#15209, Ernest Leslie RANSOME

  Ernest had a brother John Wilmer Ransome.

Ernest, following an apprenticeship at his father’s factory in Ipswich, moved to America to take up the post of Superintendent of the Pacific Stone Company in San Francisco. There, again after much research and experimentation, he patented a system of ferro-concrete in which the iron bars were twisted to improve the bond. Two underpass bridges built to his specification in San Francisco in 1886 remain in use to this day and are among the three or four oldest in the world. Despite scepticism his revolutionary techniques were vindicated in 1902 when his Pacific Coast Borax Refinery building in Bayonne, New Jersey suffered a catastrophic fire but survived where steel and iron framed structures would not. The 15-story Ingalls Building in Cincinnati constructed using the system patented by Ernest Ransome in 1884 was the world’s first skyscraper and was designated a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark in 1973.