THH 



ORGAN IZ _ . 

 KNOWLEDGE 



GDK 



Ee 



E, the fifth letter of the English alphabet and 

 the one oftener used than any other. The Phoeni- 

 cian letter, which in form corresponded to it, rep- 

 resented a window and was an aspirate, such as 

 expressed in the English h, but the Greeks made 

 use of it as a vowel. They also turned it around 



from left to right, almost like the English capital letter E, which has come down from it. 

 Like the letter a, it represents a number of sounds, the short sound being common in such 

 words as met, bless. The long sound is the natural sound of the letter, as in eve. It was 

 first in the fifteenth century that the final e in a word was not pronounced; it served and 

 still serves to give the preceding vowel a long sound, as in cane or mane. The frequent 

 use of the letter in English is largely due to its being the indefinite vowel into which the 

 a, o, u endings of the Anglo-Saxon period were weakened. See ORTHOGRAPHY. . 

 In music E is the third note in the nat- / K 



ural scale of C. In the G clef E is on /[/f t fi f T = ~ /KS-fi is * 

 the first line and fourth space. llv^n J v U " J_ 



EADS, eedz, JAMES BUCHANAN (1820-1887), 

 an American engineer who designed and con- 

 structed one of the finest bridges in the world, 

 the Eads Bridge, arched over the Mississippi 

 River at Saint Louis. He was born at Law- 



THE EADS BRIDGE 



renceburg, Ind., but at an early age went to 

 Saint Louis and became a clerk on a steamboat. 

 He invented a diving bell boat and an appa- 

 ratus for raising sunken boats. Becoming 

 famous as an authority on all matters relating 

 to the navigation of the Mississippi, he was 

 asked for advice by President Lincoln at the 

 time of the War of Secession; the fleet of gun- 

 boats built on his suggestion rendered valuable 

 service .to the government, and with them 

 Fort Henry was captured in 1862. 



Among other improvements promoted by 

 Eads along the Mississippi River, most notable 

 is the construction of jetties (see JETTY) at the 

 mouth of the Mississippi, permitting navigation 

 by the largest oceangoing vessels. He was the 

 first American to receive the Albert medal, con- 

 ferred by the British Society for the encourage- 

 ment of arts, manufactures and commerce. 



The Eads Bridge is a three-span, steel-arched 

 bridge connecting Saint Louis, Mo., and East 

 Saint Louis, 111. Four great piers standing on 

 bed rock far below the river bottom support 

 a bridge which accommodates two railways 

 and a broad highway for street-cars, teams and 

 pedestrians. This structure, erected without 

 interfering with the river traffic, cost $6,500,000, 

 about seven years' work and thirteen lives; but 

 the difficulties encountered and overcome in- 

 spired men to inventions, ideas and methods 

 of marked value to subsequent bridge engineer- 

 ing. It is not a free bridge, toll being required 

 of all who use it, in the sums of twenty-five 

 cents for persons on trains, ten cents for street- 

 car passengers, and five cents for foot passen- 

 gers. This great bridge was begun in 1867 and 

 completed in 1874. 



1896 



