A Note on Sharp Turns

JF Ptak Science Books   Quick Post

THere is just something very offputting about sharp turns made by unusual things in unnatural settings, a sort of unwanted geometry applied to unneccesary objects found in cringing and chaffing places. 

For example--this image of a ship steaming in for a roudn of reapirs as though it was coming into a first-decade strip mall seems to have a frightful sesnse of wrongness to it.  Not to mention that it seems a little impossible for the ship to have made those four turns to get in/out of the "car park". 

[Source: W.H. THomspon, Devon. A Survey of its Coast, Moors, and Rivers with some Suggestions for their Preservation, London, 1922.]

This reminds me very much of an earlier sharp turn found in an 1875 engineer's drawing ("Plan of Ten-Stall Stable....for W.D. Wight's paper on Underground Horses")--and yes indeed these were horses kept underground, used for hauling the heavier wagons (on tracks) of whatever, brought out to these larger chambers by men doing the same work with lighter loads in smaller areas.  (There's more on this in an earlier post on this blog, here.)

Obviously there is nothing but everything else in the very wide world of the history of sharp turns--these two just happened to come together fo rme, and looked very similar in their own ways. 

 

Comments

[Jeff Donlan]

C'mon, these are no worse than a Nascar pit stop. Also, I think you may have posted the wrong picture for the ship and dock. What I see is "Suggested layout for a small filling station at the side of a main road in a rural district." Where I find sharp and absurdly non-intuitive turns are in new suburbs. Even today, after 70 years of building suburbs, we can't do it sensibly.