The last section of the İzmit Bay Bridge was installed on April 21. The three-kilometer bridge will cut the 70-minute drive around İzmit Gulf to just six minutes and is part of a large highway project that will link industrial Istanbul to İzmir, another industrial hub, as well as many Aegean tourism destinations.
![]()
The Osman Gazi Bridge aka İzmit Bay Bridge (Turkish: İzmit Körfez Köprüsü) is a suspension bridge under construction, located at the Gulf of İzmit along the eastern end of the Sea of Marmara, in close vicinity of Izmit and approximately 50 km (31 mi) southeast of Istanbul, Turkey.
When completed, it will be the fourth-longest suspension bridge in the world by the length of its central span.
Construction and operation of the bridge was awarded to a joint venture formed by five Turkish companies (Nurol, Özaltın, Makyol, Yüksel and Gocay) and one Italian construction company Astaldi following the international Build–operate–transfer tender that took place in April 2009.
Mavi Boncuk |
![]()
The Osman Gazi Bridge aka İzmit Bay Bridge (Turkish: İzmit Körfez Köprüsü) is a suspension bridge under construction, located at the Gulf of İzmit along the eastern end of the Sea of Marmara, in close vicinity of Izmit and approximately 50 km (31 mi) southeast of Istanbul, Turkey.
When completed, it will be the fourth-longest suspension bridge in the world by the length of its central span.
Construction and operation of the bridge was awarded to a joint venture formed by five Turkish companies (Nurol, Özaltın, Makyol, Yüksel and Gocay) and one Italian construction company Astaldi following the international Build–operate–transfer tender that took place in April 2009.
Mavi Boncuk |
Köprü: bridge EN[1] oldTR: [ Uyghur Maniheist texts, 900] köni nomluġ köprügüg körkittiŋiz [hakiki öğretinin köprüsünü gösterdiniz] oldTR köprüg köprü from oldTR köpür- şişmek, kabarmak +Ig
[1] bridge (v.) Old English brycgian "to bridge, make a causeway," from bridge (n.). Related: Bridged; bridging.
bridge (n.1) "causeway over a ravine or river," Old English brycge, from Proto-Germanic *brugjo (cognates: Old Saxon bruggia, Old Norse bryggja, Old Frisian brigge, Dutch brug, Old High German brucca, German Brücke), from PIE root *bhru "log, beam," hence "wooden causeway" (cognates: Gaulish briva "bridge," Old Church Slavonic bruvuno "beam," Serbian brv "footbridge"). For vowel evolution, see bury. Meaning "bony upper part of the nose" is from early 15c.; of stringed instruments from late 14c. The bridge of a ship (by 1854) originally was a "narrow raised platform athwart the ship whence the Captain issues his orders" [Sir Geoffrey Callender, "Sea Passages"].
Bridge in steam-vessels is the connection between the paddle-boxes, from which the officer in charge directs the motion of the vessel. [Smythe, "The Sailor's Word-Book," 1867]
bridge (n.2) card game, 1886 (perhaps as early as 1843), an alteration of biritch, but the source and meaning of that are obscure. "Probably of Levantine origin, since some form of the game appears to have been long known in the Near East" [OED]. One guess is that it represents Turkish *bir-üç "one-three," because one hand is exposed and three are concealed. The game also was known early as Russian whist (attested in English from 1839).
"... This earlier dating of the game and the probability that it was of Turkish or Russian origin is strongly supported by evidence uncovered in 1974-1975 by Robert H. True, who quotes from a 1904 issue of Notes and Queries, a letter from A. M. Keiley (nationality unknown): I was in 1886 a member of the Khedival Club in Cairo, and bridge was the principal card game played there at my entry and, as members told me, had long so been. One of the names by which bridge was first known on the Riviera was Khedive, presumably because players had met it in Cairo. Turkey held Egypt almost without interruption from the early 16th century until World War I and Khedive was the official title held by the Turkish viceroy.
Further new evidence confirming Levantine origin and earlier dating of the game was presented by Bob van de Velde of The Netherlands in IBPA Bulletin No:222. Sources for this evidence are Daily Telegraph (England, November 1932), La revue du bridge (France, December 1932) and Bridge (The Netherlands, February 1933). The primary source, Daily Telegraph, carried an article by a Mr. O. H. van Millingen who lived in Constantinople in 1879 or 1880 and remembered a very interesting game called Britch, a game that became very popular in all clubs and dethroned the game of whist. He included a letter, dated January 7, 1922, of his friend Edouard Graziani who at that time worked for the Italian Embassy as a translator and was one of the best Bridge players of the Cercle d¹Orient. In August 1873 Graziani played the game of bridge for the first time at the home of Mr. Georges Coronio, manager of the Bank of Constantinople. Also present at that game in Buyukdere along the bank of the Upper Bosphorus were Mr. Eustache Eugenidi and a Mr. Serghiadi, a Rumanian financier who taught the principles of bridge to the foursome. After Constantinople, Graziani wrote, bridge came first to Cairo, from where it conquered the Riviera, Paris, London and then New York..."SOURCE
[*] The name bridge has its origins in the name of an earlier game. Bridge departed from whist with the creation of Biritch (or "Russian Whist") in the 19th century, and evolved through the late 19th and early 20th centuries to form the present game. The word biritch itself is a spelling of the Russian word Бирюч (бирчий, бирич), an occupation of a diplomatic clerk or an announcer. However some experts think that the Russian origin of the game is a fallacy.