Waterbury evening Democrat., 1904-09-30
WIND STORMS
 AND SKYSCRAPERS

Probably no person unaccuStomed to such an experience ever stood on the roof of a twenty-story building, when
 great wind was blowing, without q tremor of the nerves, and at least an imaginary sense of swaying in the
 huge structure beneath his feet. There l is such swaying and 1t has been
 measured with great eXactness. But
 it turns out to be far less than is i'm agined.
 Careful observations to determine the amount of oscillation of tall build | ings in a high wind were made in Chicago, a few years ago, during 8 1 tempest in which the velocity of the wind reached eighty miles an hour.
 The Monadnock building, POO feet in l height, and unprotected in it's upper part by neighboring edifices, swayed 1 only one-Quarter to one-half an inch
 from the perpendicular
 But it should not be inferred from this that no special effort Is needed to
 secure a lofty building from the eff 1 fleets of the wind. Or the contrary, | the slight degree of oscillation men. | toned above was due to the fact that | the engineer architect had calculated
 beforehand the atmospheric forces that
 h4s building would have to resist, and
 had provided against them by means of a system of "wind-bracing.'
 This Is one of the niceties in the
 modern art and science of building
 Experiments and mathematical calcu. lations. of which the general public can have little idea, have determined 1 the pressures exerted against lofty structures by winds of various veloci- 1 ties and also the best methods of en- abling the buildings to withstand these pressures. When building POO feet tall sways only a quarter of an inch out of the perpen0lcular,s In the lace of hurricane pushing against 1t with
 force of thirty pounds on every
 square foot of it's surface, that fact IS
 testimonial to the success of scien- tific 'wind-bracing" People who sit
 secure and indifferent in their offices, POO or 300 feet above the pavement.
 and hear the wind howl and hurl it's blasts about the steel cage that en- closes them think little of the mathe~ matics on which their safety is based; but if that mathematics were not the surest product of the human mind, they might find themselves at the bot tom of tangle wreck.
 'sWhat is wind-bracing, thenT it may be asked, It is system of steel connections which, in the body of q tall building, serve purpose similar to that of the interlacing muscles and tendons which bind together the bones of the human skeleton, and enable It to act all together, as unit, in resist ing forces tending to upset or crush it. Tn scientifically constructed building the force of the wind push ing against it's upper portion arouses a resistance which is transmitted downward from story to story, and distributed on all sides from member to member of the steel skeleton, until it is felt at the foundations, and thus the strength and weight of the lower portion of the building, lying in the shelter of the surrounding edifices, out of the reach of the wind above, are brought into play for the common de- fense. very much as the effects of a push against mans shoulder are dis, tributed throughout his muscular sys- tenn, down to his feet, and are thus resisted by his whole body.-Garrett { r. Serviss in Success.