The following may be interesting to engineer types. It's over 120 years old; I found it in the Louisville (OH) Herald newspaper for 2-18-1895.
EARLY SUSPENSION BRIDGES.
A primitive Form Was in Use Before the Alphabet Was Invented.
The towline is doubtless the earliest, as it is still the simplest application of a rope for the removal of material. Hitched to a floating log, the genesis of all water craft, canoe or sledge, it was used before history learned the art of writing, or mankind the art of reading.
The towline was combined with the suspension cable as a means of crossing streams in the mountains of Hindustan at a remote period. This suspension cable, says a writer in Cassier’s Magazine, often several hundred feet in length, was made of twisted fibers or slender stalks of climbing vines. This was solidly secured to large trees or masses of rocks on the banks of the chasms to be crossed.
On this cable a wooden block, grooved underneath, was placed, suspended from which was a small, rude platform, or, at times, a simple loop of rope, for the passenger or baggage. The wooden block with its attached load was pulled across the chasm in either direction by a towline attached to the block. This rude contrivance is the genesis of the most refined aerial ropeways of the present day, and of the suspension bridge also, which is, in a crude form, of very great antiquity.
When the Spaniards first visited Peru they found suspension bridges which could be traversed by men and burdened animals. Some of these bridges were over 200 feet span and were formed of half a dozen cables of twisted osiers, stretched from bank to bank, and passed over wooden supports. These cables were bound together by smaller ropes and were covered with a layer of bamboo, which formed a support for the roadway.
Early Suspension Bridges
Re: Early Suspension Bridges
Good Answers: