JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
There have been a number of posts to this blog on "Bad Places to Be"--that is, very unpleasant surrounds in which someone was working, or found themselves to be. For example, sappers digging under opposing sapper's tunnels to place explosive charges under trenchworks, or being in a tiny observation gondola let on a cable suspended from a dirigible, or digging a tunnel, or being a U-Boat crew member in late 1943, and so on. And then there's the impossible scenario of being the man with the job of crawling through the burnt and enormous timbers of the Brooklyn 'Bridge's east caisson, crawling though tiny spaces to chisel out damaged sections of the gigantic woodworks upon which tons of rock were placed, and doing this in mostly the dark and underwater. Really, quite incredible. But then again it was a terrifically difficult and dangerous job to be a workman anywhere in those caissons--the environment was dank, dark, fetid, muddy, slippery, hot, and on top of it all, crowded. And so to today's issue: the building of the pier for Kehl Bridge, found in the July 1868 issue of Journal of the Franklin Institute. It was quite a massive undertaking, and of course my eye is drawn immediately to the bottom of the image, where the men with the most impossible jobs labored. Here's the detail:
Which is a section of this image:
I feel an instant chill looking closely at images like this...
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