Credit: Courtesy of the Linderman Library, Lehigh University
In 1909, John Fritz, now eighty-seven, funded and designed a state-of-the-art engineering laboratory at Lehigh University that included equipment for testing steel, cement, and concrete. Fritz fitted the lab with a Riehle testing machine, capable of testing tension and compression at 800,000 lb. capacity, which measured the strength of the cable produced by Bethlehem Steel for contracts that included for the first Tacoma Narrows bridge.
