engineering

John Alexander Brodie

John Alexander Brodie is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand John Alexander Brodie rather than just read about it. In short: John Alexander Brodie (1858 – 1934) was an English civil engineer. He was especially known for his contribution to town planning in Liverpool, notably as one of the engineers who led the design of the Mersey Tunnel under the River Mersey.

Key takeaways

John Alexander Brodie belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect John Alexander Brodie to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of John Alexander Brodie from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

John Alexander Brodie (1858 – 1934) was an English civil engineer. He was especially known for his contribution to town planning in Liverpool, notably as one of the engineers who led the design of the Mersey Tunnel under the River Mersey. He is also known for inventing the netting for football goals in 1889.

Early life John Alexander Brodie was born in Bridgnorth on 1 June 1858. His father, James Brodie, was a Scottish man from Kettins. Brodie served his apprenticeship in 1875, working in the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board engineering department under Chief Engineer George Fosbery Lyster. In 1879 he obtained a Whitworth Scholarship and a Canning Scholarship to study mathematics at Owen's College (now part of the University of Manchester). After graduation, he served a three-year traineeship in the office of Sir Joseph Whitworth.

Civil engineering career After a short spell working for the Liverpool City Engineer's Department, he set up a private consultancy and spent some time working in Bilbao, Spain. He returned to Britain in 1884.

Brodie was a keen sportsman and played rugby and golf. In 1889 he invented the goal net for use in football matches, and he said that this was the invention of which he was the most proud. Brodie returned to Liverpool in 1898 as the city engineer suggesting several improvements for the town such as the UK's first ring road, electric trams and the East Lancashire Road, the UK's first intercity highway.

He pioneered a new system of road layout, in which conventional road traffic would run along a dual carriageway with the central reservation being used for a segregated reserved track for trams. This layout formed the basis of Brodie's wide new boulevards such as Queens Drive and adjoining radial roads such as Menlove Avenue. This technique was later used in road building projects in Manchester, for Kingsway and Princess Road. Brodie was at the forefront of pre-fabricated housing technology, promoting the use of pre-cast reinforced concrete slabs as a means of building houses quickly and cheaply; he presented an example of this technique to the Cheap Cottages Exhibition at Letchworth Garden City. The design attracted attention from across the world and he is known to have influenced Grosvenor Atterbury who used a similar technique to build the houses at Forest Hills Gardens. Brodie was also interested in town planning and this was recognised in 1912 when he was asked to help select the site of and plan New Delhi. He visited India twice for this purpose and in 1931 was invited to the official opening ceremony by the viceroy owing to the high regard that Edwin Lutyens, the chief planner had for him. Brodie served as president of the Institution of Civil Engineers between 1920 and 1921, becoming the first local authority engineer to receive the accolade. He was also an associate professor of engineering at Liverpool University and vice-president of the Liverpool Self-Propelled Traffic Association which would later become a constituent of the Royal Automobile Club.

Brodie's greatest engineering achievement was the Mersey Tunnel. Brodie worked on this project jointly with engineer Sir Basil Mott and the tunnel was completed in 1934 following nine years in the making. Running from Liverpool city centre under the River Mersey to emerge in Birkenhead, the tunnel was originally conceived with a tramway for Liverpool Corporation Tramways which would run along a lower section beneath the roadway, but this plan was later abandoned. At the time of its construction it was the world's longest underwater road tunnel, a title it held for 24 years, and remains to this day the UK's largest municipal engineering project.

Personal life Brodie married Aimée Freeland, the daughter of Hugh Freeland from Uddingston, in 1897 in Glasgow. They had two sons and two daughters.

Death and legacy

On 16 November 1934, Brodie died at Aigburth Hall in Liverpool's Aigburth suburb at the age of 76. After Brodie's death, Liverpool City Council named Brodie Avenue in his honour. His former Liverpool home where he lived from 1858 to 1934, 28 Ullet Road near Sefton Park, is commemorated with an English Heritage blue plaque. There is also a Stonegate pub called The John Brodie on Allerton Road in the Mossley Hill suburb.

References

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with John Alexander Brodie

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what John Alexander Brodie claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to John Alexander Brodie before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about John Alexander Brodie ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of John Alexander Brodie

In research: John Alexander Brodie appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses John Alexander Brodie in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: John Alexander Brodie is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1858 births, 1934 deaths, Alumni of the Victoria University of Manchester, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for John Alexander Brodie outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study John Alexander Brodie in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what John Alexander Brodie means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain John Alexander Brodie out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is John Alexander Brodie in simple terms?

Why does John Alexander Brodie matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study John Alexander Brodie?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on John Alexander Brodie.