sped across the bridge, which had railings for only a third of its length at that time. His stunt garnered further publicity for the bridge, and the toll collected from the span proved lucrative; $5,000 was collected in less than a year since its official opening on August 1, 1848. Disputes arose between the bridge companies and Ellet over their shares of the money, and their relations turned bitter. The companies charged that Ellet was late in his schedule and withheld payment. Ellet retaliated by mounting cannons at the bridge to claim ownership over it. In the end the matter went to court. The bridge companies paid $10,000 to Charles Ellet, and he left the project to work full-time on the Wheeling Suspension Bridge. The Niagara Suspension Bridge project was in hiatus for three years before the bridge companies engaged another renowned civil engineer, John Augustus Roebling, to complete it. The delay caused Roebling to miss out on the honor of building the first permanent bridge to span the Niagara; Serrell completed the Lewiston Suspension Bridge in 1851. Roebling would, however, achieve other honors in building his Niagara Railway Suspension Bridge. John Augustus Roebling's railway bridge Born in Prussia (later a part of Germany), John Augustus Roebling obtained his first conditional engineering degree (Feldmesserprüfung) at Erfurt in 1824. He attended two semesters of lessons at Berlin's Bauakademie and worked for the Prussian government, constructing military roads. Tired of the bureaucracy, he resigned his position and left for the United States in 1830, arriving with his brother in Philadelphia on August 6, 1831. Instead of continuing an engineering profession, he took up farming for a living. After five years he married a tailor's daughter, and had eight children with her over the next decade. He found agrarian work unsatisfactory, and in 1837, after the death of his brother and the birth of his first child, he returned to engineering. Roebling first signed on as a surveyor for the Beaver River canal system, launching his career with a string of canal and railroad projects. Aside from writing articles in engineering journals, Roebling designed his own wire cables and started his own company to manufacture them; the John A. Roebling Company was the first wire rope manufacturer in the United States. Gradually gaining fame for his civil engineering, Roebling finally got to build suspension bridges. His first bridge was the Allegheny Suspension Aqueduct