Thank you for downloading the Witness History Podcast from the BBC World Service.

I'm Wayne Wright and today I'm taking you back 50 years to October 30th, 1973 and the construction

of the first ever bridge connecting Europe with Asia.

The new bridge linked both sides of the narrow Bosphorous Strait, separating European and Asian Turkey and joining the Black Sea with the seat of Marmira.

The hillsides around the bridge,

which were normally green and trees,

were covered, absolutely covered by people, and they all poured onto the bridge, thousands of people.

I'm here to meet Brit Harvey Binney. This is his home in Cambridgeshire in the east of England.

Harvey, who you just heard there, was a key member of the design team for the structure which at the time of its completion had

the fourth longest suspension span in the 1960s Turkey was expanding and commercially

Istanbul had become the country's powerhouse. Turkey was expanding and commercially Istanbul

had become the country's powerhouse,

but the Bosphorus Strait was hampering economic performance.

About 90% of the country is in Asia

and the smaller portion which includes the

ancient city of Istanbul is in Europe and by the mid-1960s the average waiting time to get on the car ferry was about two and a half hours for a

ten minute crossing. That was nothing compared to the separate ferries for lorries where the waiting time was actually measured in days.

So the Turkish government decided they needed a bridge and joined the two parts of their country together.

And Harvey says building the bridge over the Bosphorus

was a huge feat of engineering.

It was a steel construction, a suspension bridge,

which means effectively two towers, one on each side of the water with a cable

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