one of them was George Washington [Eric Foner p374-5].
HIGHLIGHTS OF PAINE’S LENGTHY STAY IN FRANCE: The French Decade, 1792 – 1802
Paine’s departure from Europe had nothing to do with his scientific and technical pursuits, but on account of his politics, and the harshness of the era. To explain why Paine’s exodus was both hasty and necessary to safeguard his life, a brief sidelight to the French Revolution is needed.
Parts of Paine’s career are similar to another great pamphleteer, the Englishman, John Milton. It is known by historians of the French Revolution that it was much more violent and bloodier than either The Glorious Revolution in England, leaving Oliver Cromwell’s forces in power; next, then to the new world, the American War of Independence, leaving George Washington’s and Lafayette’s forces in power. The regicide of the British sovereign, King Charles I, traumatized the English people so thoroughly that in the English Restoration, a new king and his royal line were promptly brought back to the throne. It is fortunate for Mr. John Milton, the greatest pamphleteer in English before Paine, that Milton made his anti-royalist statements on the inherent mismanagement and often villainy of the aristocracy, and their courts, in his famous pamphlet, Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (1648), which boldly supported whatever means were needed to divest a state of its hereditary monarchs, hangers-on, tainted judges and lax royal administrators. Had Milton’s pamphlet appeared a few weeks before the axe man cleaved a royal head from its king, Mr. Milton might have found himself swinging from a handy tree branch, or being disembowelled and roasted alive, at public execution, with other Roundheads who despised the king and brought about his death? Luckily, Milton’s scathing criticism of the English throne came weeks after the regicide, leaving Milton as a commentator, not a perpetrator, nor an instigator. Like Milton, Paine had clean hands where the path of the guillotine lay across France.
However, our engineering and bridge building friend, Mr. Paine, found himself in a Miltonic milieu because in his pleas [and petitions] to spare the life of the king whom he insisted on identifying as Mr. Louis Capet. “And while conceding the odious waste, maladministration, misuse of office, etc., yet still in Paine’s view, the regent sovereign of France did not merit the death sentence. Here, due to his siding with humanitarian, less reactionary revolutionaries, Paine had made enemies in dangerous times and places.
Robespierre in that very same year, thought eradicating France’s enemies the best solution, and held that the king of France and vast numbers of his retinue should perish, and so many aristocrats and faux aristocrats alike went then at Robespierre’s order, to the executioners, often tossed headlong into a public square in Paris, there to die by that most French execution device, the guillotine.
Paine had earlier found himself jailed in Paris in 1793, but was then also was released, through the actions of powerful friends, led by Ben Franklin, and the American president. Now years later, 1799, even when firebrands such as Robespierre and Marat were dead, and different revolutionaries in power, Paine’s name was again put on the list of criminal undesirables. And he was again in great danger of the guillotine. Paine records in his own handwriting shows his wonderment of the events at the Luxembourg prison, Bruges, Belgium, for all of calendar 1799. It was at this prison which French authorities took 160 of 168 prisoners from their cells, and removed all but a few of these individuals to the guillotine in the space of only one night. Paine himself and seven others were spared, without explanation.
In fact, when finally Paine boarded a ship from the port of Le Harve in 1802, he was just days ahead of a French warrant would have terminated his liberty, and perhaps his life. Also British ships were seen prowling the water around Calais, and said to have British warrants for Paine’s arrest, and transport and imprisonment to England for allegations of treason.
What, indeed, had provoked the British authorities to pursue Paine across The English Channel? As early as December, 1797, in pamphlets and plans, he advocated a strategy and techniques for invading England. His proposal was sent in Memorandum form to Napoleon, with recommendations to build a French fleet of shallow-bottomed gunboats and flat bottom barges for transport of infantry and cavalry. He continued to advocate the invasion of England through 1798, using the auspices of M. Bonneville, his good friend, publishing in Paris in his friend’s “Bien Informe,” a press for pamphlets and newsletters. In 1798, he befriended the steamship innovator and naval architect Robert Fulton in Paris, while Paine himself was exploring the potentials for iron and steel and steam in ships – again mixing politics with technology.
By 1798, Paine had also advocated to the French government with copies memos to Napoleon that French forces should go the assistance of Irish uprisings, and advocated overthrow of English rule across the whole of Ireland. In 1799, through “Bien Informe” he advocated open seas and international commerce regulation for all nations. By 1800, his paper Parte Maritime had proposed international regulation and standard rules for excise, safety and administration amongst the nations. He had also filled out his proposal to Napoleon to link the regions of France through its rivers, and estuaries, with new connecting canals and iron bridges. Couple these with Paine’s offense/defense/invasion planning skills, and we have Paine, the military engineer. For his regional linking proposal to Napoleon, he produced as many as four of the iron bridges he envisioned, using models five feet in length. Apparently, even this work was not appreciated, since he was voted out of his elected office in French government by his enemies, and slander undercutting his loyalties were tallied up against him.
Had this architect-engineer not have exited France in such a speedy manner, the Tom Paine story might have ended in one of the mass graves dug outside of Paris for the decapitated bodies of enemies of the state.
BRIDGES FOR AMERICA-PAINE’s 1803 PROPOSAL TO CONGRESS AND PRESIDENT JEFFERSON
Returning to the American shores in 1803, it was some time before Paine devoted himself to technical matters again, but this time distinctive American in nature.
His massive 1803 proposal plan for America’s bridges, waterways, canals and their collective commercial and military consequences is his great gift to the new nation, presented in proposal form to the Congress and President Jefferson. Recalling that his study of French waterways and bridging, that concept would be a prototype for the American proposal. Paine embarked on scrutinizing innovations and improvements for US bridges and canals, based on existing data and maps. It must be remembered that cartography was often a rough hewn science, and that much of America was poorly mapped, even after Lewis & Clark made their extensive exploration of the new American territories added by The Louisiana Purchase. He did extensive model building in 1803 to support his proposals.
His techniques for the American proposal seem straightforward in his “The Construction of Iron Bridges, June 13, 1803,” which is quintessential Paine for documenting his American skills and achievements. While writing a nationwide schema for a great nation such as France may seem enough to exhaust many technical folk, Paine began a massive analysis of how best to safeguard, provide patrol boats/revenue cutters, bridges, canals and supporting civil constructions for the most newly acquired waters of America to follow The Louisiana Purchase. From 1803-1807, he did extensive model making and design work. In 1807, he wrote a series of articles articulating how to construct and manage a fleet of gunboats to defend American shores. The model gunboats made for this engineering mock-up were sent to the President in September, 1807. As with his bridge proposal, Mr. Paine used his modelling skills to carve models of armed river craft which the United States would patrol the gigantic new river basins along the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, their streams and estuaries, from the mouth of the Mississippi at New Orleans, to the northernmost rivers coming into America from Canada. He proposed the boats to be light, fast, able to hold troops, effective and economic. His model making skills for boats were well received at the US Patent & Trade Office; and delivered on President Jefferson’s desk were new boat models for the proposal. We are reminded here of Paine’s equally energetic plans for shallow draft gunboats for his proposals to Napoleon for an invasion of England.
Naturally, where so many well charted rivers that needed bridging, iron bridge technology would bring many advantages, such as prefabrication, transportation by section, ease of assembly by semi-skilled workers, and ease of manufacture at large ironmongers. As with his study of France and concepts for streamlining that nation’s waterways and estuaries with bridges, stream widening, river deepening, and canal building, there was in Paine’s vision, a genuinely speedy and cost effective means for the new republic to safeguard its waterways. He proposed his model patrol ship to be a small, fast and trim military vessel to collect taxes, and assure safety of the waters, monitor smuggling, and control pirates and privateers — a real problem in the Barataria swamp and bayou regions outside New Orleans.
Paine’s years in the British Excise office immediately jump to mind, that he was a skilful and knowledgeable taxation & duty officer for some years. Paine’s proposals to America, when fulfilled, would have assured that the many cities, towns, villages and settlements would get bountiful commercial river traffic and timely communication of information.
It seems likely that Paine’s credentials to design and model a prototype small warship for patrols of US waters came from his youth, when having gained a sense of quality materials and good workmanship in the family stay business, he embarked literally into the world of privateering. Aboard the British licensed privateer, named “Terrible,” where the ship’s commander listed himself as “Captain Death,” we can imagine Paine as a young apprentice, perhaps working under the tutelage of the ship’s sail maker, or the carpenter, for the maintenance of the ship. After a brief stay, Paine shipped on board “The King of Prussia,” another privateer of British licensure, where he was most likely in the Able Bodied Seaman (ABS) category, fit for many jobs of seamanship. At the pleadings of his father, Paine left the nautical life on privateers after another brief stay on “King of Prussia.” We must remember that his nautical days were all done by 1759. Serving aboard vessels devoted to privateering seems to have provided Paine with basic ship design ideas for his own models, that is, for fast revenue cutters and nimble patrol corvettes, as he wrote about them some four decades later in his proposals to the Americans.
The 1803 negotiations with the French for the turn-over of “Louisiana” whatever shape and size that would be, was still a mystery in 1802 – it was a complete surprise to American negotiators when French diplomats made the decision not to withhold or exempt any parishes or locations from one massive sweeping sale. Even today, the size of the lands absorbed into America by the Louisiana Purchase are huge, sweeping from the mouth of the Mississippi up to and across the border with Canada.
Paine’s engineering skills helped him assimilate proposals for the massive transportation problems that the Louisiana Purchase brought with it. It was fortunate America had one such engineer on hand. Paine wrote a very persuasive letter to Jefferson, urging him to buy the entirety of the Louisiana Territory from France, with the consent of the occupants. Initially, Jefferson was considering buying only New Orleans, and the Florida’s, and in other important correspondence, Paine itemized to Jefferson the constitutional ramifications of assimilating so great a purchase; his correspondence to the president was also fiercely opposed to the Federalist proposal to seize New Orleans by force, which today seems fool-hearty and an invitation to war where there had been only peace.
Having served in the French legislature as the representative of the great commercial, mercantile city of [le Port de] Calais in France, Paine had a keen eye for the pulse, ebb and flow of waterborne commerce. With an excellent knowledge of how the French government worked, its pitfalls and unusual characteristics. Moreover, he understood that Napoleon’s mandate that The French Law as specified by The Napoleonic Code would be permanent in the new US territories derived from France – which meant not converting the legal system over to the English Common Law, the familiar legal model of the Colonies. This meant that Louisiana would forever observe the Napoleonic Code. There is little doubt that Paine felt imminently well qualified to offer Jefferson and the young republic such advice due to his many years in France, working intimately with the French political administration and legislature councils of that nation which Blanchard calls then “the foremost nation in the world,” as he termed the new and imperial France. In his latter days, Paine was a good friend to France at the tables of American public opinion.
By the time Paine grew ill and died in 1809, the many decades of theological and political warfare had battered down Paine’s good name. Many in England thought him a rogue, and then there was his hot-tempered, abrasive public letter to George Washington which won him no friends, and other opinion- based epistles – these had cast a shadow over his reputation as an editor, writer, technical man and statesman. His technical skills and achievements in engineering and architecture were lost to all but a few study New Englanders whose stock and trade was in the construction and bridge industry, and some scholars of his written work at large.
Paine did himself no favours with his barbed epithets on religion, so that various religious revitalization movements brand him still as a heathen, atheist, or mean spirited agnostic – instead of one of the truest Age of Reason practitioners of Deism. When Thomas Edison publicly championed Paine’s reputation in the 1920s, and praised Paine’s whole canon of work, it is likely that engineers and architects at least in America, England and France, heaved a sigh of relief that Paine’s name was again a good one. Thomas Paine, American architect-engineer, innovator, inventor, political scientist, and man of letters had at long last gotten a laurel wreath he so long deserved.
A BOLD NEW TECHNICAL IMAGE FOR PAINE
Today a fresh image of Paine, Architect-Engineer, emerges from the technical side of the pantheon of American figures from the 18th Century. Paine deserves a more solemn
solemn and prominent place for his technical accomplishments than he now holds for his political and ethical works by themselves.
In Age of Reason neoclassic poses, we see grand and noble figures such as Washington, Voltaire and Franklin, carved by no less than the era’s master sculptor, Houdon. Indeed, we need to identify America’s 21st Century equal of Houdon, to be engaged for a brand new statuary of Paine.
Today, with fresh emphasis on Paine the engineer, planner, model maker of bridges and ships, iron smith and draughtsman, we owe Mr. Paine a fresh new statuary to celebrate his broad, wide achievements in the crafts and sciences. And perhaps one new statue alone would not do a triumvirate might be needed.
I suggest that three statues, that is, A Paine Triumvirate, should be created to show Century Paine in all his roles – writer, statesman, and architect-engineer. The first statue would be best set in the District of Columbia amidst the Federal Monuments, where Paine’s plain attire and a simple desk would show a pamphleteer and writer/editor at his work.
A second sculpture then, in Philadelphia, close to Franklin’s home and the Liberty Bell, would be illustrative. Here, Paine’s wardrobe of a London gentleman’s clothing would best show him at our Constitutional Convention, then on to his elected office, representing Calais in the French legislature. Lastly, proposed as the engineer/architect Paine-a 3rd and final sculpture, which would be best placed in Cambridge/Boston, sited somewhere near the MIT Campus. This statue would remind the bustling crowds of the world of commerce about ordinary things like bridges and common sense. The almost divine smile of reason, I believe, would of necessity grace Paine’s face, where in artisan’s clothes, sitting on the work bench of an engineer or iron worker, Paine would hold a book on his knee with his left hand, and in the right hand and forearm, he would proudly cradle a model of his iron bridge.
END NOTES
[1] Thomas Clio Rickman, Life of Thomas Paine, especially, Preface and Chapter 1. However, in Part 2 of Rickman, this biographer confirms Paine’s bridge and model ship making skills; that his bridges were inspired by spider webs; and that his first model for the Paris trip was made from mahogany.
[2] Complete Works of Thomas Paine, All Political and Theological Writings, preceded by A
13
Life of Paine, by Calvin Blanchard: Chicago, B.F. Ford, Clark & Co., 1885, pages 13-25, 26- 63.
[3] John Keane, A Political Life: Biography of Thomas Paine, esp. Forward and Chapter 1. [4]David J. Brown, Bridges: Three Thousand Years of Defying Gravity, London: Mitchell Beazley/Octopus Publishing Group, 1999, pages 48-50.
[5] Lithograph, printed by British Institute of Engineering, 1796 – Iron Bridge over the Wear River, Sunderland County at Durham, England.
[6] Paine, Collected Writings: Literary Classics, NY 1955, Distributed by Putnam Penguin, Notes and Editorial by Eric Foner. Of special notes pages 423-428, iron bridges; pages 842 – 853, other bridge information.
[7] Calvin Blanchard, Complete Works of Thomas Paine, pages 64-87.
SUPPLEMENTAL INFORMATION
Thomas Edison, The Philosophy of Thomas Paine. Web address
http://www.positive.atheism.org/hist/paine dsn/htm
L’Encyclopedie,’ Denis Diderot, Editor, Paris: The Complete Illustrations, 1762-1777, in facsimile edition by Harry N. Abrama, Inc., NY, 1978. Facsimile prepared by and edited by Arnoldo Mondadoir, Editore, Milano, Italia.
Biographical note on the author:
Tim Whalen holds the BA and MA degrees in English from the University of Tulsa and is ABD in the Ph.D programme; he has published books on technical and proposal writing ay Pilot Books, ARTECH, Horizon Books, IEEE Press and Management Concepts. He has contributed articles to several journals.