often noticed failures in the supporting columns directly under the
beams, where these columns are light in comparison with the beams.
Failure of slabs over the supports is common, and therefore the writer
always places extra rods over the supports near the top surface.

The width of the beams which Mr. Godfrey derives from his simple rule,
that is, the width equals the sum of the peripheries of the reinforcing
rods, is not upheld by theory or practice. In the first place, this
width would depend on the kind of rods used. If a beam is reinforced by
three 7/8-in. round bars, the width, according to his formula, would be
8.2 in. If the beam is reinforced by six 5/8-in. bars which have the
same sectional area as the three 7/8-in. bars, then the width should be
12 in., which is ridiculous and does not correspond with tests, which
would show rather a better behavior for the six bars than for the three
larger bars in a beam of the same width.

It is surprising to learn that there are engineers who still advocate
such a width of the stem of T-beams that the favorable influence of the
slab may be dispensed with, although there were many who did this 10 or
12 years ago.

It certainly can be laid down as an axiom that the man who uses
complicated formulas has never had much opportunity to design or build
in reinforced concrete, as the design alone might be more expensive than
the difference in cost between concrete and structural steel work.

The author attacks the application of the elastic theory to reinforced
concrete arches. He evidently has not made very many designs in which he
used the elastic theory, or he would have found that the abutments need
be only from three to four times thicker than the crown of the arch
(and, therefore, their moments of inertia from 27 to 64 times greater),
when the deformation of the abutments becomes negligible in the elastic
equations. Certainly, the elastic theory gives a better guess in regard
to the location of the line of pressure than any guess made without its
use. The elastic theory was fully proved for arches by the remarkable
tests, made in 1897 by the Austrian Society of Engineers and Architects,
on full-sized arches of 70-ft. span, and the observed deflections and
lateral deformations agreed exactly with the figured deformation.

Tests on full-sized arches also showed that the deformations caused by
temperature changes agree with the elastic theory, but are not as great
for th