I'm Peter Bergen, Vice President of Global Studies and Fellows at New America. Our panel consists of Candace Rondo, who is Director of the Future Frontlines Program at New America, former Washington Post Bureau Chief in Kabul, covering extremism in Afghanistan, Pakistan, work for International Crisis Group. In Afghanistan, the US Institute of Peace is also a professor of practice at Arizona State University where she is working with Sean Walker, who is also a professor at Arizona State University, focusing on information. Shannon Hiller, who is a Princeton, also a member of this research consortium. She is co-director of the Bridging Devise Initiative at Princeton University, and finally, Jared Holt, who is also a member of this research consortium. He's a resident fellow at the Atlanta Council's Digital Forensics Research Lab, and he's a former investigative reporter who covered right-wing extremists and terrorists. So Candace, can I kind of turn it over to you to give us an overview of kind of what the project and the consortium, what questions it's trying to answer and where you are collectively in the work. Yeah, thank you, Peter. So a lot of the folks on this webinar today and several more from different organizations who are researchers, practitioners, people with connections to policymakers, began discussing informally what we were seeing in various data streams, both online and offline, leading up to the events of January 6. Several of us on the day, on January 6, immediately began responding when there was a call put out for volunteers to begin collecting social media data from the storming of the Capitol on the day. And since then, we have sort of been discussing and exchanging information and views on how to proceed with this very complex research into exactly what happened on January 6, but also what happened leading up to that. And so we'll hear from Shannon and Jared and Sean a little bit more about that. But where we are right now, especially with our research, is we've begun looking at influencers, influencers and micro-influencers who are really key to stoking a lot of the anxiety and the political grievances that we saw expressed leading up to January 6, including folks like Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Mike Flynn and others. And a lot of what we're seeing is not too surprising. Social media played a really big role. And so that's a big part of the research that we're doing. And I'll let the others also talk a little bit about what they're doing. Well, and we should note that Nancy Pelosi just announced the select committee to look into what happened on January 6. And I also see that Rudy Giuliani's law licenses just been suspended in New York for false claims he made about the 2020 election. Turning it over to Sean Walker, who's a professor at Arizona State. Sean, how do you plug into this work? I'll share my works primarily around looking at some of the social media data and also trying to join some of this online and offline data. One of the big challenges that we're finding is that a lot of the social media platforms are the mainstream platforms like Facebook and Twitter are trying to moderate some of this content by some of these actors. So that means every time we gather this data, we kind of get different data. And some of those pieces are ephemeral, so they're kind of disappearing. And we're also seeing a lot more activity on what we call more fringe platforms like Parler and Gab and Telegram and such. And that data is even harder to access, but that only pays part of the picture. We have this sort of public-facing picture that's happening online in mainstream and in friend social media. But then we also have these pictures that we're trying to gather of all this offline activity and all this behind the scenes activity and email and WhatsApp and text messages and those things. So combining those pictures together to try to see how information flows between the platforms. And within the platforms is something that we're trying to do, but is actually a pretty difficult task and is something that's kind of hard to access. And also we note that a lot of these movements like QAnon and such are using these different signals that we normally see in marketing and such. Content that's going viral is less interest to these groups. We are more interested in very specific signals that are lower volume and different kinds of signs and other things that are more difficult to pick up. And a lot of the tools aren't designed to do that yet. Great. Shannon, how do you plug into this? Sure. Well, you know, Bridging Devides was really set up to focus on tracking and mitigating broader political violence, especially ahead of the last election. And with a focus on how do you get that data and information to communities to do something about it before things escalate. In tracking those trends, just as Candace said, there were a lot of us who were talking ahead of Election Day itself heading into inauguration. The fact that trends around demonstrations relating to COVID, anti-COVID restriction demonstrations, the backlash to the huge surge in Black Lives Matter and social justice demonstrations through the summer, and then heading into around the election demonstrations there. So we did a report, for example, looking at all the demonstrations between November 4th and January 20th. And only 3% had some type of explicit contention, but the vast majority of those were stop the steal. And those demonstrations, though, were in 50 states. So part of what we think a lot about is communities have been dealing with these dynamics for a long time, whether it's COVID, stop the steal, or armed intimidation of social justice demonstrators. And so where I think of a glimmer of hope, and I know we're going to talk a little bit more about, is a lot of the folks here have been collaborating to think about how do we get this information into the hands of folks who are looking for answers for how to address this, not just around January 6th, but all the things that led up to and we're seeing after it. Great. Thank you. And Jared, how does your, how do you fit into all this? Yeah, so at the DFR lab, we were doing some work with Georgetown's Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, because as Shannon noted, we saw a spring and a summer that was painted by this uptick in extremist public showings. So you had militias going to racial justice protests. There were some conflicts and there were some concerns that through armed intimidation or other beings that there would be efforts to intimidate voters at polling places. So I was working with ICAP and trying to keep an eye on different extremist movements in, especially in key areas where there was already some contention and incidents recorded to try to monitor that. And then that monitoring continued after the election as results were coming in and as we didn't have an election night where a winner was clear and these narratives started to bubble up. So nowadays I'm really interested when we're talking about January 6th that looking at sort of the nexus between the more formalized groups that have large bank accounts of funding and access to influence and sort of where the overlap is with organized extremist groups because these groups often have very different visions, very different goals, but for the time being they had set aside their differences and worked together towards this common project. And I think there are still a lot of questions that remain to be answered about the nature of the communication between those different flavors of the day, if you will. Well, let me ask each one of you kind of what are your top line conclusions? The question we're trying to answer in this panel is what happened on January 6th? And I guess we all know what happened but it kind of was this all a long time coming? What extent was this planned? What extent was this kind of spontaneous? To what extent were any of you surprised by this and we'll start with Candice and we'll just kind of do around Robin. Yeah, it's a really good question. I think we've been talking a lot amongst a lot of the researchers who have been looking at the events of January 6th and also just election violence more generally and the unrest in the United States over the last year or so, year and a half. There are a lot of known knowns to use the Rumsfeldian frame. We know that a lot of people participated in the event. We know that a lot of them came from all over the country and they many of them had participated in other events in state capitals as Shannon mentioned. There are some known unknowns. We don't really know to what degree there was coordination between groups like the Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys, and other, the 3%ers that have become so prominent in terms of the number of arrested folks and charged folks in connection with the investigation into January 6th and we don't really fully understand the role of these big influencers as I mentioned, but they clearly played some important part even though some of them weren't physically present on the day and quite a few of them, including Mike Flynn and a couple of others, it seemed like their accounts, their social media accounts went dark on the day which is a little bit unusual if you would think that on that day of all days they would be more active. And so some of the things we are looking into are sort of, you know, what happened there? Were there other conversations going on on encrypted channels or lesser known channels? So those are some of the known unknowns and then there are the unknown unknowns which is essentially where is this movement heading, you know, to what degree will the investigations both in the courtroom and then also this select committee that Nancy Pelosi has just announced, where will that take the movement next? To what degree will it serve to create a common narrative about what happened and what it means? Or, you know, end up dividing the country even further and creating I think more of a tailwind for some of these extremist groups? Sean? Well, I would be I'm surprised and not surprised. I mean, there's lots of signals that something was happening, the fact that it turned into such a punctuated event I think is maybe the shocking part to see that. But I wouldn't argue that this is part of a long arc and this event is kind of a punctuated event within that longer arc because we can see in the movement this is a bit of a marriage between some interesting folks besides the influencers, but we also see in kind of the underlying movement, you know, anti-vaxxers, you know, COVID, QAnon, militias coming together in ways that, you know, we may not have seen in the past. And we continue to see that relationship kind of form and closer, right? And we have white supremacy and other things are joined into this. So, right now, you know, we're still kind of pulling apart, right? You know, even though often the media says that there like floods of data about this, the data about before and after the event is much difficult to get access to. There is a big effort to collect event, you know, that data in real time, how reliable some of that data is, right?  But I think this is a long arc that hasn't finished and that, you know, there's still planning for other events ahead. They've moved to new platforms, right? We have this kind of idea of the new parlor versus the old parlor that was de-platformed that, you know, old parlor, well, kind of disappeared, right? New parlor is still very active. And we see some of the same players that we saw pre-January 6th and the pre-de-platform remover parlor are really big players right now. And they're continuing to stir up, you know, we also see connections to the Arizona audit and other states that are doing the audit. So, I think the arc has just begun, sadly. And monitoring that arc, I think, is something that's, you know, researchers and policymakers have to work really hard on because getting access to this is so difficult. Sean? Sure. Well, you know, as Jared already mentioned, one of the things that we've thought a lot about is the nexus between what gets a lot of headlines, the organized groups, and should be investigated. But, and the fact that there were a lot of individuals and people, the majority of people, I believe, like, facing charges so far were not affiliated with specific armed groups or organizations, and that may develop. But one of the things we looked into recently is looking back over the past year, as you heard already, we had, you know, COVID demonstrations, social justice demonstrations, the election, all these dynamics leading in. And one of the things we saw was the ways in which the behavior at those demonstrations carried through into January 6 and are carried through after, you know, we were about to release a short brief that focuses on those unaffiliated actors and well over 90% of them were in direct opposition to Black Lives Matter demonstrations. And that was, there's layers of why that was bring, why people were coming out for that. You know, one is the longstanding tradition of, of opposing racial justice advances in this country through behavior like that. But the other is that supercharged dynamics that we've talked about. And then on top of that misinformation driving real fear of things like antifa buses coming to suburban neighborhoods that we didn't see materialized, but did bring people out onto the street and carried over into January 6 and now. So, you know, I, I, I shared Sean's flag and, and concern about the fact that if we don't find a way to, to, to create a closer shared narrative coming out of January 6, what actually happened, then we'll just see more of these, these dynamics actually on the ground around things like, you know, the, the reviews and things in different states of the vote. And jar. Um, you know, kind of echo, echoing what Sean said, I was not surprised that January 6 was a ugly day. But I am surprised how far it went and how, you know, how specifically ugly than it was.  So, oh, you know, and that being said to kind of echo what, you know, others have already touched on, like Shannon was saying, there were organized groups that were taken seriously that, you know, ritualize and, you know, plan to conduct events, violent events or to unleash violence, but sort of a larger reckoning is that arc that we were talking about, which is that, you know, January 6 was kind of the byproduct of a larger movement that began really earnestly climbing last spring and landed on the steps of the Capitol. And that arc is still ongoing, you know, there are still millions of Americans in this country that look at January 6 and don't think anything bad happened or think it was justified, you know, there's ongoing attempts by commentators and even some elected officials to try to revise the history of that day, which, you know, I think all of that kind of underscores that the importance to, you know, get good data and be able to really, you know, fill in all the details and tell the full story of what happened on January 6 before and after because, you know, it sounds silly, but the G.I. Joe slogan, no intact the battle, right? So if you were advising Nancy Pelosi, I mean, what were just anybody can jump in? What were the top two questions that you'd like answered, you know, other than the obvious ones like what was the kind of sequence of events with the National Guard and the Pentagon and all those sorts of things, but leaving aside those sorts of questions, but in the kind of area that we're discussing, the kind of organization of these movements? And what are the questions that you think that they should be really honing in on? And since they have subpoena power, who should they be, you know, who should they use as subpoena power to bring before the committee? That last one is a pretty loaded question. I'll start with the first and just, you know, some of the things that I've been wondering about just as Sean and I and others have been kind of digging through the data, things that jump out at me, a lot of money flowed from people to people in the run up to January 6. There were different types of vehicles for transferring funds from, you know, individuals to groups or, you know, from, you know, groups to leaders and vice versa. Example, you know, we know about PayPal donations, Bitcoin transfers that we still don't know a lot about. And there are, of course, a lot of theories that perhaps there are even foreign actors who in some way helped support those donations. And there's a lot of dark money out there. That the evidence of that is quite clear, you know, from all the different higher level influencers who are closer to the Trump administration, you know, their efforts to both rally to stop the steel campaign litigate and so forth and so on. So I think those are important questions to be asking, because, you know, certainly where dark money goes, you know, so too does disinformation nowadays. It's not automatic, but increasingly, I think we know, you know, that LLCs can be shell companies that you can have all these different kind of vehicles for transferring cash for favors that nobody can look in the dark box and see, right. So that's one big question to answer. Another that, you know, I'm certain it's just a repeated theme that we've been struggling with now since at least 2016 is to what extent did foreign actors, be it Russia or China or others, you know, play a role in amplifying a lot of the false narratives and the disinformation that stoked the flames, right. And we see even in our own research, looking at Parler, you know, there's some pretty strange activity that seems to really tail with the activity of big influencers. And so, you know, the question, you know, I don't think we can say there's coordination or collusion or anything like that, but simply to say, you know, to what degree did the United States have a problem with foreign actors like Russia, sort of using this moment, leveraging it to stoke even more division in the country? And what does that mean going forward? And then last, I would just say, you know, for tech companies, gosh, it's so many questions to be asked and answered in terms of their efforts to take down content. For instance, QAnon, of course, content was taken down a couple of months before the actual election day. But we don't know anything about the methods. We don't know anything about the algorithmic, you know, design. We know nothing. It's that is another black box that we've kind of allowed Twitter and Facebook to kind of sort of do a hand wave on. But the problem with that, of course, is we don't know what they know about what's really out there and how much it really syncs up with a lot of what the researchers are finding, you know, in terms of pattern and trends in the data itself. So those are my questions. Yeah. Candice has always made an excellent list and I know Sean and Jared will add. I would actually add a component of that question, you know, which is how should questions be asked and individuals be pulled in? Because I think in addition to accountability, in addition to truth telling about what happened on January 6, one of the goals of the committee has to be trying to create a shared narrative across partisan perspectives. And, you know, I think it's going to be a real challenge. But without that, as I think someone already mentioned, there's a continued risk that this further polarizes positions on what actually happened on January 6. And as Candice already alluded to, there won't be a single answer of what happened. There will be multiple layers of what brought people to that day and what resulted in, again, as Jared already said, very close to a worse situation. And so I think often it's hard to tell that story in a way that appeals across different audiences. But I think that has to be a goal of the committee. I'll jump in. My two questions, I guess. First off would be one that I haven't seen explored too much, which is that like, you know, what did the Trump White House know and when did they know it? You know, various extremist figures and stuff have made claims of meeting with or talking with people in the broader Trump administration orbit leading up to January 6. You always have to take what extremist claim with like a huge grain of salt, though. But I do think given, you know, all things considered, it's worth at least trying to get to the bottom of the veracity of those claims. And additionally, the Trump digital team that was in the White House, you know, was very open about the fact they scoured a lot of, you know, the foreign boards and social communities where this kind of rhetoric was taking place. So I would be curious to, you know, for a committee like this to kind of probe a little bit further into that aspect, to kind of assess out, you know, what degree of knowledge was present there. And then my second question would be, where is all this data? Why aren't social media companies sharing data like everything they have with researchers? Because the digital component is not the only component, but it is a huge component.  And I'll just add, along with some researchers at ASU, like Christy Roche and Michael Simione, we've been thinking about misinformation as it's useful. It's not necessarily contagious or because we're damaged or not informed. So a question in my mind is the misinformation that was spread that has led to this event, whom was it useful to, right, and why? And I think that helps us address maybe some more of the root causes rather than thinking of people as like, there's this trope, right, of, you know, members of QAnon or folks that went to the Capitol during the insurrection, right, that there's some sort of problem with them. There's some sort of mental illness. There's some sort of deficit. But if we kind of flip that narrative and think, well, there's a reason why they're there, it's because this was useful to them and this was valuable to them. And the information that they believed and they decided to adopt and share was also valuable and useful.  But of course, if you don't trust law enforcement, then whatever they say doesn't matter. So I think that's another component too of we want to know this information. Why was it valuable to whom was it valuable and when was it valuable? But also that tells us a little bit about who can speak to this, who can counter some of these narratives? How do we intercede? How do we change these configurations and relationships of how we make a determination of value? The other question, and I know that, you know, as Jared said, you know, all the online information is not the be all end all, right? That's one slice. And that's actually a very specific slice that has a it's as a performative act to it, right? We there is it's a public performance. I think that's an important component. And that explains a lot. That's not all of it. But I would ask of mainstream social media platforms. I would ask them information that they took down fairly quickly, right? There's a difference between information that never made it online because it was caught in their filters, and that never circulated versus information that circulated for about 48 hours or less, and was either removed by actors or removed by the platform. That's some of the most harmful and toxic content. And that disappears within a very short period of time, meaning it never gets fact checked, meaning that it never enters the media in many cases, and meaning that it disappears. So then we can't have a democratic conversation about that material. So basically, it causes harm and then it disappears and then we're kind of lost, right? So those are kind of those are two questions that I would would think about in addition to the brilliant questions from my colleagues. Let me pick up on Sean's last observation. I mean, because through a social media company, obviously, there's two ways you take down information or comments that are against the terms of service. One would be through algorithms and another one would be through, you know, having teams of people who are looking for this. I mean, so I mean, because I not not to defend social media companies in this context necessarily, but I mean, a lot of the pressure on them has been to take things down. So Sean, are you saying that they're taking things down too quickly? And that's about I didn't quite understand the logic there. No, I'm not saying they're taking things down too quickly. It's that a lot of the content that they do take down quickly already causes harm. I think in the public consciousness, we really don't look at or consider the harm that's caused by content moderation. And that's not saying that's not what we should do. It's just to say that everything has externalities and consequences that we do. There's not a perfect solution. We can think about going back to the pandemic video that was circulating earlier and it's still circulating today. The fact that platforms were removing that content, then filter like, well, what does the government not want us to know? What do platforms not want us to know? So that added a bit of this sort of edge, right? Like, you know, I want to know what that is, and that made it more valuable. I'm not saying it should have circulated. Like, it shouldn't. It should have been gone. That was problematic. But there are consequences to every decision. There's no easy solution. And not to give platforms, you know, a free ride on this. But it's a very difficult problem. And they, you know, they're really the solutions they have with content moderation, right? We can label. But again, go back to the usefulness. If you don't trust a platform, then you're not going to believe they're labeling. If you don't trust a fact checker, you're not going to believe they're labeling. Like, that's, that's a pretty weak intervention. Many of the interventions that we have are designed for folks that are not part of these extremist communities on either side. They're designed for folks that have high levels of trust in government, high levels of trust in the media, and high levels of trust in social media platforms. And I would argue the folks that went to the Capitol during the insurrection on January 6, they don't meet either of the any of those, right? That's not, you know, so interventions that focus on those groups are not going to work. They're going to fall flat. So those two things, right? How do we intervene? But also, how do we not lose track of all that content that's been removed? Social media platforms are not sharing this content with researchers. They might be sharing it with a few on the backend, but they're not sharing it with researchers and policymakers. So we can really understand like, what does the first 48 hours of some of this really toxic content that circulated, what's the impact of that? And we know that some of that content contributed to group membership, joining, you know, QAnon, other groups. We know that that contributed, but then it disappeared. So as researchers, unless we were able to capture that in real time, we don't see those pieces. And that becomes a big gap in the findings from researchers and potentially the findings from the committee. Yeah, can I just quickly just jump in here? Because I think this is, it's Sean is like picking up on something really, really important, which is, you know, a lot of people kind of have heard about QAnon, right? Like, I mean, it's in the headlines all the time now, we got, you know, politicians in Congress, you know, who seem to be in some ways affiliated with it. But actually, like the contours of the movement itself, the narratives are a little bit less well known, right? And I think one of the things that we're finding as we kind of dig into it is a design feature of QAnon is to be, is to co-opt already extant conspiracy theories and kind of turn them on themselves and to co-opt language that is pretty like anodyne, like great awakening, great storm, like what does that mean exactly, right? Nobody knows except for people who follow QAnon. And there's like 4,500 drops that we know of that, you know, these posts from Q that, you know, that are out there. But that's just the base, right? We know that there are millions of followers now around the world. We've got Japanese QAnon, we've got German QAnon. And even though the narrative is an American narrative, right, about some Americans, you know, in the White House doing things, having to do with, you know, crazy conspiracies. And so the design features of these, of QAnon in particular, but other types of conspiracy oriented movements are so deceptive, right, and so malleable and adaptable that it does, I mean, it does challenge tech companies to really think about what it, not what is the content, but what are the design features that we need to address here. And also, you know, even after January 6, we saw things, I saw things, where QAnon content was no longer with a Q, but it was with a KU, right? These kind of adaptations are being run on platforms in order to get around the content moderation. And again, that goes to the design features themselves. And I think, you know, those are questions that the tech companies really have to answer. Well, that raises an interesting question, because one of the, as you all know, the White House released for the first time, just the last, what, 10 days ago, the first, you know, government-wide policy on domestic terrorism. And one of the things that it said, one of the actual actions that it said it was going to take, which I think is very relevant to what Canada just said, and what you're all saying, is that it's going to do a better job of telling local police departments and law enforcement, kind of what the symbol, what the symbology is, what the phraseology is. Because, I mean, a lot of this stuff is pretty obscure, right? Unless you follow it closely. I mean, you've kind of just raised the point that Q can kind of morph into something else that isn't quite Q, but everybody kind of gets it. So how would you, anybody just jump in? How would you score what the White House is trying to do here? Obviously, that's just one element of a much larger package. And obviously, this is a very hard issue because a lot of these people are radicalizing individually, as people have said already, without necessarily being part of a large group. And that's just a hard law enforcement problem. Yeah, I mean, I'll start by saying just quickly, you know, I see, first of all, it's heartening to see the White House making the effort. You know, I think, you know, the strategy has a lot of elements that really address some of the multi-varied spokes of the wheel that are kind of challenging in terms of getting to grips with the problem. I do think, though, one of the challenges for law enforcement and the military, frankly, because we know that a lot of the folks who showed up in January 6th were military veterans and quite a few police officers, right? The construct that we have right now when we think about domestic extremism, vis-a-vis law enforcement and the military is they're being infiltrated. But that does not really reflect reality. Reality is there is kind of a dominant idea about what patriotism is within white supremacist oriented movements, whether they're stated or unstated, right? And there's a dominant idea about, you know, the role of the military and the police in enforcing, right, that normative idea of, you know, power and race. And so when we talk about, you know, the military and the law enforcement and infiltration and extremism, I think we have to be really careful because it won't look like that to anybody who's sitting in, you know, a suburban Chicago police force. It will just look like, you know, a guy or a woman who really just loves the flag, right? And really just loves, you know, his or her country. And it won't sound like that. You don't need, you know, swastika tattoos to latch on to some of these narratives and to be mobilized to look at, you know, people of a different race or creed or ethnicity in a very different way as potential targets for violence. I'll jump in here. I, like Candace, I appreciate the effort, especially after, you know, doing this work for so long and having a federal government that didn't seem overly concerned with addressing root causes. It's very refreshing to see those root causes at least addressed. As far as the law enforcement tactic goes, in theory, I think it's, you know, a good idea to get, you know, nobody should, like, have to know about this stuff, right? But for stakeholders that can help ensure public safety and, you know, hopefully get ahead of potentially violent situations, I think this knowledge is really important. So sharing that down at the local level so that, you know, law enforcement can recognize things happening in the community or, you know, receive some education on when those kind of beliefs can start to tilt into a direction that gets particularly dangerous. You know, I think that's great information. But, you know, for that theory to work, you have to have almost this inherent trust of law enforcement generally. And I, you know, I don't know that the events of the past, well, frankly, history of the country, you know, really, you know, speaks to a, you know, omnipresent trust that should be doled out there. You know, we certainly don't want law enforcement getting into the game of trying to like enforce against ideology. But, you know, for this effort to be successful, I think there also has to be a fair amount of work of addressing sort of the ideologies, whether, you know, even if they're not extreme, it's just sort of like the power structures and ideologies presence in police departments and police departments that, you know, could get in the way of accomplishing this work. Yeah, I think you're hearing some some common trends. I likewise, I think it was an impressive focus. And I think it's the there's a whole fourth pillar that focuses on root causes and long term drivers. But especially from our perspective, a security focus, something focused specifically only on domestic terrorism and not the broader societal questions is always going to fall short of being able to to talk about the ways we can tackle those together. So everyone has said the word trust and building off of what Sean said before. You know, it's because it's so essential for all the steps that could happen afterwards that could actually build like something mitigate some of these issues. You know, we do know from research that's more for social science focused on the impact of what we call in group messengers. So being able to find it, you know, Sean mentioned that lots of folks at the Capitol may not trust conventional people, but there are people they do trust and could have messages that would mitigate that drive towards violence. But to do that, we have to understand more about those dynamics. And I think that goes beyond just a security only response to these questions. Well, that prompts a very simple question. If Trump hadn't said go to the Capitol, would things have turned out differently? I think so. Curious what others think? I think it would have turned out differently. You know, from timelines that have been put together by places like the Washington Post, we know that confrontations at the Capitol actually had already begun to start before the end of his speech. But I do think that in the case, the first sentencing that we have had out of the January 6 trial, that the woman who was convicted expressing her remorse said something that I think can really help us understand the dynamic of exactly what happened, which is that she herself believed, I support Trump so much. He's telling me to go to the Capitol, so that's what I'm going to do. We're going to protest whatever. And then gets sort of caught up in this big sweeping thing. And part of the remorse that she expressed was that by her participation in going into the Capitol and walking around, it may have provided some room or some cover for more extremist groups or organized groups who had explicitly violent or insurrection type of agendas on that day. And I think that what she was telling prosecutors and stuff really captured the dynamic that I think was at play that day, which is that you had a smaller subset of particularly violent, particularly nefarious actors who were seeking to create chaos and destruction that day. And then you had, and this is kind of what we've been talking about the whole time, this broader arc that was going and got aimed in that direction and provided the bandwidth that these groups felt comfortable taking action. We've got quite a few questions that have come in on the Q&A function. Please feel free. We're going to turn to them now so we can get the audience. So let me start with a good question from Kendrick Nekornpen. What changes do you see in the Q&A community following the January 6 riot? Are they empowered or are they defeated? Do they see the incident as a victory or a defeat for anybody who wants to jump in? I think it's super hard to generalize about Q&A. I mean, you know, one of the things, so a couple of very good research outfits have done some great work. I mean, Jared at DFR lab, you know, Graphica, you know, everybody's been sort of looking at like what happened to Q&A when the bubble burst basically. The problem with trying to generalize about Q&A is that we're talking about potentially tens of millions of people around the world who are now attached to this narrative. And, you know, I think Graphica, which is a New York-based research organization that works on this information, had a great observation in one of their reports, which is essentially, you know, you can't really call this a fringe movement anymore because it's so tightly tied with, you know, Trump and that wing of the Republican Party that it is mainstream, right? In the United States, it's just mainstream, you know, 17% of people pulled by Pew recently, you know, basically nodded their heads and said, yes, of course, there are child trafficking, you know, monsters who are in charge of our government, right, which is a, you know, a primary Q&A narrative. So it's really hard to generalize about Q&A. I think what we can say definitively is it is a movement that now has a life of its own. It's going to be extremely difficult to stop it from kind of spreading until, you know, tech companies kind of get at this challenge of understanding the design flaws primarily. Okay, another good question from Kathleen Walsh for those back in the classroom in the fall, what's the best to-date resource you'd recommend to equity inform and answer students' questions about what happened on January 6th? I'd go back in part to what we were just talking about in terms of trust and start from whatever community you're in, thinking about what connects it to students' direct lives and where they'll be able to trust the resource and not dismiss it out of hand based on perhaps the biases that they have in their own community. That's not a very helpful answer off the top, so maybe others have specific resources they've thought of that are accessible to students. I think it's kind of part of the challenge, right, and I think it's, it speaks a lot to the value of something like a select committee, like Representative Pelosi announced this morning, which is, you know, A, being a fact-finding endeavor to fill in gaps and also Shannon, what you've been talking so much about, which is, you know, generating a collective understanding because I know DFR lab has been doing research, you know, Sean's been doing research, Kate has been doing research, you've been doing research, right, and we all kind of have our lanes, we all kind of have, you know, what we're looking at, what we're particularly interested in, but I don't know that there really is like one spot to go or one, you know, definitive thing that leaves it all together in a way that's like really easy to follow and understand. There's, you know, a kind of a whole mishmash of different institutions and organizations trying to, you know, color in their page of the coloring book, but we need, I think there still is a strong need to collectivize those findings and, you know, come up with a way that's coherent to present them. Yeah, totally agree. I would add to maybe to generalize beyond the six to talk about persuasion and information operations and those tactics that are used around misinformation in general. I mean, as all sides use, right, and the media uses and politicians use, so another way to ground this is to kind of look at the information environment and how do we present this content in ways that are manipulative. And so to connect that to maybe the general environment today might be another resource. And also just with QAnon real quick, I think, you know, QAnon's not going away because people found QAnon useful and found their participation useful. And until we address those needs or those gaps in those needs or reconfigure their calculation of value, they're not going away. They're going to continue to do what they're doing. And then they kind of end up kind of distorting some of that information further to make it still useful until it's no longer useful to them. Yeah, let me just quickly jump in because I've, you know, Sean and I are both professors.  Without doubt, you know, there have been a couple of congressional short briefings, right, that have been produced already. Those are going to be good sources because, you know, they're official. I think in many ways they use the kind of classic form of just qualifying the evidence. And that's a good discussion for, you know, jumping off point for discussions. But to Sean's point, you know, we actually with the Cronkite School at ASU, we began actually an interesting experiment with teaching people open source investigation techniques, who are going to go on to become journalists. And it was, and we were doing this in real time, while all this stuff was unfolding. It was fascinating, you know, just sort of chasing the data. And I think what I learned from that experience is, you know, again, a lot of people just, especially students, you know, at the college level, high school level, they don't know that these are these influence operations have, you know, a shape. They have a form, they have a pattern. And they kind of tend to look and feel a certain way. And I think the more we can educate folks about that, that's a really good starting point. And actually, I think to even double down on what Ekenna says, she knows I love those teaching techniques, too. But in looking at some of those individuals who are not affiliated with Proud Boys or three percenters who ended up at the Capitol on January 6, they had engaged in a lot of these same trends, this arc that we've been talking about this whole time in ways that we're concerning. So, you know, a couple of folks from Georgia who were intimidating protesters with weapons in a year ago, at demonstrations. And so I think, you know, students have the same lived experience of this last year and are trying to make sense of it all together at once, just like we are as researchers in a way. And so helping them to see that even through the narrative of an individual and how that links to so many of the big trends we've seen this past year that I think will be unpacking for a long time as a country. A question from Alex Stalker of New America, which is, how can the data you've gathered be most useful in terms of accountability, preventing similar future events, which connects to a related question? What kind of accountability do you think is appropriate for news entities that really leaned in and propagated the stuff that sealed narrative, like EEG, Newsmax, et cetera? I mean, we're seeing a, I think actually one of the most underappreciated kind of moments in history was the day that Dominion voting systems brought a lawsuit against Sidney Powell, Michael Lindell and Rudy Giuliani. Each one of these is $1.3 billion. And it's the first time that you've seen a pretty large-scale company taking on the ramifications of disinformation in ways that regular media, be it Fox or ABC News, or just really couldn't either because they're not oriented toward that kind of storytelling or simply they don't have the capacity, right? They can't get to grips with all these complexities like QAnon and all that stuff. So, I mean, I do think that that will be another really interesting source of information for understanding how these influence campaigns were designed, how they unfolded. We don't know how it's going to turn out. The lawsuit may be settled. We don't know. The future is unclear where that's concerned. But without a doubt, I think those suits in SmartMax as well, Smartmatic as well, which is the other voting company, elections tech company, I think what they are challenging is this idea that you can just, you can go on any old news channel and say stuff, and then jump on social media and say stuff that is false, groundless and so damaging as to make it impossible to live and work and just be in the world, let alone do business. One of my colleagues, Dan Gilmour here at ASU, says that the news is not sonography, but in many cases we treat social media as a form of sonography. So, just because someone posted something on social media does not mean it's worthy of reporting. And just like we have practices now that are emerging around suicidality, we don't present information about a death by suicide in a way that causes further harm. How do we present mis and disinformation in ways that do not continue to propagate that mis and disinformation, and also how do we handle all of these takedowns from platforms? So, for example, we have all these news stories that have tweets from Trump, but those tweets are gone. So now we have these like hanging, you know, news stories. So, and I think we also have to understand the recursive loop between social media and the mainstream media and even fringe media as I would argue like OAN is fringe is potentially an understatement, but there's a recursive loop between mainstream media and fringe media and social media, right? We source information from social media, then that gets put back, you know, on to the mainstream media, then that gets then sort of regurgitated and resourced back into social media. So it's this loop where we're kind of feeding this content. And that, you know, for my colleagues that do work in journalism, you know, that there are a lot of questions about, you know, research and sourcing and all those things that social media changes some of that game doesn't change some other parts of that game. But I think a big issue during the reporting of the election and beyond. And even before that is that we just anything that was posted on social media became newsworthy and that caused a huge mess. And there wasn't a lot of accountability for that. And just just quickly picking up on that, I think the to the extent that Paul's narratives about a stolen election contributed to January 6, they also contribute to this day to a lot of serious threats against elected officials, unelected elections administrators. And I think we mentioned at the top online to offline harm. That's not just like individual lives who are who are damaged by that, but also big economic cost and security details, the implications of that are real. And I think being able to draw that line and think about where accountability stands for that is important too. And I'll jump in just kind of, you know, make the point that a lot of these networks that we're circulating this kind of mis and disinformation around the election. You know, there's been a lot of deep platforming of some of the most noxious actors or the, you know, misinformation, super spreaders, for example, but like the network is very much still in place in still very much like roaring and like white hot pumping misinformation, disinformation. And I think, you know, increases to data, you know, could further the understanding because, you know, I think something that gets missed in a lot of conversations about some of this bigger picture is that, you know, these systems of misinformation and disinformation exist on a parallel track. And it kind of gets to something that Sean was saying, which is like the, I'll pick on somebody. The New York Times article debunking XYZ doesn't mean anything to a community that doesn't trust the New York Times, right? So we think, you know, better access to data, being able to construct a more complete picture can help inform our thinking and our strategies as we, you know, ponder ways to sort of disrupt the gap between those networks a little bit and hopefully be able to, you know, earn back the trust or at least, you know, plant seeds of truth in these communities and hopefully, and this can be a long term project, but hopefully, you know, kind of turn the tide a little bit or at least make, you know, turn the roar down into a rumble. One final question, because we only have three minutes left from David Sturman, you know, was breaching the capital kind of part of the plan for some of the people who gathered there? Or was that, was that sort of a spontaneous? And what, to what extent was there the UC planning for what actually happened, as opposed to just, hey, we're going to gather there and kind of crowd dynamics, more behavior kind of took over? Yeah, I mean, I don't think there's any question that there was pre-planning by certain, you know, groups and factions and cadres and, but here are some signs that we, I think we picked up on before the events of the day. One very small example, you know, there's a lot of chatter in certain telegram channels, you know, following like the Oathkeepers and a few other sort of more extreme elements, not to fire the first shot. Okay. And this comes from, you know, the start of the Civil War. There's this theory, of course, that the Confederate side lost because they fired the first shot. I believe it Ford Sumter. Forgive me if my Civil War history is a little bit off, but I've seen a recall in the chatter of seeing, you know, mentions of Sumter, right, as being part of kind of the mentality going in, so that essentially the idea was to draw fire, to be the first to draw fire from, let's say, you know, the Capitol Police or the military, whoever was going to be there, you know, on call to respond, so that the narrative would be, you know, this was self-defense.  That narrative was running through a lot of the chatter on telegram, you know, parlor, you know, against, with certain groups, right, like some of these factions. So there was definitely an intentionality around that.  We're hearing about August 15th, which is another, you know, potential event where, you know, either in QAnon circles or in other right-wing circles, Trump will somehow be, you know, installed as president, even though obviously he has not been elected. So, you know, there's, I think, a lot of the more extreme factions see January 6th as a jumping off point, as a beginning. And we should absolutely count on more events like this happening. And I think one of the things we were able to do on the day of January 6th and January 7th with the help of some folks here on this panel was to look actually not just in D.C., but across the country at what was happening in state capitals and at state capitol buildings. And D.C. was not the only place that a capitol was breached on January 6th. And there were, you know, we see what's going on in Oregon and elsewhere. And there were precursors to that, especially at capitol buildings prior to that. So I think when you draw that together, in that picture, it's clear that that was happening around anti-COVID restrictions well before January 6th and that on that day it was actually quite widespread intentionality from certain groups that were at state capitals around the country to enter buildings in that way. And it's important to connect those dots beyond just the most extreme kind of elements. And I would say kind of putting some of these pieces together real quick that this is sort of queuing on and these related groups sort of acting like a social movement and trying to draw the legitimacy of the same sort of structures of a social movement, the same tactics of a social movement. So, you know, being able to say Second Amendment, you know, making calls on leaders that their rights are being violated. So I think that's also an important tactic that's being used in this shift and a way to seek legitimacy in a way that social movements only can. Great. Well, we're going to have to leave it there. We want to, I want to thank, on behalf of the 122 people who tuned in to listen to this conversation, I want to thank Candace, Sean, Shannon and Jared for a very lively, interesting discussion. Unfortunately, there are other somber topics. So we'll wrap the meeting now and we'll clap virtually for them. Thank you.


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19. Robert Stephenson's Victoria Bridge, Lower Canada, Illness and Death, Stephenson characteristics. George Stephenson bequeathed to his son, his valuable collieries, his share in the engine-manufactury at Newcastle, and his large accumulation of savings, which, together with the fortune he had himself amassed by railway work, gave Robert the position of an engineer-millionaire, the first of his order. He continued, however, to live in a quiet style, and although he bought occasional pictures and statues, and indulged in the luxury of a yacht, he did not live up to his income, which went on rapidly accumulating until his death. There was no longer the necessity for applying himself to the laborious business of a parliamentary engineer, in which he had now been occupied for some fifteen years. Shortly after his father's death, Edward Pease strongly recommended him to give up the more harassing work of his profession, and his reply, 15 June 1850, was as follows. The suggestion in which your kind note contains is quite in accordance with my own feelings and intentions respecting retirement, but I find it a very difficult matter to bring to a close so complicated a connection in business as that which has been established by twenty-five years of active and arduous professional duty. Comparative retirement is, however, my intention, and I trust that your prayer for the divine blessing to grant me happiness and quiet comfort will be fulfilled. I cannot but feel deeply grateful to the great disposer of events for the success which has hitherto attended my exertions in life, and I trust that the future will also be marked by a continuance of his mercies. Although Robert Stevenson, in conformity with this expressed intention, for the most part declined to undertake new business, he did not altogether lay aside his harness, when he lived to repeat his tubular bridges both in Lower Canada and in Egypt. The success of the tubular system, as adopted at Menai and Conway, was such as to recommend it for adoption wherever great span was required, and the peculiar circumstances connected with the navigation of the St. Lawrence and the Nile may be said to have compelled its adoption in carrying railways across those great rivers. The Victoria Bridge, of which Robert Stevenson was the designer and chief engineer, is without exception the greatest work of the kind in the world. For gigantic proportions and vast length and strength, there is nothing to compare with it in ancient or modern times. The entire bridge, with its approaches, is only about sixty yards short of two miles, being five times longer than the Britannia across the Menai Straits, seven and a half times longer than Waterloo Bridge, and more than ten times longer than the New Chelsea Bridge across the Thames. It has not less than twenty-four spans of two hundred and forty-two feet each, and one great central span, itself an immense bridge, of three hundred and thirty feet. The road is carried within iron tubes sixty feet above the level of the St. Lawrence, which runs beneath at a speed of about ten miles an hour, and in winter brings down the ice of two thousand square miles of lakes and rivers, with their numerous tributaries. The weight of iron in the tubes is about ten thousand tonnes, supported on massive piers, which contain some six and others ten thousand tonnes of solid masonry. So gigantic a work involving so heavy an expenditure, about one million three hundred thousand pounds, was not projected without sufficient cause. The Grand Trunk Railway of Canada, upwards of twelve hundred miles in length, traverses British North America from the shores of the Atlantic to the rich prairie country of the far west. It opens up a vast extent of fertile territory for future immigration, and provides a ready means for transporting the varied products of the western states to the seaboard. So long as the St. Lawrence was relied on, the inhabitants along the Great Valley were precluded from communication with each other for nearly six months of the year, during which the navigation was closed by the ice. The Grand Trunk Railway was designed to furnish a line of communication through this great district at all seasons, following the course of the St. Lawrence along its North Bank, and uniting the principal towns of Canada. But stopping short on the North Shore it was still an incomplete work, unconnected except by a dangerous and often impracticable ferry with Montreal, the capital of the province, and shut off from connection with the United States, as well as with the coast to which the commerce of Canada naturally tends. Without a bridge at Montreal, therefore, it was felt that the system of Canadian railway communication would have been incomplete, and the benefits of the Grand Trunk Railway in great measure and nuggetry. As early as 1846 the construction of a bridge across the St. Lawrence at Montreal was strongly advocated by the local press for the purpose of directly connecting that city with the then projected Atlantican St. Lawrence Railway. A survey of the bridge was made and the scheme was reported to be practicable. A period of colonial depression, however, intervened, and although the project was not lost sight of, it was not until 1852, when the Grand Trunk Railway Company began their operations, that there seemed to be any reasonable prospect of its being carried out. In that year Mr. A. M. Ross, who had superintended under Robert Stevenson the construction of the tubular bridge over the Conway, visited Canada and inspected the site of the proposed bridge, when he readily arrived at the conclusion that a like structure was suitable for the crossing of the St. Lawrence. He returned to England to confer with Robert Stevenson on the subject, and the result was the plan of the Victoria Bridge, of which Robert Stevenson was the designer and Mr. A. M. Ross, the joint and resident engineer. The particular kind of structure to be adopted, however, formed the subject of much preliminary discussion. Even after the design of a tubular bridge had been adopted and the peers were commenced, the plan was made the subject of severe criticism on the grounds of its alleged excessive cost. It therefore became necessary for Mr. Stevenson to vindicate the propriety of his design in a report to the directors of the railway, in which he satisfactorily proved that as respected strength, efficiency and economy, with a view to permanency, the plan of the Victoria Bridge was unimpeachable. There were various methods proposed for spanning the St. Lawrence. The suspension bridge, such as that over the River Niagara, was found inapplicable for several reasons, but chiefly because of its defective rigidity, which greatly limited the speed and weight of the trains, and consequently the amount of traffic which could be passed over such a bridge. Thus, taking the length of the Victoria Bridge into account, it was found that not more than twenty trains could pass within the twenty-four hours, a number insufficient for the accommodation of the anticipated traffic. To introduce such an amount of material into the suspension bridge, as would supply increased rigidity, would only be approximating to the original beam and neutralizing any advantages in point of cheapness which might be derivable from this form of structure, without securing the essential stiffness and strength. Iron arches were also considered inapplicable because of the large headway required for the passage of the ice in winter, and the necessity which existed for keeping the springing of the arches clear of the water line. This would have involved the racing of the entire road, and a largely increased expenditure on the upper works. The question was therefore reduced to the consideration of the kind of horizontal beam or girder to be employed. Horizontal girders are of three kinds. The tubular is constructed of riveted rectangular boiler plates. Where the span is large, the road passes within the tube. Where the span is comparatively small, the roadway is supported by two or more rectangular beams. Next there is the lattice girder, borrowed from the loose, rough timber bridges of the American engineers, consisting of a top and bottom flange, connected by a number of flat iron bars riveted across each other at a certain angle, the roadway resting on the top or being suspended at the bottom between the lattice on either side. Bridges on the same construction are now extensively used for crossing the broad rivers of India, and are especially designed with a view to their easy transport and erection. The trellis, or Warren, girder, is a modification of the same plan, consisting of a top and bottom flange with a connecting web of diagonal flat bars forming a complete system of triangulation, hence the name of triangular girder, by which it is generally known. The merit of this form consists in its comparative rigidity, strength, lightness and economy of material. These bridges are also extensively employed in spanning the rivers of India. One of the best specimens is the Krumlin Viaduct, two hundred feet high at one point, which spans the river and valley of the Eber, near the village of Krumlin in south Wales. This viaduct is about a third of a mile long, divided into two parts by a ridge of hills which runs through the centre of the valley, each part forming a separate viaduct, the one of seven equal spans of one hundred and fifty feet, and the other of three spans of the same diameter. The bridge has been very skillfully designed and constructed, and by reason of its great dimensions and novel arrangements is entitled to be regarded as one of the most remarkable engineering works of the day. In calculating the strength of these different classes of girders, Mr. Stephenson observed, one ruling principle appartains and is common to all of them, primarily and essentially, the ultimate strength is considered to exist in the top and bottom. The former are being exposed to a compression force by the action of the load, and the latter to a force of tension. Therefore, whatever be the class or denomination of girders, they must all be alike in amount of effective material in these members, as if their spans and depths are the same and they have to sustain the same amount of load. Hence, the question of comparative merit among the different classes of construction of beams or girders is really narrowed to the method of connecting the top and bottom webs, so-called. In the tubular system the connection is affected by continuous boiler plates riveted together, and in the lattice and trellis bridges by flat iron bars, more or less numerous, forming a series of struts and ties. Those engineers who advocate the employment of the latter form of construction set forth as its principal advantage the saving of material which is affected by employing bars instead of iron plates, whereas Mr. Stephenson and his followers urge that in point of economy the boiler plate side is equal to the bars, whilst in point of effective strength and rigidity it is decidedly superior. To show the comparative economy of material, he contrasted the lattice girder bridge over the river Trent on the Great Northern Railway near Newark with the tubes of the Victoria Bridge. In the former case where the span is 240.5 feet and the bridge 13 feet wide, the weight including bearings is 292 tons. In the latter where the span is 242 feet, the width of the tube 16 feet, the weight including bearings is 275 tons, showing a balance in favour of the Victoria Tube of 17 tons. The comparison between the Newark Dyke Bridge and the tubular bridge over the river air is equally favourable to the latter, and no one can have travelled over the Great Northern Line to York without noting that as respects rigidity under the passing train the tubular bridge is decidedly superior. It is ascertained that the deflection caused by a passing load is considerably greater in the former case, and Mr. Stevenson was also of the opinion that the sides of all trellis or latter girders are useless except for the purpose of connecting the top and bottom, and keeping them in their position. They depend upon their connection with the top and bottom webs for their own support, and since they could not sustain their shape but would collapse immediately on their being disconnected from their top and bottom members, it is evident that they add to the strain upon them, and consequently to that extent reduce the ultimate strength of the beams. I admit, he added, that there is no formula for valuing the solid sides for strains, and that at present we only subscribe to them the value or use of connecting the top and bottom, yet we are aware that from their continuity and solidity they are of value to resist horizontal and many other strains, independently of the top and bottom, by which they add very much to the stiffness of the beam, and the fact of their containing more material than is necessary to connect the top and bottom webs has by no means been fairly established. Another important advantage of the tubular bridge over the trellis or lattice structure consists in its greater safety in event of a train running off the line, as contingency which has more than once occurred on a tubular bridge without detriment, whereas in event of such an accident occurring on a trellis or lattice bridge it must infallibly be destroyed. Where the proposed bridge is of the unusual length of a mile and a quarter, it is obvious that this consideration must have no small weight with the directors who eventually decided on proceeding with the tubular bridge according to Mr. Stevenson's original design. From the first projection of the Victoria Bridge the difficulties of executing such a work across a wide river, down which an avalanche of ice rushes to the sea every spring, were pronounced almost insurmountable by those best acquainted with the locality. The ice of 2,000 miles of inland lakes and upper rivers, besides their tributaries, is then poured downstream, and in the neighbourhood of Montreal especially it is often piled up to the height of from 40 to 50 feet, placing the surrounding country under water, and doing severe damage to the massive stone buildings along the noble riverfront of the city. To resist so prodigious a pressure it was necessary that the piers of the proposed bridge should be of the most solid and massive description. Their foundations are placed in the solid rock, for none of the artificial methods of obtaining foundations, suggested by some engineers for cheapness's sake, were found practicable in this case. Where the force exercised against the piers was likely to be so great, it was felt that timber ice-breakers, timber or cast-on piling, or even rubble work, would have proved but temporary expedience. The two centre piers are 18 feet wide, and the remaining 22 piers 15 feet. To arrest and break the ice an inclined plain, composed of great blocks of stone was added to the upper river side of each pier, each block weighing from seven to ten tonnes, and the hole were firmly clamped together with iron rivets. To convey some idea of the immense force which these piers are required to resist, we may briefly describe the breaking up of the ice in March 1858, while the bridge was under construction. Fourteen out of the twenty-four piers were then finished, together with the formidable abutments and approaches to the bridge. The ice in the river began to show signs of weakness on the 29th of March, but it was not until the 31st that a general movement became observable, which continued for an hour when it suddenly stopped, and the water rose rapidly. On the following day, at noon, a grand movement commenced. The waters rose about four feet in two minutes, up to a level with many of the Montreal streets. The fields of ice, at the same time, were suddenly elevated to an incredible height, and so overwhelming were they in appearance that crowds of the townspeople who had assembled on the key to watch the progress of the flood ran for their lives. This movement lasted about twenty minutes, during which the jammed ice destroyed several portions of the key wall, grinding the hardest blocks to atoms. The embanked approaches to the Victoria Bridge had tremendous forces to resist. In the full channel of the stream, the ice in its passage between the piers was broken up by the force of the blow immediately on its coming-in contact with the cut waters. Sometimes thick sheets of ice were seen to rise up and rear on end against the piers, but by force of the current they were speedily made to roll over into the stream, and in a moment after were out of sight. For the next two days the river was still high, until, on the fourth of April, the waters seemed suddenly to give way, and by the following day the river was flowing clear and smooth as a mill-pond, nothing of winter remaining except the masses of boardage ice which were strewn along the shores of the stream. On examination of the piers of the bridge it was found that they had admirably resisted the tremendous pressure, and though the timber crib work erected to facilitate the placing of floating pontoons to form the dams, was found considerably disturbed and in some places seriously damaged, the piers, with the exception of one or two heavy stone blocks which were still unfinished, escaped uninjured. One heavy block of many tonnes weight was carried to a considerable distance, and must have been torn out of its place by sheer force as several of the broken fragments were found left in the pier. The works in connection with the Victoria Bridge were begun on the 22nd of July 1854, when the first stone was laid, and continued uninterruptedly during a period of five-and-a-half years, until the 17th of December 1859, when the bridge was finished and taken off the contractor's hands. It was formally open for traffic early in 1860, though Robert Stevenson did not live to see its completion. The tubular system was also applied by the same engineer in a modified form in the two bridges across the Nile, near Damietta, in Lower Egypt. That, near Ben Ha, contains eight spans or openings of eight defeat each, and two centre spans formed by one of the largest swing bridges ever constructed, the total length of the swing beam being 157 feet, a clear waterway of 60 feet, being provided on either side of the centre pier. The only novelty in these bridges consisted in the road being carried upon the tubes instead of within them, their erection being carried out in the usual manner by means of workmen, materials, and plants sent out from England. During the latter years of his life, Mr. Stevenson took considerable interest in public affairs and in scientific investigations. In 1847 he entered the House of Commons as member for Whitby, but he does not seem to have been very devoted to his attendance and only appeared on divisions when there was a whip of the party to which he belonged. He was a member of the Sanitary and Sewage Commissions and of the Commission which sat on Westminster Bridge. The last occasions on which he addressed the House were on the Sewage Canal and the cleansing of the Serpentine. He pronounced the Sewage Canal to be an impracticable scheme. I have surveyed the line, said he. I have travelled the whole distance on foot and I declare there is no fall between the two seas. Honourable members talk about a canal. A canal is impossible. The thing would only be a ditch. Besides constructing the railway between Alexandria and Cairo, he was consulted, like his father, by the King of Belgium, as to the railways of that country, and he was made the Knight of the Order of Leopold because of the improvements which he had made in locomotive engines, so much to the advantage of the Belgian system of inland transit. He was consulted by the King of Sweden as to the railway between Christiana and Lake Mielsen, and in consideration of his services was decorated with the Grand Cross of the Order of St Olaf. He also visited Switzerland, Piedmont and Denmark to advise as to the system of railway communication best suited for those countries. At the Paris Exhibition of 1855 the Emperor of France decorated him with the Legion of Honour in consideration of his public services, and at home the University of Oxford made him a Doctor of Civil Laws. In 1855 he was elected President of the Institute of Civil Engineers, which office he held with honour and filled with distinguished ability for two years, giving place to his friend Mr Locke at the end of 1857. Mr Stevenson was frequently called upon to act as arbitrator between contractors and railway companies, or between one company and another, great value being attached to his opinion on account of his weighty judgment, his great experience, and his upright character, and we believe his decisions were invariably stamped by the qualities of impartiality and justice. He was always ready to lend a helping hand to a friend, and no petty jealousy stood between him and his rivals in the engineering world. The author remembers being with Mr Stevenson one evening at his house in Gloucester Square, when a note was put into his hand from his friend Brunel, then engaged in his first fruitless efforts to launch the Great Eastern. It was to ask Stevenson to come down to Blackwall early next morning and give him the benefit of his judgment. Shortly after six next morning Stevenson was in Scott Russell's building-yard and he remained there until dusk. About midday, while superintending the launching operations, the bulk of timber on which he stood canted up, and he fell up to his middle in the Thames mud. He was dressed as usual, without great coat, though the day was bitter cold, and with only thin boots upon his feet. He was urged to leave the yard and change his dress, or at least dry himself, but with his usual disregard of health, he replied, oh, never mind me, I'm quite used to this sort of thing. And he went paddling about in the mud, smoking his cigar until almost dark, when the day's work was brought to an end. The result of this exposure was an attack of inflammation of the lungs, which kept him to his bed for a fortnight. He was habitually careless of his health, and perhaps he indulged in narcotics to a prejudicial extent. Hence he often became hipped and sometimes ill, when Mr. Sopwith accompanied him to Egypt in the Titania in 1856, he succeeded in persuading Mr. Stevenson to limit his indulgence in cigars and stimulants, and the consequence was that by the end of the voyage he felt himself, as he said, quite a new man. Arrived in Marseille, he telegraphed from thence a message to Great George Street, prescribing certain stringent and salutary rules for observance in the office there on his return. But he was of a facile social disposition, and the old associations proved too strong for him. When he sailed for Norway in the autumn of 1859, though then ailing in health, he looked a man who still had plenty of life in him. By the time he returned, his fatal illness had seized him. He was attacked by congestion of the liver, which first developed itself in jaundice, and then ran into dropsy, of which he died on the 12th of October in the 56th year of his age. He was buried by the side of Telford in Westminster Abbey, amidst the departed great men of his country, and was attended to his resting place by many of the intimate friends of his boyhood and his manhood. Among those who assembled round his grave were some of the greatest men of thought and action in England, who embraced the sad occasion to pay the last mark of their respect to this illustrious son of one of England's greatest working men. It would be out of keeping with the subject thus drawn to a conclusion, to pronounce any panageric on the character and achievements of George and Robert Stevenson. These, for the most part, speak for themselves. Both were emphatically true men, exhibiting in their lives many sterling qualities. No beginning could have been less promising than that of the elder Stevenson. Born in a poor condition yet rich in spirit, he was from the first compelled to rely upon himself, and every step of advance which he made was conquered by patient labour. Whether working as a breaksman or an engineer, his mind was always full of the work in hand. He gave himself thoroughly up to it. Like the painter, he might say that he had become great by neglecting nothing. Whatever he was engaged upon, he was as careful of the details as if each were itself the whole. He did all thoroughly and honestly. There was no scamping with him. When a workman, he put his brains and labour into his work, and when a master, he put his conscience and character into it. He would have no slop work executed merely for the sake of profit. The materials must be as genuine as the workmanship was skillful. The structures which he designed and executed were distinguished for their thoroughness and solidity. His locomotives were famous for their durability and excellent working qualities. The engines which he sent to the United States in 1832 are still in good condition, and even the engines built by him for the Killingworth Colliery upwards of 30 years ago are working steadily there to this day. All his work was honest, representing the actual character of the man. He was ready to turn his hand to anything—shoes and clocks, railways and locomotives. He contrives his safety lamp with the object of saving Pittman's lives and peddled his own life in testing it. Whatever work was nearest him, he turned to and did it. With him, to resolve was to do. Many men knew far more than he, but none were more ready forthwith to apply what he did know to practical purposes. It was while working at Willington as a breaksman, that he first learned how best to handle a spade in throwing ballast out of the ship's holds. This casual employment seems to have left upon his mind the strongest impression of what hard work was, and he often used to revert to it and say to the young men about him, ah ye lads, there's none you know what work is. Mr. Gooch says he was proud of the dexterity and handling a spade which he had thus acquired, and that he has frequently seen him take the shovel from a labourer in some railway-cutting and show him how to use it more deftly in filling wagons of earth, gravel, or sand. Sir Joshua Wormsley has also informed us that when examining the works of the Oléon and Tour railway, Mr. Stevenson, seeing a large number of excavators filling and wheeling sand in a cutting at a great waste of time and labour, went up to the men and said he would show them how to fill their barrows in half the time. He showed them the proper position in which to stand, so as to exercise the greatest amount of power with the least expenditure of strength, and he filled the barrow with comparative ease again and again in their presence to the great delight of the workmen. When passing through his own workshops, he would point out to his men how to save labour and to get through their work skillfully and with ease. His energy imparted itself to others, quickening and influencing them as strong characters always do, flowing down into theirs and bringing out their best powers. His deportment towards the workmen employed under him was familiar, yet firm and consistent, as he respected their manhood, so did they respect his masterhood. Although he comported himself towards his men, as if they occupied very much the same level as himself, he yet possessed that peculiar capacity for governing which enabled him always to preserve among them the strictest discipline and to secure their cheerful and hearty services. Mr. Inge, MP for South Shields, on going over to the workshops at Newcastle, was particularly struck with this quality of the master in his bearing towards his men. There was nothing, said he, of undue familiarity in their intercourse, but they spoke to each other as man to man, and nothing seemed to please the master more than to point out illustrations of the ingenuity of his artisans. He took up a rivet, an expiated on the skill with which it had been fashioned by the workman's hand, its perfectness and truth. He was always proud of his workmen and his pupils, and while indifferent and careless as to what might be said of himself, he fired up in a moment if disparagement was thrown upon any one whom he had taught or trained. In manner George Stevenson was simple, modest and unassuming, but always manly. He was frank and social in spirit. When a humble workman, he had carefully preserved his sense of self-respect. His companions looked up to him, and his example was worth even more to many of them than books or schools. His devoted love of knowledge made his poverty respectable and adorned his humble calling. When he rose to a more elevated station and associated with men of the highest position and influence in Britain, he took his place among them with perfect self-possession. They wondered that the quiet ease and simple dignity of his deportment, and men in the best ranks of life, have said of him that he was one of nature's gentlemen. Probably no military chiefs were ever more beloved by their soldiers than were both father and son by the army of men who, under their guidance, worked at labors of profit, made labors of love by their earnest will and purpose. True leaders of men and lords of industry, they were always ready to recognize and encourage talent in those who worked for and with them. Thus it was pleasant, at the openings of the Stevenson lines, to hear the chief engineers attributing the successful completion of the works to their able assistants, while the assistants, on the other hand, ascribed the glory to their chiefs. Mr. Stevenson, though a thrifty and frugal man, was essentially unsworded. His rugged path in early life made him careful of his resources. He never saved a horde but saved for a purpose, such as the maintenance of his parents or the education of his son. In later years he became a prosperous and even a wealthy man, but riches never closed his heart nor stole away the elasticity of his soul. He enjoyed life cheerfully because, hopefully, when he entered upon a commercial enterprise, whether for others or for himself, he looked carefully at the ways and means. Unless they would pay, he held back. He would have nothing to do, he declared, with stock-jobbing speculations. His refusal to sell his name to the schemes of the railway mania, his survey of the Spanish lines without remuneration, his offer to postpone his claim for payment from a poor company until their affairs became more prosperous, are instances of the unsworded spirit in which he acted. Another marked feature in Mr. Stevenson's character was his patience. Notwithstanding the strength of his convictions as to the great uses to which the locomotive might be applied, he waited long and patiently for the opportunity of bringing it into notice, and for years after he had completed an efficient engine, he went on quietly devoting himself to the ordinary work of the colliery. He made no noise nor stir about his locomotive, but allowed another to take credit for the experiments on velocity and friction made with it by himself upon the Killingworth Railroad. By patient industry and laborious contrivance he was enabled, with the powerful help of his son, to do for the locomotive what James Watt had done for the condensing engine. He found it clumsy and inefficient, and he made it powerful, efficient and useful. Both have been described as the improvers of their respective engines, but as to all that is admirable in their structure or vast in their utility they are rather entitled to be described as their inventors. While the invention of Watt increased the power, and at the same time so regulated the action of the steam engine as to make it capable of being applied alike to the hardest work and to the finest manufacturers, the intervention of Stevenson gave an effective power to the locomotive, which enabled it to perform the work of teams of the most powerful horses and to outstrip the speed of the fleetist. Watt's invention exercised a wonderfully quickening influence on every branch of industry, and multiplied a thousand fold the amount of manufactured productions, and Stevenson's enabled these to be distributed with an economy and dispatch such as had never before been thought possible. They have both tended to increase indefinitely the mass of human comforts and enjoyments, and to render them cheap and accessible to all. But Stevenson's invention, by the influence which it is daily exercising upon the civilization of the world, is even more remarkable than that of Watt, and is calculated to have still more important consequences. In this respect it is to be regarded as the grandest application of steam power that has yet been discovered. The locomotive, like the condensing engine, exhibits the realization of various capital but wholly distinct ideas promulgated by many ingenious inventors. Stevenson, like Watt, exhibited a power of selection, combination, and invention of his own, by which, while availing himself of all that had been done before him, and super-adding the many skillful contrivances devised by himself, he was at length enabled to bring his engine into a condition of marvellous power and efficiency. He gathered together the scattered threads of ingenuity which already existed, and combined them into one firm and complete fabric of his own. He realized the plans which others had imperfectly formed, and was the first to construct what so many others had unsuccessfully attempted, the practical and economical working locomotive. Mr. Stevenson's close and accurate observation provided him with a fullness of information on many subjects, which often appeared surprising to those who had devoted to them a special study. On one occasion the accuracy of his knowledge of birds came out in a curious way at a convivial meeting of railwaymen in London. The engineers and railway directors present knew each other as railwaymen and nothing more. The talk had been all of railways and railway politics. Mr. Stevenson was a great talker on those subjects, and was generally allowed from the interest of his conversation and the extent of his experience to take the lead. At length one of the party broke in with, come now, Stevenson, we have had nothing but railways. Can't we have a change and try if we can talk a little about something else? Well, said Mr. Stevenson, I'll give you a wide range of subjects. What shall it be about? Say birds' nests, rejoin the other, who prided himself on his special knowledge of this subject. Then birds' nests, let it be. A long and animated conversation ensued. The bird nesting of his boyhood, the blackbird's nest which his father had held him up in his arms to look at, when a child at Willam, the hedges in which he had found the thrushes and the linnet's nests, the mossy bank where the robin built, the cleft in the branch of the young tree where the chaffinch had reared its dwelling, all rose up clear in his mind's eye, and led him back to the scenes of his boyhood at Calliton and Dulyburn. The colour and number of the bird's eggs, the period of their incubation, the materials employed by them for the walls and lining of their nests, were described by him so vividly, and illustrated with such graphic anecdotes that one of the party remarked that if George Stevenson had not been the greatest engineer of his day, he might have been one of the greatest naturalists. His powers of conversation were very great. He was so thoughtful, so original, and so suggestive, there was scarcely a department of science on which he had not formed some novel, and sometimes daring theory. Thus Mr. Gooch, his pupil, who lived with him when at Liverpool, informs us that when sitting over the fire he would frequently broach his favourite theory of the sun's light and heat, being the original source of the light and heat given forth by the burning coal. It fed the plants on which that coal is made, he would say, and has been bottled up in the earth ever since, to be given out again now for the use of man. His son Robert once said of him, My father flashed his bull's eye full upon a subject, and brought it out in its most vivid light in an instant. His strong common sense, and his varied experience operating upon a thoughtful mind, were his most powerful illuminators. Mr. Stevenson had once a conversation with a watchmaker, whom he astonished by the extent and minuteness of his knowledge as to the parts of a watch. The watchmaker knew him to be an eminent engineer, and asked him how he acquired so extensive a knowledge of a branch of business so much out of his fear. It is very easy to be explained, said Mr. Stevenson. I worked long at watch-cleaning myself, and when I was at a loss I was never ashamed to ask for information. Towards the close of his life he frequently went down to Newcastle and visited the scenes of his boyhood. I have been to Callerton, he said one day to a friend, and seen the fields in which I used to pull turnips at tapens a day, and many a cold finger I can tell you I had. His hand was open to his former fellow workman, whom old age had left in poverty. To poor Robert Gray of Newburn, who acted as his bridesmaid on his marriage to Fanny Henderson, he left a pension for life. He would slip a five-pound note into the hand of a poor man or a widow in such a way as not to offend their delicacy, but to make them feel as if the obligation were all on his side. When farmer Patterson, who married a sister of George's first wife, Fanny Henderson, died and left a large young family fatherless, poverty stared them in the face. But he can, said our informant, George struck in father for them, and perhaps the providential character of the act could not have been more graphically expressed than in these simple words. On his visits to Newcastle he would frequently meet the friends of his early days, occupying very nearly the same station whilst he had, meanwhile, risen to almost worldwide fame. But he was no less hearty in his greeting of them than if their relative position had continued the same. Thus, one day, after shaking hands with Mr. Brandling on a lighting from his carriage, he proceeded to shake hands with his coachman, Anthony Wiggum, a still older friend, though he only sat on the box. Robert Stevenson inherited his father's kindless spirit and benevolent disposition. He almost worshipped his father's memory and was ever ready to attribute to him the chief merit of his own achievements as an engineer. It was through his thorough training, we once heard him say, his example and his character which made me the man I am. On a more public occasion, he said, it is my great pride to remember that whatever may have been done and however extensive may have been my own connection with railway development, all I know and all I have done is primarily due to the parent whose memory I cherish and revere. To Mr. Lough, the sculptor, he said that he never had but two loves, one for his father, the other for his wife. Like his father, he was eminently practical and yet always open to the influence and guidance of correct theory. His main consideration in laying out his lines of railway was what would best answer the intended purpose, or to use his own words to secure the maximum of result with the minimum of means. He was preeminently a safe man, because cautious, tentative and experimental, following closely the lines of conduct trodden by his father and often quoting his maxims. In society Robert Stevenson was simple, unobtrusive and modest, but charming and even fascinating in an eminent degree. Sir John Lawrence has said of him that he was of all others, the man he most delighted to meet in England. He was so manly, yet gentle and with all so great. While admired and beloved by men of such calibre, he was equally a favourite with women and children. He put himself upon the level of all and charmed them no less by his inexpressible kindliness of manner than by his simple, yet impressive conversation. His great wealth enabled him to perform many generous acts in a right noble and yet modest manner, not letting his right hand know what his left hand did. Of the numerous kindly acts of his which have been made public, we may mention the graceful manner in which he repaid the obligations which both himself and his father owed to the Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Institute, when working together as humble experimenters in their cottage at Killingworth. The Institute was struggling under a debt of £6,200, which seriously impaired its usefulness as an educational agency. Robert Stevenson offered to pay one half of the sum, provided the local supporters of the Institute would raise the remainder, and conditional also on the annual subscription being reduced from Touguin is to one, in order that the usefulness of the institution might be extended. The generous offer was accepted and the debt extinguished. Both father and son were offered knighthood, and both declined it. During the summer of 1847, George Stevenson was invited to offer himself as a candidate for the representation of South Shields in Parliament. Thus his politics were at best of a very indefinite sort. Indeed his life had been so much occupied with subjects of a practical character that he had scarcely troubled himself to form any decided opinion on the party political topics of the day, and to stand the crossfire of the electors on the hustings might have been found an even more distressing ordeal than the cross-questioning of the barristers in the committees of the House of Commons. Politics, he used to say, are all matters of theory. There is no stability in them. They shift about like the sands of the sea, and I should feel quite out of my element among them. He had accordingly the good sense respectfully to decline the honour of contesting the representation of South Shields. We have, however, been informed by Sir Joseph Paxton that although George Stevenson held no strong opinions on political questions generally, there was one question on which he entertained a decided conviction, and that was the question of free trade. The words used by him on one occasion to Sir Joseph were very strong. England, said he, is and must be a shopkeeper, and our docks and harbours are only so many wholesale shops, the doors of which should always be kept wide open. It is curious that his son Robert should have taken precisely the opposite view of this question, and acted throughout with the most rigid party among the protectionists, supporting the navigation laws and opposing free trade. But Robert Stevenson will be judged in after times by his achievements as an engineer, rather than by his acts as a politician, and happily these last were far outweighed in value by the immense practical services which he rendered to trade, commerce and civilisation through the facilities which the railways constructed by him afforded for free intercommunication between men in all parts of the world. Speaking in the midst of his friends at Newcastle in 1850 he observed, it seems to me but yesterday that I was engaged as an assistant in laying out the Stockton and Darlington Railway. Since then the Liverpool and Manchester, and a hundred other great works have sprung into existence, as I look back upon these stupendous undertakings accomplished in so short a time, it seems as though we had realised in our generation the fabled powers for the magicians won. Hills have been cut down and valleys filled up, and when these simple expedients have not sufficed, high and magnificent viaducts have been raised, and if mountains stood in the way, tunnels of unexampled magnitude have pierced them through, bearing their triumphant attestation to the indomitable energy of the nation and the unrivaled skill of our artisans. As respects the immense advantages of railways to mankind, there cannot be two opinions. They exhibit, probably, the grandest organisation of capital and labour that the world has yet seen. Although they have unhappily occasioned great loss to many, the loss has been that of individuals, whilst as a national system the gain has already been enormous, as tending to multiply and spread abroad the conveniences of life, opening up new fields of industry, bringing nations nearer to each other, and thus promoting the great ends of civilisation. The founding of the railway system by George Stevenson and his son must be regarded as one of the most important events, if not the very greatest, in the first half of this nineteenth century. End of The Lives of the Engineers George and Robert Stevenson by Samuel Smiles Read by Andy Minter in Tring, Hertfordshire, June 2010