Book excerpt: Tower Bridge is one of London’s most recognizable landmarks. Visited by some 830,000 sightseers every year, it is famous the world over as an icon of England’s capital city. In 2019 the bridge celebrates its 125th anniversary. John M. Smith describes its genesis and construction, the larger-than-life characters that drove the project forward, and the novel technologies employed in the bridge’s design and operation. Supported with a wealth of fascinating original drawings, historic and contemporary photographs, the Haynes Tower Bridge London Manual takes readers the behind the scenes to reveal the innermost workings of this major London landmark.