ETYM Old Eng. brig, brigge, brug, brugge, AS. brycg, bricg; akin to Fries. bregge, Dutch brug, Old High Germ. brucca, German brücke, Icel. bryggja pier, bridge, Swed. brygga, Dan. brygge.
1. A structure spanning a river or a valley by which people or vehicles may cross; SYN. span.
2. Something resembling a bridge in form or function.
3. The hard ridge that forms the upper part of the nose.
4. A denture anchored to teeth on either side of missing teeth; SYN. bridgework.
5. A circuit consisting of two branches (4 arms arranged in a diamond configuration) across which a meter is connected; SYN. bridge circuit.
6. The link between two lenses of a pair of glasses; it rests on nose; SYN. nosepiece.

1. To connect or reduce the distance between; SYN. bridge over.
2. To cross over on a bridge.
3. To make a bridge across.

Card game derived from whist. First played among members of the Indian Civil Service about 1900, bridge was taken to England in 1903 and played at the Portland Club in 1908. It is played in two forms: auction bridge and contract bridge.
Any of various card games based on whist for four players.
Any of various card games for usually four players in two partnerships that bid for the right to declare a trump suit, seek to win tricks equal to the final bid, and play with the hand of declarer's partner exposed and played by declarer; especially; contract bridge

The forward part of a ship's superstructure from which the ship is navigated.
Part of a ship from which the vessel is steered and captain stands; SYN. bridge deck.

An electrical instrument or network for measuring or comparing resistances, inductances, capacitances, or impedances by comparing the ratio of two opposing voltages to a known ratio.
A Wheatstone bridge configuration utilizing four active strain gages.

(1879-1941) English composer. His works include the orchestral suite The Sea 1912, and Oration 1930 for cello and orchestra. He taught English composer Benjamin Britten.

Aa partial denture anchored to adjacent teeth.

In music, a support for the strings of an instrument that determines its length and transmits vibration to the body. In violins, lutes, guitars, and other instruments the bridge is fixed, but in the Indian tambura (long lute) and Japanese koto (zither), bridges are movable to change the tuning. The monochord of music theory also has a movable bridge.
A musical passage linking two sections of a composition.

Structure that provides a continuous path or road over water, valleys, ravines, or above other roads. The basic designs and composites of these are based on the way they bear the weight of the structure and its load. Beam, or girder, bridges are supported at each end by the ground with the weight thrusting downward. Cantilever bridges are a complex form of girder. Arch bridges thrust outward but downward at their ends; they are in compression. Suspension bridges use cables under tension to pull inward against anchorages on either side of the span, so that the roadway hangs from the main cables by the network of vertical cables. The cable-stayed bridge relies on diagonal cables connected directly between the bridge deck and supporting towers at each end. Some bridges are too low to allow traffic to pass beneath easily, so they are designed with movable parts, like swing and draw bridges.
history
In prehistory, people used logs or wove vines into ropes that were thrown across the obstacle. By 4000 BC arched structures of stone and/or brick were used in the Middle East, and the Romans built long arched spans, many of which are still standing. Wooden bridges proved vulnerable to fire and rot and many were replaced with cast and wrought iron, but these were disadvantaged by low tensile strength. The Bessemer process produced steel that made it possible to build long-lived framed structures that support great weight over long spans.
Today the longest spans are suspension bridges, with the measurement referring only to that part of the bridge actually suspended by cables.
construction
Girders may be plate, with solid plates between the upper and lower flanges, or lattice (trusses) of constant or varying height. The box girder, forming a closed tube, was first used in the Britannia tubular bridge over the Menai Straits 1850, which established the superiority of wrought iron over cast iron. Arches built of stone, brick, or reinforced concrete are commonly used for short spans. The longest concrete arch bridge is at Gladesville, Sydney, Australia (1964), and spans 305 m/1,000 ft. The earliest attempt to use iron for an arched bridge was made at Lyons 1755; the first completed was the bridge over the river Severn at Coalbrookdale, England, 1779, of which a semicircular cast-iron arch still stands. It was not until 1864 that a wrought-iron arch bridge of importance was constructed, when a bridge of three spans was built crossing the Rhine at Koblenz, Germany.
The first major steel bridge, Captain Ead’s great bridge over the Mississippi at St Louis, was completed in 1874. The arches are formed of open triangulated ribs, supporting the roadway by vertical columns at the apexes of the arch bracing. The Sydney Harbour Bridge, which opened in 1932, is one of the great single arch bridges of the world, with a span of 503 m/1,650 ft. Another great arch bridge in steel was built in 1932, the Bayonne Bridge in New York, which exceeds the span of Sydney Harbour Bridge by 0.6 m/2 ft. Tied arches avoid the need for strong abutments to support the thrust of the arch which is sustained by the carriageway instead. The earliest tied bowspring arch was built at Lugao, Hungary, in 1833, where a cast-iron arch was tied at deck level by a chain. The longest tied arch, at Port Mann, Vancouver, was constructed in 1964, spans 366 m/1,200 ft and rises 76 m/249 ft.
Cantilever bridges, were, in a crude form, known in very early times by the Chinese, and were constructed of timber. The longest cantilever bridge for the railroad was completed 1917 at Quebec, after the original design collapsed during construction in 1907. Its cantilevers rest upon points, and derive their whole stability from the land anchorages upon the shore. The year 1927 saw the opening of two important cantilever bridges—in May the bridge over the Carquinez Straits, California, and in August the International Peace Bridge between Buffalo, US, and Fort Erie, Canada.
Suspension bridges, with long, narrow floors hung from, or carried upon, ropes or chains were used by the Incas of Peru for spans of up to 60 m/197 ft in the 16th century. In more modern times, one of the earliest suspension bridges of note was the Menai Bridge, 1819. The famed Brooklyn Bridge in New York was completed 1883. Its simple method of cable spinning was the basis of future suspension bridges throughout the US. In 1926 the highway bridge from Philadelphia to Camden over the Delaware River was completed. The George Washinton Bridge from New York City to New Jersey was completed 1931. It has steel towers 194 m/636 ft above high water and a clearance of 65 m/213 ft at the center, allowing the largest oceangoing ships to pass beneath at all times with the masts standing up. Until 1964, the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco, was the world’s longest, but its length was exceeded by that of the 4.8 km/3 mi, twin-decked Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, which spans the mouth of New York’s harbor from Brooklyn to Sta
ten Island. It was opened in 1964 and has a central span of 1006 m/3,300 ft, carrying four traffic lanes and a cycle track. The Severn Suspension Bridge, which joins S England to S Wales was designed in conjunction with the Forth Road Bridge, Scotland, and completed 1966. The Bosporus Bridge, Istanbul, Turkey (1973) joins Europe to Asia; its lightness relative to its span (1074 m/3,523 ft) demonstrates the progress made in the art of bridging since the Golden Gate Bridge was built.
Suspension bridges for long spans and box-girder bridges for shorter spans have led to a hybrid form, cable-stayed bridges, which use high-strength cables to reduce the bending action in the mid-span section of a box girder. Usually two towers support the cables, which may be arranged in a fan form, or in a parallel form called “modified fan”. The 2,200-m/7,216-ft Pont de Normandie, which spans the Seine estuary, opened Jan 1995, and became the world’s longest cable-stayed bridge. Cable-stayed concrete bridges have been built for shorter spans; Tiel Bridge on the Waal River, Netherlands (1975), has a span of 267 m/876 ft supported by a fan arrangement of cables.
Precast concrete has been used extensively since the Second World War for bridge construction. Concrete, while having a high resistance to compressive forces, is relatively weak in tension. In pre-stressed concrete the tension forces are taken up by high-tensile steel wires, and this has resulted in the construction of a number of elegant bridges. The longest cantilever span in pre-stressed concrete is the Urato Bridge, Shikoku, Japan (1972), which has a central span of 230 m/1,754 ft and a mid-span depth of only 4.5 m/15 ft.

1. A device that connects networks using the same communications protocols so that information can be passed from one to the other. Compare gateway.
2. A device that connects two LANs (local area networks), whether or not they use the same protocols, and allows information to flow between them. The bridge operates at the ISO/OSI data-link layer. Also called: layer switch. See also data-link layer. Compare router.
In computing, a device that connects two similar local area networks (LANs). Bridges transfer data in packets between the two networks, without making any changes or interpreting the data in any way. See also router and brouter.
In terms of the Year 2000 problem, a program, routine, or other conversion mechanism that converts date formats from 2-digit years to 4-digit years and vice versa. A bridge is used as a remedy for literally bridging the 2-digit/4-digit format gap between programs or systems.