Evening star., 1927-02-28

The mortng ~ river III pennsyl-
Nsau,a tN am artificial cu; ~o that its
,,id hes MAY he filled ami uSed for "a
vAil}r>sI >aui il a recent shn1utSh IN
glc l>nS hattie ~ man ~ change the
;A>e ~ ghe earth
The accomplishments of civilisa'
tlcO most easily noticed are in large
}Art erHincer;ug accomplishments,
/ SAYS bulletin from the headuuarters
/ ~ tire National Geographic Society,
$50 i"aefa ti9ahly has man busted him.
/ self making over his environment that
! much ot his haud:work would stand
/ o&t ~ an observer posted an the moon
, with u teleScope equal Ia eur teS'.
/ The irregular Splotches Of our cities
| with their straight lines would show
| Up all around the world Here ana
! there railroads and their cuts and
Cie0vinSs would catch the eye as would
some long straight stretches of high
way.
| The most ancient OF the carth's
great structures. the Pyramid Of
| Cheops. should he plainly visible. eSpe'
cially when two sides are in shadow
and the moon observer could probably
| pick out that other old engineering
| triumph. the Great Wall of China
snakinc its $500 miles over mountains
=
would appear to such Hypothetical
survey from the moon. since they
would be indistinguishable, for the
most part. from natural streams.
THE terrestrial observer who seeks
evidences of mans reshaping of the
earth viii find them on every hand
On our own continent and in Europe,
especially, n veritable network of rail.
ways and roads lies over the country
side. There are few ma jor streams
but that are spanned by bridges or
made by dams to stand and deliver
water irrigation or power to be turned
to any use that mans whim may die
tate. A goodly number of our hills
and mountains have been honey
.combed by the shafts and galleries of
mines or pierced by railway tunnels.
Man has even burrowed his way under
great rivers to make way for city
transit lines, railways, vehicles and
foot passengers.
Cities Are Never Finished.
Every great city is itself a huge
and never-finished engineering task.
There are few residents of New York
or London or Paris who would not
be surprised, if cross-sections of their
city could be laid bare, at the COM
pieXity of its underground facilities,
its multiplicity of subways, water tun-
nels and pipes, wire conduits and
sewers. Above ground buildings are
constantly being erected and demol.
lsned, railways repaired, pavement
laid. Galveston, Tex, owes it's con-
tlnued existence to a great granite
sea wall; New Orleans to it's levees.
Venice and Leningrad rise in large
part from multitude of piles driven
into mud banks, and other cities in
various parts of the world must credit
engineering skill for their sites or for
their protection.
One of the most striking debts of
country to engineering is to be
round in The Netherlands. The coun.
try's name itself hints at the story;
nearly half its area lies below the
level of the sea, which is kept from
engulfing the lowlands only by hun.
dreds of miles of man-made dikes and
sluice-gates. And only constant
watchfulness and work keeps this
be!ow-sea-level country habitable. EN-
Dankments must be patroled and re.
paired constantly. Seepage continues
night and day and pumps must be
Kept operating continually to lift
millions of gallons of water from the
lowest catchment basins to canals
v
Canals were among the earliest
important engineering projects under
taken by man. Near the dawn of
history some 5000 years ago great
irrigation canals that were virtually
artificial rivers existed in the valleys
of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers ir
Mesopotamia. They were demolished
by Mongol invaders 700 years ago, but
traces of the huge channels still re-
main. In Egypt a ship canal connect
ing the Nile and the Red Sea was dug
1000 years before Christ. In the
fifth century B. c., the Chinese began
their Grand Canal finished II cen.
turtles later. This S50.mile waterway
Is the oldest and longest boat canal
in existence.
Dams Are Recent Devices.
All the earlier canals were inland,
Not until 1869 when the Suez Canal
was completed, did the world possess
an interoceanic waterway. It's only
rivel has been the Panama Canal,
opened in 1914. These two waterways
between the oceans, one costing $127,-
000,0 900 and the other more than twice
that much, probably deserve to rank
at the top of the worlds engineering
achievements.
Dams are relatively recent devices
in so far as large streams are con-
cerned. No word of building
operations of any magnitude has come
to us from the records of the ancients.
Large dams were built in Spain in the
latter part of the sixteenth century
and in France and Spain in the seven
teenth and eighteenth. In the nine.
teenth century dam-building spread to
the rest of Europe and Great Britain,
North Africa, Asia and the United
States.
Two of the greatest dams are in
Egypt. The Assouan, across the Nile.
Is u miles long and 113 feet high.
The SEMINAR, across the Blue Nile, is
the longest masonry dam in the world
-9,90O feet, or nearly 2 miles. Its
height is 1913 feet The longest of all
is the earthen Ashti dam in India,
which is 1903 feet in length. 1t is
only So feet high.
Present Greatest Highway Era.
Road construction received little
attention from the ancients and did
not become an important activity
until the advent of the Romans.
When the Roman Empire died road
building died with it, not to be gall
vanized into life again until the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
The present is the greatest road
building age that the world has seen.
Each year many hundreds of millions
of dollars are absorbed in the con-
struction of highways, chiefly in the
United States. Europe and the colo
NAL possessions of the great powers.
Tunnel boring has had both
ancient and modern aspects. The
Egyptians dug tunnel entrances to
temples and tombs, or followed the
latter bodily from the rock. The
Greeks, as early as 500 r.. c., are
said to have constructed galleries in
mines The Romans anticipafed fhe