Joseph Baermann Strauss was born at Cincinnati, Ohio in January in 1870. His mother was a pianist, his father a painter, and young Joseph took up poetry and expected a career in the arts. At the University of Cincinnati the five-foot three-inch Strauss tried out for the football team and ended up recovering at some length in the school infirmary, looking out the window at the Cincinnati-Covington Bridge, the first long-span suspension bridge in the US. His subsequent fascination with bridges changed his course, and the engineering firm he founded built several famous ones including the San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge