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WOW

September 24, 2021/0 Comments/in Friday Afternoon, Gateway Arch, Monument, St. Louis, Trivia /by Steve Kowalski

Since its’ completion in 1965, the Gateway Arch has been a must-see monument to our westward expansion. And an opportunity to have fun with photography & Photoshop. :))))))))))) Read on and be sure to check out the video link at the end. It shows the ride to the top of the gateway arch in a tram which is a mix between an elevator, a tram and a Ferris wheel. And the gateway to the west museum. What an engineering marvel!!! What a country we live in!!!!!

Splendid. Impressive. Enormous. Majestic. I could go on. Having just returned from the Fall ’21 Heat Treating Show in St. Louis, (special shout out to all my peeps who took time to visit Peggy and I at the booth – so nice to interact with other humans face to face the old school way) one thing that is stuck in my “so, how was the show” response is the famous St. Louis Arch. It is really something. Not only does it match up with my love of engineering and architecture, it also triggers my love of PIA (Pain In The @%$) Jobs! – think about that first meeting – “hey Gang, let’s build a curving stainless steel monument to America’s westward expansion, make it the tallest in the world, and design it using about 900 tons of materials. Buy the land – check. Make some drawings – check. Hire some engineers and builders – check. Work really hard to finish a structure that’s 630 feet long that visitors can travel INSIDE and then see about 30 miles off in each direction – WHAT? It’s so cool, during my stay I made time to go for a run around downtown St. Louis making sure to go around the arch – simply awe inspiring especially in the dark! So, I just had to do some info digging and share with you. Enjoy! Special thanks to traveltrivia.com, Wikipedia and for the info.

The Gateway Arch is a 190-metre (623 ft) monument in St. Louis, Missouri, clad in stainless steel and built in the form of a weighted catenary arch. It is the world’s tallest arch and Missouri’s tallest accessible building.

Built as a monument to the westward expansion of the United States and officially dedicated to “the American people”, the Arch, commonly referred to as “The Gateway to the West” is the centerpiece of Gateway Arch National Park and has become an internationally recognized symbol of St. Louis, as well as a popular tourist destination.

The Arch was designed by Finnish-American architect Eero Saarinen in 1947; construction began on February 12, 1963 and was completed on October 28, 1965 at an overall cost of $13 million (equivalent to about $100 million today). The monument opened to the public on June 10, 1967 and is located at the site of St. Louis’s founding on the west bank of the Mississippi River.

The search for an architect for a new monument at the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial took the form of a competition. Among the 170-plus submissions received in the 1947 contest was a design from acclaimed Finnish-American Eriel Saarinen featuring a tall stone gate. His son Eero also entered. Several months later, a telegram arrived at the Saarinen offices intended to inform Eero that he had made the shortlist; however, it was addressed to Eriel by mistake. Father and son celebrated a family success with Champagne. When the administrative error was discovered, they opened a second bottle and toasted Eero instead, as in the end, it was Eero’s design vision which resonated most with the judging committee.

You’ve probably seen photos where the arch looks taller than it is wide, but it’s an optical illusion. The arch measures 630 feet tall, and if you measure from leg to leg at ground level, that’s also its exact width. But because the shape of the arch draws the eye upwards and narrows as it rises, our brains don’t accurately process the dimensions, and we convince ourselves the arch is taller than it actually is.

The cross-sections of the arch’s legs are equilateral triangles, narrowing from 54 feet per side at the bases to 17 feet per side at the top. Each wall consists of a stainless steel skin covering a sandwich of two carbon-steel walls with reinforced concrete in the middle from ground level to 300 feet (91 m), with carbon steel to the peak. The arch is hollow to accommodate a unique tram system that takes visitors to an observation deck at the top.

The structural load is supported by a stressed-skin design. Each leg is embedded in 25,980 short tons (23,570 t) of concrete 44 feet thick and 60 feet deep. Twenty feet (6.1 m) of the foundation is in bedrock.

Saarinen’s monument is the centerpiece of Gateway Arch National Park, dating back to 1935, when the National Park Service created a space to represent Thomas Jefferson’s vision of a transcontinental United States and St. Louis’ role as a gateway for westward expansion. Jefferson believed the American West was worth exploring, and not the empty wilderness that some of his contemporaries believed it was. During his presidency, he secured the Louisiana Purchase and sent Lewis and Clark to map the Missouri River and find a way beyond the Rockies to the Pacific Ocean.

The original name for Gateway Arch National Park was the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial. The arch itself came several decades later, constructed between 1963 and 1965. It stands between the Mississippi River and the Old Courthouse, where the landmark Dred Scott case was tried. The monument honors both Jefferson and Scott and is dedicated to “the American people” overall. Six themed exhibits trace key events in U.S. history from 1764 to 1965, celebrating America’s pioneering spirit and the impact of westward expansion on landscapes and communities.

The arch is engineered to resist earthquakes and sway up to 18 inches in either direction, while withstanding winds up to 150 miles per hour (240 km/h). The structure weighs 42,878 short tons (38,898 t), of which concrete composes 25,980 short tons (23,570 t); structural steel interior, 2,157 short tons (1,957 t); and the 6.3mm thick grade 304 stainless steel panels that cover the exterior of the arch, 886 short tons (804 t). This amount of stainless steel is the most used in any one project in history – (they should have called me to do the heat treating!!)

The arch is a weighted catenary—as a chain that supports its own weight is purely tension – its legs are wider than its upper section. The geometric form of the structure was set by exact mathematical equations provided to Saarinen by Hannskarl Bandel. A hyperbolic cosine function describes the shape of a catenary. A chain that supports only its own weight forms a catenary; the chain is purely in tension. The catenary arch is the strongest of all arches since the thrust passes through the legs and is absorbed in the foundations, instead of forcing the legs apart.

To get visitors to the top of the arch proved trickier than first thought, as Eero Saarinen demanded a solution that would not alter its exterior appearance. Engineers considered elevators, escalators, and even a Ferris wheel, but none of those options were practical. Finally, Saarinen hired an elevator parking specialist named Dick Bowser and gave him just two weeks to come up with a solution. Bowser presented his idea of a custom-built tram, and the puzzle was solved. Two separate trams operate independently, one inside each opposing leg of the arch, and take four minutes to reach the top. Each tram consists of eight pods and holds five passengers. These pods begin their journey horizontally, suspended from a track above. As the track turns vertical, the pod pivots to ensure passengers remain upright, rotating 155 degrees in total. The trams use a series of cables, counterweights, and other features to function safely.

Though proponents envisioned a project that would revitalize the waterfront and stimulate the St. Louis economy, the plans to build the Gateway Arch National Park were met with opposition. Much of the financing came from federal funds, but some felt the money could have been better spent improving the lives of the people of St Louis instead.

When President Franklin Delano Roosevelt approved the plans in 1935, he set in motion a chain of events which would lead to what one city engineer called “an enforced slum clearance program.” Amid allegations of vote-rigging, the order was given to raze several blocks of riverfront real estate to the ground. They contained many small factories employing around 5,000 blue collar workers.

That wasn’t the end of the controversy. When World War II came, the site stood derelict for a decade. Later, when construction of an interstate kick-started the redevelopment, it initially isolated the park from the surrounding neighborhoods. The issue that wouldn’t be fixed until 2018, when the CityArchRiver project, dubbed the “park over the highway” came to fruition and finally provided a pedestrian link to downtown St Louis.

Several U.S. presidents have visited Gateway Arch National Park, including Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan. However, security concerns prevent a U.S. president from actually ascending to the top of the Gateway Arch. (In the confined space of the trams, they’d be vulnerable, but an exception was made in 1967 for Eisenhower).

While construction on the arch was completed in 1965, it wasn’t until July 24, 1967, that the inaugural public ride on the north tram took place. The attraction was then still a work in progress; the south tram wouldn’t be completed until the following year, while the landscaping and the Museum of Westward Expansion were still several years away.

In November 1967, Eisenhower accompanied Dick Bowser to the top of the Gateway Arch, going against the wishes of the Secret Service. Even so, there were certain conditions attached to his rule-breaking journey. It couldn’t be an official part of his itinerary (that way details wouldn’t be published in advance) and he’d have to visit outside regular opening hours to avoid the general public. Eisenhower agreed — and who could blame him for not wanting to miss out on such an experience?

The Gateway Arch is one of the most visited tourist attractions in the world with over four million visitors annually, of which around one million travel to the top. The arch was listed as a National Historic Landmark on June 2, 1987 and is also listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

VIDEO OF THE ARCH, TRAM AND MUSEUM

Construction of the Gateway Arch, St. Louis program (1965) Grab a cup of coffee, this baby is 29 minutes long.

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DO YOU LIKE CONTESTS?
Me, too.
As you may know the Kowalski Heat Treating logo finds its way
into the visuals of my Friday posts.
I. Love. My. Logo.
One week there could be three logos.
The next week there could be 15 logos.
And sometimes the logo is very small or just a partial logo showing.
But there are always logos in some of the pictures.
So, I challenge you, my beloved readers, to count them and send me a
quick email with the total number of logos in the Friday post.
On the following Tuesday I’ll pick a winner from the correct answers
and send that lucky person some great KHT swag.
So, start counting and good luck!
Oh, and the logos at the very top header don’t count.
Got it? Good. :-))))
Have fun!!

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O-H

September 17, 2021/0 Comments/in Friday Afternoon, History, Ohio State, Trivia /by Steve Kowalski

Ohio State Alumni and Ohio State fans are literally everywhere in the world. And they never miss an opportunity to display their O-H-I-O. Gotta love ‘em!!!! :)))))))))))))))))))

I – O. For anyone who is part of the college, either as an alumni, fan, or observer, this makes all the sense in the world. Having attended and graduated from another university a bit farther southwest, I can still call myself a Buckeyes fan. History, tradition, passion and buckeyes (yep, I eat them too), most just can’t say enough about OSU – the only university in the country the has the word THE in its name. Today marks the anniversary of when the school opened so many years ago, so I scoured the net and found some fun trivia. 100+ year history, touching millions of lives each year (60,000+ enrollment yearly). Enjoy, and thanks to OSU and Wikipedia for the trivia. Enjoy!

Classic
Ohio State Battle Cry

The Ohio State University was founded in 1870 as a land-grant university in accordance with the Morrill Act of 1862 under the name of Ohio Agricultural and Mechanical College. Initially, it was thought that one of Ohio’s two existing public universities (Ohio University and Miami University YEA!) would be designated as the land-grant institution, and each engaged in a vigorous competition to win over the state legislature.
At the strong urging of Republican stalwart Governor Rutherford B. Hayes, however, it was ultimately decided to establish a new university to be located near the legislature in Columbus. Hayes’ role in founding the university is recognized in Hayes Hall (named after Rutherford, not Woody), the oldest building still standing on the campus. Hayes later noted that the founding of Ohio State was one of his two greatest achievements—the other being Ohio’s ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment.
The school was originally situated within a farming community located on the northern edge of Columbus and was intended to matriculate students of various agricultural and mechanical disciplines. The university opened its doors to 24 students on September 18, 1873.
In 1878, the first class of six men graduated. The first woman graduated the following year.
In 1900, in light of its expanded focus, the college permanently changed its name to the now-familiar “The Ohio State University”. Ohio State began accepting graduate students in the 1880s, with the university awarding its first master’s and doctoral degrees in 1886 and 1890 respectively. 1891 saw the founding of Ohio State’s law school.
From its inception, a debate was waged between those in favor of broadening the university’s focus to encompass the liberal arts and sciences and those who favored a more limited focus. Governor Hayes viewed the selection of the university’s location as key to keeping the university free of excess influence by the state’s agricultural interests.
The (“broad-gauge”) faction was led by university trustee Joseph Sullivant. When the votes were completed, it had been decided to offer seven fields of study: agriculture, ancient languages, chemistry, geology, mathematics, modern languages, and physics. Only the ancient languages curriculum came down to a close vote, passing by a margin of 8–7. Later that year, the university welcomed its first class of twenty-four students, including three women.
Two factors in Ohio State’s formative years would hinder the university’s immediate development: Fueled by the agriculture interests and the Springfield business community that supplied them, the attitude of Ohio farmers towards the university had turned from one of indifference to one of outright hostility. By 1880, this hostility had begun to make its presence felt in the state legislature.
By 1891, Ohio State had grown to a degree that Governor James E. Campbell recommended a permanent levy on the tax duplicate to support its continued growth. The significant role that the fledgling university had begun to play within the state, as well as the peace that Hayes had brokered with the state’s agricultural interests, was underscored by the fact that the proposal passed without opposition despite the insistence of Ohio State’s board of trustees that neither Miami nor Ohio universities be included in the bill.
In 1906, Ohio State President William Oxley Thompson along with the university’s supporters in the state legislature put forth the Lybarger Bill with the aim of shifting virtually all higher education support to the continued development of Ohio State while funding only the “normal school” functions of Miami and Ohio University. Although the Lybarger Bill failed narrowly to gain passage, in its place was passed the compromise Eagleson Bill, which determined that all doctoral education and research functions would be the role of Ohio State and that the two older institutions would not offer instruction beyond the master’s degree level. This arrangement would stand for the next fifty years until population growth had necessitated additional Ph. D programs in the state.
1912 saw the formation of Ohio State’s Graduate School to coordinate the university’s burgeoning master’s and doctoral enrollments. In 1914, Ohio State’s college of medicine was formed through a merger with Starling Medical College. That year also saw the founding of Ohio State’s School of Dentistry. In 1916, the board of trustees approved the formation of a College of Commerce and Journalism.
Subsequently, Ohio State’s solidifying of its role as the state’s flagship, comprehensive university was fairly rapid, as demonstrated by its 1916 induction into the prestigious Association of American Universities. To date, it remains the only public university in Ohio to be extended AAU membership.
This momentum was further accelerated by Governor Harry L. Davis, who in his 1921 inaugural address declared that, “In Ohio State University the commonwealth has an educational institution which should become the largest and best state institution in the United States. This is evidenced by the development of the institution in recent years, and I desire specifically to ask the co-operation of the General Assembly in the effort which I propose to make to help the Ohio State University to attain that goal in the not too distant future.” He subsequently shepherded a one-eighth of a mill tax levy through the legislature to fund a university building fund. Seventy-two percent of the funds were earmarked for the Ohio State University with the remainder split between Ohio University and Miami University. By decade’s end, the university’s enrollment stood at 15,126 a more than fourfold increase from just twenty years prior.
With the onset of the Great Depression, Ohio State would face many of the challenges affecting universities throughout America as budget support was slashed, and students without the means of paying tuition returned home to support families.
By the middle thirties, however, enrollment had stabilized due in large part to the role of FERA (the Federal Emergency Relief Administration) and later the NYA (National Youth Administration).[6] By the end of the decade, enrollment had still managed to grow to 17,568. Two important initiatives were also begun during this decade. Each would come to play increasingly important roles in the university’s development up to the present time. In 1934, the Ohio State Research Foundation was begun to bring in outside funding for faculty research projects. In 1938, a development office was opened to begin raising funds privately to offset reductions in state support.
In 1952, Ohio State founded the interdisciplinary Mershon Center for International Security Studies, which it still houses. In 2003, the United States Department of Homeland Security decided to base the National Academic Consortium for Homeland Security at the university.
The bitter and sudden formation of Ohio State University in Columbus commenced a centuries-long conflict for funds ensue between the state’s oldest, established institution and the new agricultural and manufacturing university. In one incident, Ohio State attempted to use Ohio University’s federally trademarked name “OHIO” on its athletic uniforms; however, during the subsequent legal dispute, presidents of the two schools agreed Ohio State should not be permitted the use of that name on uniforms.
Presently, the university has reached the ranking of becoming a Public Ivy, as well as receiving high rankings and awards from many institutions, including U.S. News, Academic Ranking of World Universities, The Lombardi Program on Measuring University Performance, Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, and The Public Accounting Report.
The university now provides education to about 68,262 students each year in eight campuses throughout Ohio and is governed by President Kristina M. Johnson.
In 2019 Ohio State’s attempt to trademark the word “the” was turned down by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
When alumni travel throughout the world, they love to send back pictures showing the famous hand gestures spelling O H I O.
The Ohio State vs Michigan yearly football contest is considered by most to be the greatest rivalry in college sports. GO BUCS!

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King’s Awakening

September 10, 2021/0 Comments/in Friday Afternoon, Hurricane Ida, Trivia /by Steve Kowalski

(top to bottom) Hurricane Ida from the International Space Station by European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Pesquet. And Ida from Bourbon Street. Destruction. Flooding. Displacement. Rescue. Reconstruction. But the levees held. (Check out this brief documentary on the Lake Borgne Surge Barrier. An amazing structure and system.) And of course the t-shirts are available online. Only in America. :))

Engineers. They are amazing. Take a problem – a big problem, like we often do here at KHTHeat solving your PIA Jobs (Pain in the @%$ Jobs!), spend time figuring it out, measure, test, remeasure, retest, and then design and build something. Simple, right? But honestly, who ever came up with the idea of a working levee system? Stopping flood waters from the Gulf all the way up the Mississippi. Uncontrollable forces, hundreds of square miles, utilities, people, buildings and equipment. When Hurricane Ida made landfall in New Orleans last Sunday, the destructive storm surges buffeted a system of levees and other flood barriers that had been greatly fortified since Hurricane Katrina crippled the city in 2005. This time, the levees held, thanks to $14.6 billion worth of improvements to southeast Louisiana’s storm-risk reduction system. Amazing. I was catching up on my “newspaper” reading and came across a great article by WSJ contributor Ben Zimmer. On the word levee and just had to share. Bravo to all the engineers out there – you are a special breed, and I’m honored to have a few amazing ones here at KHT Heat. Special thanks to linguist and lexicographer Ben Zimmer for the insights, You Tube for the music and Wikipedia for the extra info. Enjoy! (and be sure to crank up the Zeplin classic – I think it’s a whole lot better than the original).

For your listening pleasure:
When The Levee Breaks by Kansas Joe & Memphis Minnie – (1929)
Led Zeppelin’s Version – (1971)

A “levee” is a raised embankment that prevents a river from overflowing. Unlike flood walls, which are typically made from concrete, levees are built up from earthen materials. Like the structure it names, the word “levee” is intimately connected to the history of New Orleans, going back to its founding as a French colonial city in 1718.

The site for the city was chosen in part because it stood on relatively high ground, with a natural embankment that could protect it from floods along the Mississippi River. French maps dated to the 1720s labeled this embankment “La Levée,” running along the Mississippi—or the Saint Louis, as the river was then known. An English-language map of the time gave it a wordier designation: “Bank to preserve the Town from the Inundation.” (check out the number of rivers off the gulf back in 1700’s – HERE

‘Levy,’ meaning ‘to raise taxes,’ comes from the same French root as its sound-alike ‘levee.’ The French word “levée” literally means “a rising” and is formed from the verb “lever,” meaning “to raise.” Ultimately, it goes back to Latin “levare” meaning “to lift up” or “to make lighter”

“Levee” came to be used for other more ceremonial purposes. Since the French verb “lever” could also be used for getting out of bed, it got attached to a morning routine by King Louis XIV at the palace of Versailles, where royal subjects would be received in his bedchamber. (I can’t imagine meeting my customers in my bedroom??).

The word “levee” was soon extended to other distinguished assemblages of visitors throughout Europe, then exported to the New World for formal receptions held by colonial governors. To this day, Canada maintains the tradition of the New Year’s Day levee, a reception hosted by the governor general and other officials.

In New Orleans, meanwhile, the use of “levee” for a river embankment crossed over from the French language into English. In 1770, Philip Pittman, a British Army officer who surveyed the Mississippi River, wrote, “the town is secured from the inundations of the river by a raised bank, generally called the Levée.”

The main purpose of artificial levees is to prevent flooding of the adjoining countryside and to slow natural course changes in a waterway to provide reliable shipping lanes for maritime commerce over time; they also confine the flow of the river, resulting in higher and faster water flow.

Some of the earliest levees were constructed by the Indus Valley Civilization (in Pakistan and North India from circa 2600 BC) on which the agrarian life of the Harappan peoples depended. Levees were also constructed over 3,000 years ago in ancient Egypt, where a system of levees was built along the left bank of the River Nile for more than 1,000 kilometres (600 miles), stretching from modern Aswan to the Nile Delta on the shores of the Mediterranean.

The Mesopotamian civilizations and ancient China also built large levee systems. Because a levee is only as strong as its weakest point, the height and standards of construction have to be consistent along its length. Some authorities have argued that this requires a strong governing authority to guide the work and may have been a catalyst for the development of systems of governance in early civilizations. However, others point to evidence of large scale water-control earthen works such as canals and/or levees dating from before King Scorpion in Predynastic Egypt, during which governance was far less centralized.

Levees are usually built by piling earth on a cleared, level surface. Broad at the base, they taper to a level top, where temporary embankments or sandbags can be placed. Because flood discharge intensity increases in levees on both river banks, and because silt deposits raise the level of riverbeds, planning and auxiliary measures are vital. Sections are often set back from the river to form a wider channel, and flood valley basins are divided by multiple levees to prevent a single breach from flooding a large area. A levee made from stones laid in horizontal rows with a bed of thin turf between each of them is known as a spetchel.

After the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, the Mississippi levee system, built up by the Army Corps of Engineers, came to encompass both natural ridges along the river and artificial structures made from piling up soil.

Levees only seem to attract national attention when they fail. That was the case in 1927, when the Great Mississippi Flood—one of the worst natural disasters in American history—put the word “levees” in headlines around the country. The flood also served to inspire the country blues song “When the Levee Breaks” by the husband-and-wife duo Kansas Joe McCoy and Memphis Minnie, released in 1929. “If it keeps on raining, levee’s going to break,” as the lyrics go. Four decades later, Led Zeppelin would reinterpret the song for the band’s fourth album.

While New Orleans was fortunate this time that the levees withstood the battering of Ida, the continued threat of flooding from storm surges will guarantee that “levee” remains part of the city’s lexicon, more than three centuries after its founding on a bend in the Mississippi.

WANT TO SEE VIDEO ON HOW THE LEVEE CHANGED IN NEW ORLEANS!

Overview

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