Thanks, Stephen, for your inspiring comments and prior suggested references. Your railroad reference was most helpful. You and Ken Martin would make quite a Super IT History team.

Maybe someone might pursue this preface:

In the Spring of 1860, six brand new iron bridges of advanced bridge design technology sat along a remote 140-mile section of unfinished wagon road in Indian Territory. Outside of New York, nothing like these Super Bridges existed; yet there they were, six Whipple bowstring arch bridges just made in Philadelphia of cast & wrought iron—bridging streams in the middle of Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) 1100 miles from their origin. But soon they would have no friends. Within a few years they would all be destroyed; within a century almost forgotten. Even their father, the U.S. Government, would burn their birth records under an order from the U.S. Congress. .... "Yes, Mr. President, this really did happen!!"

I have surgery scheduled in a week, so it is time to pass the ball. Thanks again to all.