A Mile-High Pile of Wood--Graphical Display of Quantitative Data.

JF Ptak Science Books LLC  Post 913

Continuing a long, developing thread on the graphical display of quantitative data--and especially that which uses man-made objects for comparison—is this interesting bit from a Romanian mining publication from 1933.

The huge mound next to the Eiffel Tower shows the consumption of wood in Romania over a ten year period, a stack of wood 700  metres long and 1500 metres high.  Evidently this wall has only the most rudimentary depth of a metre, as the legend reads that the volume of the woodpile is 1,050,000 metres cubed, which is the same as its square area.  So somebody missed something, here, though the artist did supply some nice shadowing.

Just above it appeared this comparison for the amount of oil consumed over the same ten year period

I’m not sure why this comparison was being made.  This does come in the interwar period which saw a great expansion in Romanian territory and a vast modernization effort following the country’s devastating experience in WWI. Maybe it was illustrating modernization from wood-burning power/heating sources to oil-based. I really don't know--I just liked the Eiffel Tower being dwarfed by a massively tall and impossibly skinny woodpile.

Comments

[Rick Hamrick]

While it is still a ridiculous number, it is true that the math works for the really tall and wide and terribly narrow pile o' lumber if the depth of the pile is one meter.

I don't recall running across any plywood which was a meter wide and 700 meters long, though.

[John F. Ptak]

Well, oopsie: thanks for pointing this out RIck. I meant to say "1 metre" after saying "rudimentary depth" but I forgot! I think though that there was such a plywood as you described, made I think by Maginot& Cie of a forgotten part of forgotten France.