Fact Follows Fiction: Real Bridges Based on Euro Banknote Artwork | Hacker News Reader

Fact Follows Fiction: Real Bridges Based on Euro Banknote Artwork

99percentinvisible.org

74 pointsadamnemecek14 comments

This looks like an elaborate attempt to replicate the Königsberg bridge problem. Or at least, it should be, with its seven bridges to an island.

Perhaps Maths students will soon be studying the "Bridges of the Euro" problem, instead of the "Bridges of Königsberg" problem. That will solve two issues:

* the name Königsberg has not been used by most of the world for many decades. The city itself goes by the name Kaliningrad, although younger people often use the nickname "König" for the city. * the bridge count in now-Kaliningrad is not the same as in the famous puzzle.

(Yes, yes, I'm trying to show off that I went to Kaliningrad and checked out as many of the bridges as still existed.)

OK, here now an inside story(when I still was in school). One day, a close relative came home from work at ECB/EMI, a bit exhausted. This was the day they found out that the winning draft of the banknotes was indeed NOT FICTION but REAL buildings. This caused a little internal scandal, as I remember that a journalists discovered the real buildings in an art book. So the creator of the banknotes had to go back to draft and actually insert fictional buildings, modeled after typical styles of Europe. So at the very beginning of european banknotes, the subject of the OP post would have been the other way round.

This is interesting but the 5 euros note does not really represent a bridge but an Aqueduct (looking really like this one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pont_du_Gard). So you can't really walk on it like they show in their schematic proposal.

What distinguishes it as being an aqueduct rather than a bridge? (Visually, I mean.) Didn't the Romans construct them in very much the same way?

An aqueduct was a bridge for moving water instead of people.

Not only "was" but also "is".

Here's a list of canal aqueducts in the UK: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_canal_aqueducts_in_the...

The newest aqueduct I saw listed at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aqueduct_(bridge) is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathur_Aqueduct , which was built in 1966. It's meant for irrigation water .

If you note the sale of the humans on the diagram, it's clear they're schematics of the actual bridges he built, not the theoretical inspiration which would be much larger.

For some of the bridges, that's OK, but the miniature stayed suspension bridge looks kind of silly.

Engineer nitpick: it's actually a cable-stayed bridge! Suspension bridges have hanging main cables in an arc between the towers, then the bridge is supported by smaller vertical connectors between the main cables and roadway.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bridge-suspension.svg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bridge-fan-cable-stayed.s...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable-stayed_bridge

It's supposed to look like a cable-stayed bridge, but it's probably just a beam. The cables seem decorative only. Look at those huge supports underneath.

Here's the real thing in a small bridge, the Mary Avenue bike bridge over Interstate 280 in Cupertino.[1] This is a very good looking bridge, and went up fast - only three nights of road closures to assemble the deck.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Avenue_Bridge

You call it silly. I found it extremely funny, and a little thought provoking even.

> So you can't really walk on it

Drats, I'll have to call to get those walking tours on a nearby aqueduct shut down.

Thanks for the heads up.

Tom Scott also covered this last year: "The Fictional Bridges That Became Real" https://youtu.be/S9E1wsxOSzM [video]

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