Author Archives: McCoy

A Truly Grand Old Ditch

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More Locks and Funiculars

The Ramp Rules & The Ditch is Cool

A Boat on the Grand Old Ditch

Construction of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, also known as the C&O Canal and the Grand Old Ditch, began in 1828 and finished in 1850.

It reached a final length of 184.5 miles, extending between Cumberland, MD to Washington, DC. Coal was the primary good shipped—though businesses also shipped lumber, limestone for construction, sand, flour, salt, and much more.

The canal operated until 1924, when it was finally shut down due to competition from the railroads, along with major flood damage that year.

Interestingly, the mule-drawn barges were often operated by families that lived on them, especially in the earlier years of the canal. The families would all work together to run these barges; not surprisingly, the mothers were the main figures in running everything. They steered the boats, raised the children, and did all the housework.

The men just took care of the mules and the heavy lifting.

If you've never tried to raise children while running a house, well, let's just say I'll take the heavy lifting any day. (I've never had any illusions about Maggie being the most important part of my family.)

While it operated, though, the C&O Canal contained some of the most impressive engineering designed for a canal. To aid ships in moving uphill, the canal held 74 canal locks, or enclosures: ships sailed in, the lock closed behind them, then fill slowly with water, raising the height of the ship to the next elevation level. They also built 11 aqueducts for crossing major streams and more than 240 culverts to cross smaller ones.

In addition to this was the Paw Paw tunnel, which stretched nearly a kilometer in length, the construction of which almost bankrupted the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company. They were forced to end construction early, failing to get all the way to Pittsburgh.

My favorite part of the canal, though, was the C&O Boat Elevator. It served to lower boats down past Georgetown, where traffic jams tended to build up. It operated exactly like a funicular, only for boats—lowering them 600 feet on the diagonal and 40 feet in elevation.

The downward journey was entirely powered by gravity, while water powered turbines would lift the empty boat carrying caisson back to the top. It's a big step up from the Diolkos. Another great example here of human ingenuity in action.

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Quotable

So, Yard Ramp Guy—Go have yourself a happy new year:

“Generosity is giving more than you can, and pride is taking less than you need.”

— Kahlil Gibran

Exciting Tedium

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What’s in a Name

Dull & Boring?

Oh, Calm Down

There’s a town named Boring, Oregon. Though it’s not an especially exciting place, it's not really that boring either. By most accounts, Boring is a lovely little town of 7,000 people built on an extinct lava field. Things maybe got pretty exciting when the nearby and majestic volcano Mount Hood last erupted, about 200 years ago (but that only caused some mudflows and lava domes and wasn’t a major eruption and was, therefore, probably not very exciting).

I like that they didn’t name the place Less Exciting. “Go there! Take advantage of myriad hiking trails and other outdoor activities. Have a not boring time!”

There’s another place named Dull, Scotland. This is a tiny village of less than a hundred people—a pretty little hamlet, with but a single street. Oh, and this breaking news item: it has old grave stones dating back as far as the 7th century.

There's a farming community named Bland, Australia. With a population of some 6,000 residents, it covers a much larger area than the other two. Bland used to be a gold mining region, though these days it's largely a farming community. Tony Lord is the mayor of Bland.

A few years ago, a Scottish cyclist from Dull—on vacation in the States—passed through Boring. She had a fairly terrific eureka moment, and in 2012 the two towns became sister cities.

Not to miss out on all the excitement, the following year Bland joined the sister cityhood as well. Together, they’re known—self-mockingly and otherwise—as the Trinity of Tedium.

Rules and regulations dictate that the trio are not officially sister cities, due to the size differences between the three, but they definitely live up to the spirit of the Sister City.

Sister Cities: dreamed up after the Second World War, they were intended to help repair the international bonds of friendship torn by the war. The notion quickly spread in popularity, and sister cities (also called Twin Towns) are linked around the world. Residents exchange gifts, organize joint celebrations, and foster exchange students with one another.

Not on the register of Sister Cities: Inacessible Island. A dormant volcano with an area of 5.4 miles, it sits in the middle of the South Atlantic Ocean. Oh, and its human population is pretty much zero. Because, you know, it’s hard to reach.

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Quotable

So, Yard Ramp Guy—Here you go:

“Habit is the cement of society, the comfort of life, and, alas! The root of error.”

— Fulke Geville

Better Bathroom Behavior

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Or: Waiter, There’s a Fly in My Urinal

Cleaner

In a More Perfect World…

Public restrooms are a serious challenge to keep clean. The men’s room is, unsurprisingly, a huge problem.

From my unscientific research over the years (um, using public bathrooms), a shocking number of guys simply seem to lack common courtesy or even decent aim. I’m not the bathroom police, and I’m not a puritan, but it’s really not difficult to keep things clean.

We’re faced with a number of design challenges in public restrooms besides those dealing with courtesy and aim. Here are a few of the solutions that our proud bathroom engineers have come up with:

  • Toilet seats: Ever noticed that toilet seats in public restrooms are about the only ones that are U-shaped? Yeah, that's done entirely because too many men splash or don’t bother to aim, and very few clean up after themselves.
  • Flies in the toilet: A lot of urinal manufacturers have started constructing their urinals with a fly etched into the back of the urinal. Guys using the urinals tend to aim straight at them. Some companies have started selling special stickers for home use as well. I've heard that they reduce spillage by 80% (but that seems like a somewhat suspicious figure, if only for the difficulty in measuring it). They’ve also employed etchings of bees and dots for the target practice.
  • Paper toilet seat liners: These flimsy little things provide psychological reassurance more than any real protection. Toilet seats are designed to make a poor surface for bacteria to nest on and, well, the paper liners are a better surface for that. On top of that, your skin makes a pretty great barrier to bacteria.
  • Air dryers: It turns out that air dryers aren't better than paper towels. Air dryers spray germs everywhere. If you've washed your hands well, of course, it shouldn't matter. But how many people don't wash well? (A horrifyingly large number.) On the flip side, though, those air driers are much better for the environment, so there's a tough tradeoff there.

So, yeah, there we have it. This has been your public servant reporting, and imploring you to wash your hands well.

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Quotable

Well, Yard Ramp Guy—I’ve missed our alphabet thing. Glad for the return:

“I always have a quotation for everything—it saves original thinking.”

— Dorothy L. Sayers

From the Ancient Sumerians to Toyota

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Or: What a Long, Strange Trip It’s Been

Less than half the parts in Chevy and GMC trucks are made in America.

Made in American (not the camel)

The most American truck? The Toyota Tundra, made with more than 70% American parts.

I could make the obvious, cheesy joke about how a Japanese company is making the most American truck, but there’s a more important takeaway here. And it's starting to give us an idea how interconnected manufacturing and the modern global economy has become.

We hear a lot about globalization these days, mostly in terms of trade agreements like NAFTA. We also hear a lot of talk that treats globalization like it's some brand new phenomenon. Actually, globalization dates back (at least) to the Bronze Age. Yes, ancient societies were hardly isolated citadels surrounded by barbarians.

The Ancient Sumerian texts (some of the oldest in the world) fairly often referred to trade partners. We’ve managed to decipher some of these partnerships—including deals with ancient Middle Eastern states like Egypt.

We couldn’t match the name of one trade partner, Meluha, though, to a location until recent archaeological discoveries. As it turned out, Meluha is actually the Harappan civilization.

Also known as the Indus River Valley civilization, it was located in our modern-day India and Pakistan. Meluha was some 2,300 miles away from the Sumerians—a tremendous distance for this time period.

As time went on, the level of globalization only grew. We've found Roman coins in ruins from ancient India, and we know goods from as far away as China made it to Rome. Medieval Europe was chronically short on coinage, since all their silver was going to India and China.

(Europe had nothing India or China wanted, but India and China had all sorts of spices and such that Europe wanted.)

Apart from the Roman Empire, Europe was an unimportant backwater on the global scale until the Renaissance and the Age of Sail.

So, if anyone tries to convince you that globalization is something new, or that human history isn't one of perpetual interconnection, well...laugh. Laugh harder than you would have if I’d actually made some cheesy joke about a Japanese car company being more American than an American company.

The Soviet/Russian Gem

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A Diamond (Mine) in the Rough

The Great Wall of China isn't visible from space. That's just an urban legend. The Mir diamond mine in Siberia, however, is.

Big Hole in the Ground

The Mir mine is an open pit diamond mine that's almost a mile wide and a third of a mile deep. It was the source for nearly all of the Soviet Union's diamonds. And without it, the USSR probably never would have worked.

Not only did the Mir mine provide much needed cash to the USSR, it also provided diamonds necessary for industrial purposes, and all major nations need such diamonds for their many industries. (Remember: diamonds are necessary for many large drill bits and scouring materials.)

The Mir mine opened in 1957, operating for 44 years until its closure in 2001. Developing the mine was no picnic. It occupies ground that’s frozen seven months of the year, and it turns to slush in the brief summer.

Engineers needed to build the main processing plant on solid ground 12 miles away. Steel got so cold it would shatter, and oil would freeze. Jet engines were used by the miners to thaw the permafrost in the winter.

Still: the quality and quantity of the diamonds in the mine more than warranted these ridiculous efforts.

The mine is actually so large that helicopters can't fly safely over it. Air tends to warm in the bottom of large holes (and the Mir mine certainly counts as large). That warm air rises over the hole. It's less dense than the cold air around it, so the helicopter tends to drop quickly when it enters the air.

A helicopter pilot could probably recover from that just by increasing rotor speed, but the cool air pouring into the hole to replace the rising warm air from all sides creates extremely powerful wind shear, which will slam the helicopter into the side of the mine.

The Mir was truly a diamond in the rough.