SYDNEY, April 8, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – A former French spy hailed as a genius
for an engineering feat that made building the Sydney Opera House possible
has died aged 97, officials said Monday.
Joe Bertony — one of the original engineers of Australia’s most
recognisable building — handwrote 30,000 separate equations to create the
“erection arch” or truss which held the concrete sails in place during
construction.
“Bertony was a remarkable man who will be remembered as the inventor of the
Sydney Opera House’s mobile erection arch,” Sydney Opera House chief
executive Louise Herron said in a statement.
“Those calculations were checked by the only computer in Australia at the
time with a large enough capacity to do so. Not a single error was found,”
she said.
“Bertony was a genius. Without him, the spectacular sails might never have
become a reality.”
He died at his home in Sydney on Sunday, the Sydney Morning Herald
reported.
Born on the Mediterranean island of Corsica, Bertony joined the French navy
to study naval engineering and was recruited as a spy, according to author
Helen Pitt, who has written a book about the Opera House.
He was twice captured by the Germans during World War II and sent to
concentration camps, but escaped both times and was later awarded the Croix
de Guerre by the French government for his wartime actions, Pitt added.
The Opera House, which opened in 1973, is billed as Australia’s number-one
tourist destination and is the country’s busiest performing arts centre.