The John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge opened to pedestrians in December 1866, and the 1,057ft. main span was at that time the longest in the world. Not only was the Cincinnati Suspension Bridge the world's longest, but it was also the first to utilize both vertical suspenders and diagonal stays fanning from either tower. This advance was next seen on the Brooklyn Bridge (also designed by John Roebling), which surpassed the Cincinnati bridge in length and almost every other statistical category in 1883.