TODAY IN SCIENCE HISTORY ®  •  TODAYINSCI ®
Celebrating 24 Years on the Web
Find science on or your birthday

Today in Science History - Quickie Quiz
Who said: “Genius is two percent inspiration, ninety-eight percent perspiration.”
more quiz questions >>
Thumbnail of Richard Trevithick (source)
Richard Trevithick
(13 Apr 1771 - 22 Apr 1833)

English mechanical engineer and inventor who successfully harnessed high-pressure steam and constructed the world's first steam railway locomotive (1803).


THE FIRST PROJECT FOR A
ONE THOUSAND FOOT TOWER.

from Scientific American Supplement (1887)

Sketch of the proposed tower, together and to scale with Great Pyramid, St. Paul's Cathedral
Fig 1.— A 1,000 Foot Tower Projected In 1833. (source)

At the time of the Philadelphia Exhibition, the Americans conceived the idea of constructing a tower a thousand feet in height, but the project was never carried out. In 1832 the Vote on the reform bill suggested to [Richard] Trevithick the idea of perpetuating the memory of the event by the erection of a column higher than any that had ever up till then been constructed. The celebrated English engineer drew up the following note, which was inserted in the Morning Herald of July 11, 1883:

National Monument in Honor of Reform.—The great measure of reform, which has become the law of the country, should be recalled through the construction of an extraordinary monument exceeding in height Cleopatra’s Needle and Pompey’s Column, and symbolizing the beauty, strength, and unalterable grandeur of the British Constitution. With this end in view, it is proposed to hold a meeting for which a special call will be made, and there will be opened throughout the entire kingdom a subscription to which will be admitted even the smallest sums, with a maximum of two guineas.

This note was followed by the names of eminent persons who had given their approbation. The description of the monument was thus given:

“We give a sketch of the 1,000 foot openwork cast iron column, 100 feet in diameter at the base and 12 feet at the apex, consisting of fifteen hundred 11 x 11 foot plates, containing a circular depression in the center 6 feet in diameter, and, near each angle, an aperture 1½ feet in diameter, the object of such openings being to reduce the weight and to diminish the effect of the wind.

“These plates will be 2 inches in thickness, and will have flanges on the sides so as to permit of their being united by bolts, with the interposition of strips of lead. This column will rest upon a circular foundation, with a base 60 feet in height. It will have a cap with a platform 49 feet in diameter, and will carry a statue 39 feet in height. In the center of the column there will be a cylindrical tube 10 feet in diameter, for the reception of an elevator.

Sketch of the proposed tower, cut away to show central cylindrical shaft for elevator, and steam engine mechanics in basement
Fig. 2.—Section, Showing Elevator. (source)

“Each plate will weigh about three tons, so that the total weight may be estimated at 6,000 tons. A 20 horse power steam engine will be sufficient to elevate one plate to the entire height in ten minutes, and, as it will be possible to employ a large number of workmen at the same time in assembling the plates, one plate per hour may be easily put in place. The 1,500 plates, then, may be assembled in a little less than six months. Certain foundrymen have engaged to deliver these pieces on the spot at $35 per ton. At such a price the construction of this national monument would not cost over $400,000.

“As stated, there will be a tube 10 feet in diameter, in which will move an iron plate piston provided with seats for twenty-five persons. This piston will be raised by compressed air, through a pump actuated by a steam engine, with an ascensional velocity of about 3 feet per second, so that the entire ascent will require about five minutes. At the base of the tube there will be a door opening outwardly and inwardly to allow persons to enter who desire to ascend. When once this door is opened, the pressure of the air will keep it so. The piston will be provided with an aperture and a cock, serving to regulate the descent by allowing the air to escape.

“The aperture will be such that the descending velocity shall not exceed 10 feet per second. Under such circumstances, there will be no greater shock upon reaching the bottom than that which would be experienced by an object falling from a height of 8½ inches, or than that which would be experienced by a person walking at the rate of 118 feet per hour and suddenly stopped. At London, the 213 foot column called the Monument is much admired. People ascend 419 feet to reach the cross of St. Paul’s Cathedral, and daring tourists make an immense climb to scale the 490 feet of the pyramids of Egypt.

“How much more agreeable would it be to ascend a thousand feet on a cushion of compressed air, to contemplate London at one’s feet, and to descend again to the ordinary level of daily life, gently and without shock, at a moderate velocity regulated by the simple opening of a cock, without anything being able to accelerate such velocity beyond 3 feet per second, and allowing the traveler to be set down at the end of the trip without receiving any greater shaking up than he would if he were descending a stairway?”

A few meetings were held, and the project in a few months was sufficiently advanced to make it possible to present the plans to the King of England, William IV., on March 1, 1833. But Trevithick died on the 22d of April, and the 1,000 foot column was forgotten. It is of interest from a historical standpoint to recall the matter.

The Bulletin of the Society of Civil Engineers, from which we borrow these data, adds: “Far from depreciating the merit of our colleague, Mr. [Gustave] Eiffel, our object has been to show, through the distance that separates the latter’s well elaborated project from Trevithick’s sketch, the immense progress that has been made during the last half century in the use of metals in constructions.”

For our part, we shall add that Mr. Eiffel’s monument appears to us to be one of the most important projects of our epoch.—La Nature.

Text and images from 'The First Project For a One Thousand Foot Tower', Scientific American Supplement (22 Jan 1887), No. 577, 9209. (source)


See also:

Nature bears long with those who wrong her. She is patient under abuse. But when abuse has gone too far, when the time of reckoning finally comes, she is equally slow to be appeased and to turn away her wrath. (1882) -- Nathaniel Egleston, who was writing then about deforestation, but speaks equally well about the danger of climate change today.
Carl Sagan Thumbnail Carl Sagan: In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. (1987) ...(more by Sagan)

Albert Einstein: I used to wonder how it comes about that the electron is negative. Negative-positive—these are perfectly symmetric in physics. There is no reason whatever to prefer one to the other. Then why is the electron negative? I thought about this for a long time and at last all I could think was “It won the fight!” ...(more by Einstein)

Richard Feynman: It is the facts that matter, not the proofs. Physics can progress without the proofs, but we can't go on without the facts ... if the facts are right, then the proofs are a matter of playing around with the algebra correctly. ...(more by Feynman)
Quotations by:Albert EinsteinIsaac NewtonLord KelvinCharles DarwinSrinivasa RamanujanCarl SaganFlorence NightingaleThomas EdisonAristotleMarie CurieBenjamin FranklinWinston ChurchillGalileo GalileiSigmund FreudRobert BunsenLouis PasteurTheodore RooseveltAbraham LincolnRonald ReaganLeonardo DaVinciMichio KakuKarl PopperJohann GoetheRobert OppenheimerCharles Kettering  ... (more people)

Quotations about:Atomic  BombBiologyChemistryDeforestationEngineeringAnatomyAstronomyBacteriaBiochemistryBotanyConservationDinosaurEnvironmentFractalGeneticsGeologyHistory of ScienceInventionJupiterKnowledgeLoveMathematicsMeasurementMedicineNatural ResourceOrganic ChemistryPhysicsPhysicianQuantum TheoryResearchScience and ArtTeacherTechnologyUniverseVolcanoVirusWind PowerWomen ScientistsX-RaysYouthZoology  ... (more topics)

Thank you for sharing.
- 100 -
Sophie Germain
Gertrude Elion
Ernest Rutherford
James Chadwick
Marcel Proust
William Harvey
Johann Goethe
John Keynes
Carl Gauss
Paul Feyerabend
- 90 -
Antoine Lavoisier
Lise Meitner
Charles Babbage
Ibn Khaldun
Euclid
Ralph Emerson
Robert Bunsen
Frederick Banting
Andre Ampere
Winston Churchill
- 80 -
John Locke
Bronislaw Malinowski
Bible
Thomas Huxley
Alessandro Volta
Erwin Schrodinger
Wilhelm Roentgen
Louis Pasteur
Bertrand Russell
Jean Lamarck
- 70 -
Samuel Morse
John Wheeler
Nicolaus Copernicus
Robert Fulton
Pierre Laplace
Humphry Davy
Thomas Edison
Lord Kelvin
Theodore Roosevelt
Carolus Linnaeus
- 60 -
Francis Galton
Linus Pauling
Immanuel Kant
Martin Fischer
Robert Boyle
Karl Popper
Paul Dirac
Avicenna
James Watson
William Shakespeare
- 50 -
Stephen Hawking
Niels Bohr
Nikola Tesla
Rachel Carson
Max Planck
Henry Adams
Richard Dawkins
Werner Heisenberg
Alfred Wegener
John Dalton
- 40 -
Pierre Fermat
Edward Wilson
Johannes Kepler
Gustave Eiffel
Giordano Bruno
JJ Thomson
Thomas Kuhn
Leonardo DaVinci
Archimedes
David Hume
- 30 -
Andreas Vesalius
Rudolf Virchow
Richard Feynman
James Hutton
Alexander Fleming
Emile Durkheim
Benjamin Franklin
Robert Oppenheimer
Robert Hooke
Charles Kettering
- 20 -
Carl Sagan
James Maxwell
Marie Curie
Rene Descartes
Francis Crick
Hippocrates
Michael Faraday
Srinivasa Ramanujan
Francis Bacon
Galileo Galilei
- 10 -
Aristotle
John Watson
Rosalind Franklin
Michio Kaku
Isaac Asimov
Charles Darwin
Sigmund Freud
Albert Einstein
Florence Nightingale
Isaac Newton


by Ian Ellis
who invites your feedback
Thank you for sharing.
Today in Science History
Sign up for Newsletter
with quiz, quotes and more.