Joseph Tomlinson (June 22, 1816 – May 10, 1905) was an English-American engineer and architect who built bridges and lighthouses in Canada and the United States.

[1][4] Tomlinson showed a strong interest in mechanical design as a child,[1] but his parents sought to give him a classical education.

[5] A lifelong self-learner who studied and read widely,[2] he learned the principles of iron and steel construction and engineering.

When Tomlinson received the commission to design the dig and completed tunnel, he worked on his plans for 72 hours without a break or sleep.

[10] The tunnel, which ran partly beneath Church Street in Whitehall, was 682 feet (208 m) long,[13] with walls of stone and arches of brick.

[14][c] Tomlinson took a job as a bridge engineer with the government of the British colony (now Canadian province) of New Brunswick in 1854.

[5] He moved to Cleveland, Ohio, later that year and began designing bridges for the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway (LS&MS).

[23] Tomlinson also won the contract to build all the marble-topped meat and vegetable stalls inside the market.

[5] From 1848 to 1849, he worked for Schuyler Bros.,[5] designing and overseeing some of the early construction on the Illinois Central Railroad during this time as well.

[31][32] His construction firm had built the CP&A main line from 1850 to 1852,[33] and Stone had purchased the patent rights to brother-in-law William Howe's truss bridge[34] in 1842.

[31][38] Stone then ordered the CP&A's chief engineer, Charles Collins, to make the desired changes to the bridge design.

[39] Because the angle blocks were not designed to accommodate the braces, Stone ordered workers to cut away portions of the I-beams to make them fit.

[50][p] At the ends of the bridge, where Stone used only a single diagonal, only half of the angle block received load.

Two locomotives hauling 11 passenger railcars of the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway plunged 150 feet (46 m) into the ice-clogged river below.

The wooden cars burst into flame when their kerosene-fed heating stoves and oil lamps overturned,[36] and rescue personnel made no attempt to extinguish the fire.

[54][53][r] Stone categorically denied that there were any design or construction flaws,[54] and blamed the collapse on the derailment of one of the two locomotives pulling the train.

Since the Province of Canada had no fisheries or marine departments, the new dominion government absorbed and amalgamated those from New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.

[63] Peter Mitchell, the former Premier of the Colony of New Brunswick, was named to the inaugural Senate of Canada and appointed Minister of Marine and Fisheries.

[64] Mitchell was well-acquainted with Tomlinson's work in New Brunswick, and asked him to join the new Department of Marine and Fisheries.

[66][t] Tomlinson initially faced the difficult job of integrating the policies and practices of more than a dozen local, provincial, and regional lighthouse boards into a common code.

[68] The number of lighthouses expanded so rapidly in the first five years of Tomlinson's work that in 1876 the Department of Marine and Fisheries established six regional agencies to take over responsibility for their operation and upkeep.

[65] During his time with the department, he created standardized designs for wooden bridges and trestles for those portions of the Canadian Pacific Railway being built by the federal government.

[76] In 1882,[76] the department sent Tomlinson to Newcastle upon Tyne in England[77] to supervise the manufacture and prefabrication of the metalwork[78] Cisco Bridge.

[77] Completed in 1884, this bridge has been called "one of the most imposing engineering works on the Canadian Pacific Railway's transcontinental main line" by rail historian Michael Batten.

[65][w] Tomlinson retired to a home at 217 North 13th Street in Cedar Rapids, Iowa,[82] leaving the Department of Railways.

In the months just before his death, Tomlinson began working out the design for an extremely long suspension bridge.

[87] When others were still erecting bridges primarily from experience and rules of thumb, Tomlinson calculated load limits and strain using advanced mathematics.

[88][x] The couple had three daughters: Ida (wife of George Venable Smith), Ione, and Maria (who died in childhood).

The couple had five children: Ann (wife of Robert Nicholas Slater), Joseph, Alfred, Fannie (who died at the age of five), and Frances.

[8] The Engineering Record called Tomlinson "a pioneer designer and builder of steel bridges in this country.