Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 January 1893 — ENGINEERING FACTS. [ARTICLE]

ENGINEERING FACTS.

The Greatest Works of the World and When Constructed. The Romans built the first dikes in Holland. In I*Bo there were 2,814 lighthouses in the world. The first coast light in the United States was in 1673. The first Kddystone lighthouse was erected iu 1758. Asphalt pavements were first laid in Paris in 1854: The diamond drill is pointed with black diamonds. The total cost of the Suez Canal exceeded £20,000,000. A tunnel between Dover and Calais was proposed in 1802. The coast survey of the United States was beguu iu 1817. Roebling’s railway bridge at Niagara has a span of 831 feet, with 50 feet deflection. The Cherbourg “digue” is 4,120 yards long, having Iwo arms inclosing the entrance. Pontoon bridges, with copper pontoons, were invented bv tho French about 1672. At the beginning of the eight eenth century all European armies had pontoon trains. The weight required toorush a square inch of brick varies from 1,200 to 4,500 pounds. Gunter’s chain, used iu measuring land, was invented by Edmund Gunter in 1006. The great aqueduct which supplied Carthage with water was seventy miles long. There was a modiieval assieiation of engineers called the “Brethren of the Bridge.” The St. Gotlinrd tunnel is nine and onefourth miles long; began, 1870; opened, 1881. The Minot Ledge lighthouse is of granite; height, 88 feet, the lower 40 feet being solid. A pneumatio dispatch tube, thirty inches in diameter, was laid down in Londonin 1861.

A light suspension bridge was built at Niagara Falls iu 1848, and removed iu 1854. In A. I). 105 Trajan built a magnificent stone bridge across the Danube 4,770 feet long.. The Brooklyn suspension bridge is 5,863 foot long, 1,505 feet central span and 135 feet high. In blowing up Blossom Rock, Sun Francisco Bay, 43,000 pounds of explosives were used. The caissons of the St. Louis bridge were sunk, ‘in one ■case, 120 feet through the sand. There irro eighty miles of tunnels in Great Britain, their total cost exceeding £6,5*0,000. A tunnel under the Thames was proposed in 1700; the present tunnel was finished in 1843. (The most noted lighthouse in the United States is at Minot’s Ixulge, in Massachusetts Bay. Tho cost of tho Union Pacific was ceS orted as $112,350,260, an average <*f *08,778 a mile. The excavation of Hell Gate reef was attended by 21,000 sounding# and 8,000 'borings. The Croton aqueduct in New York surpasses all modern engineering efforts ■of this kind.

Tho first lighthouse in Ithe Unibed ■States was built oil Little Brewster •Island, Boston, 1715. VentilaUug machines «e a 'necessity 'in coal mines to overcome the effects of -anxious gases. The Eads jetties are regard ell by engimeors as a greater triumph than the St. tiLouis bridge. The theodolite wm first constructed in '■the scyenteejutli century, by an unknown inventor. The giant statues of llameses were {placed in pontiou % rolling them along greased planks. Tho receiving reservoir# *f the Croton aqueduct have a joint capacity of 1,180,'OOO,OOO gnlktuw. Including commissions and interest, rtihe total cost of the Croton aqueduct sues $12,500,006. A railway tunnel under-the English CLannel wits projected iu 1800; charter refused by Parliament. The “digue,” or breakwater, of Cherbourg is one of the boldest engineering touts ever performed. The preliminary surveys for ithe Pacific Railroad required four seasons, and cost over $1,000,000. Cinil engineering becaihe important about ,1(550, when Sincutou began the Eddyetone lighthouse. The Great levels in East England, 2,000 equare miles, huve been recovered from the sea by dikes. Cornelius Vermuyden, the Dutch engineer, was invited to England iu 1021 to embaa.k the Fens district.

Every pontoon used in the French army weighs 1,058 pounds and lias a buoyancy of 18,075 pounds. The walk of Babylon arc said by Herodotus ,to have been 330 feet high and 100 feet thick at £be base. The Mont Ctsnis tunnel is seven and oue-balf mile* long; begun, 1857; opened, 1871, total cost, £2,000,000. The surveysof the Hoosac-tunnel were so accurate that the drifts differed by only five-sixths of an inch. Jerusalem is still supplied with water from Solomon’s Pools, through an aqueduct built by the Crusaders. The engineers of San Francisco propose to supply that city with water- from J,ake Tahoe, 150 miles distant. Westminster Bridge, built in 1750, was the first in which the foundations were laid by the aid of caissons. The Pharos light hourie, Alexandria, was built B, C. 285; hightsso feet, light visible forty-two miles. The Caledonian Canal, Scotland, is sixty miles long, twenty feet deep, 120 vide at the top and and 50 at the bottom. The day before the battle of Wagram Napoleon had a complete pontoon bridge built and floated into place. The Union Pacific lias fifteen long and a great number of short tunnels, the aggregate length being O,OCO feet. In 1792 Van Estiu invented n hollow sphere and tube several hundred feet in length, the motor power being air. Some of the Comstoek mines are so deep that no means have yet been devised to overcome the excessive heat. The Union Pacific road crosses nine mountain ranges, the highest being the Black Hills, 8,242 feet above sea level. In the construction of the Suez Canal 80,000,000 cubic yards of material were excavated by 30,000 laborers. •‘Engineering is the art of directing the great sources of power in nature for the use and convenience of man.” Caracalla’s engineers ''understood the principle of the siphon and employed it in some of their water works. The Rialto at Venice-, designed by Michael Angelo and erected in 1588, has k single span of ninety.eight feet, with twenty-three feet rise. The accuracy of the surveying in indent engineering is marvelous eonsid-

cring sue rudeness of the instruments. The famous bridge constructed by Queen Nitooris at Babylon, and described by Diodorous, was five furlongs long. Home was supplied from twenty-four urge aqueducts, which brought 50,000,000 cubic feet of water daily into tho city. The first tunnel for commercial purposes was executed by M. Riguet, in the reign of Louis XIV., at Bezieres, France. In boring the Mont Cenis and Bt. Gotliard tunnels, ordinary means were used first, then steam power; finally compressed air. It is estimated that by improper methods in the Pennsylvania mines, 30 to 40 per cent of the anthracite. coal was formerly lost. The Hoosac tunnel, Massachusetts, is tho longest in the United States; length, four ami three-fourths mile; cost, $14,000,000. * The Croton aqueduct is forty miles long, having sixteen tunnels and a * collecting reservoir of 3,000,000,000 gallons capacity. The Ernst August tunnel in the Hart/, mines is nine miles long, and the water it drains from the mines is used for transportation. The Languedoc Ship Canal, in France, by a short passage of 148 miles, saves, a sea voyage of 2,000 miles by tho Straits of Gibraltar.

Throe different boring machines, designed to. cut out, a central bore twentyfaur feet in diameter, were invented for use in the Hoosac tunnel. The New York obelisk was brought to this country in a specia’ly prepared vessel, the hold being opened at the bow to > admit the stone. At the present day most heavy tunnel work is done by machine drills, driven by compressed air, which also serves to ventilate tho works. Some of the English pumping ongines porfonn work equalling the raising of 120,000,006 pounds one foot high by tho consumption of otie-hundrod weight of coni. The Simplon road, from Switzerland to Italy, was built by Napoleon’s engineers, in 1807; over 40,000 workmen were employed at one time. The largest monolith ever cut in this country was quairied of granite in Missouri mu! transported to tho Easton a specially prepared train. The length of the Tay bridge which fell, 1870, whs 10,013 feet, 00 feet above tho water level, 85 spans. The new Tay bridge was begun in 188 p. One of tho first tunnels in the United States was on the Alleghany Portage Railroad in Pennsylvania. It was 1)00 feet long ami finished in 1831. Of tho whole length of the Suez Canal, sixty-six miles are cuttings, fourteen were made by dredging through the lakes, and eight miles required no labor. The Suez Canal, tho greatest work of marine engineering, is eighty-eight miles long, and reduces the distance from England to India from 11,370 miles to 7,028 miles. The Victoria railroad bridge over the St. Lawrence at Montreal is two miles ' long, dost over $5,000,000, and contains 10,500 tons of iron‘and 3,000,006 cubic feet of masonry. The auger that bores a square hole consists of a screw auger in a square tube, tho corners of which are sharpened from within, ami as the auger advances pressure on the tube cuts the round holo square. The most famous wooden bridge wan built at Sclmffhauscn in 1757, bv Grubenmann, an illiterate carpenter. It bad: two wooden arches with spans of 103. and 172 feet respectively, Tho best example of a stone bridge in the United States is the high bridge of the Croton aqueduct. Its length is 1,460 feet, the top of the purapet 116 feet above high water; there are fifteen arches, eight of which have an 80-foot span,—*. |Bt. Louis Globe-Democrat,