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Amazingly cool that they understood they had to make the statue handle winds in the harbor. Kind of neat to have a piece that's so emotionally powerful, aesthet

by tomcam 4y ago

Amazingly cool that they understood they had to make the statue handle winds in the harbor. Kind of neat to have a piece that's so emotionally powerful, aesthetically pleasing, and so beautifully engineered.

pavlov 4y ago
The quite new museum on Liberty Island (opened in 2019) is surprisingly interesting and well executed. The decade-long campaign to raise money in both France and US was an impressive feat of crowdfunding. And the sculptor himself had terrific business acumen, selling tickets to tour his workshop and exhibiting full-scale parts of the statue in Paris to large crowds to keep up interest while it was still years away from completion.
- technologia 4y ago
  If you get the opportunity, there is a Bartholdi museum in a small town on the French German border called Colmar that was originally his home. It’s interesting the evolution of the artist over the decades leading up to the Statue of Liberty
IncRnd 4y ago
- sp332 4y ago
  Curtain wall construction had only been invented less than 20 years earlier, and this was the tallest such structure at the time.
  - IncRnd 4y ago
    > Curtain wall construction had only been invented less than 20 years earlier The comment was about understanding that the statue needed to handle winds in the harbor - not about curtain wall construction. > and this was the tallest such structure at the time. The wind load acting on lighthouses and chimneys was formulated in France by L. Fresnel in 1825. One of the Seven Wonders of The Ancient World was also a lighthouse, Egypt’s Pharos of Alexandria. As the first known lighthouse it stood 450' or 145' taller than today's Statue of Liberty.
- yunohn 4y ago
  - IncRnd 4y ago
    I was simply replying to those who commented to me. There was no political stance against the use of "they" in my comments. There was a bias in people who replied to me, but I ignored those biased statements. I literally don't care either way as to how people live.
somat 4y ago
Conversely the fact that it was such a late change means it was poorly engineered. engineering as a discipline means understanding your problem space and creating a well formed solution to it, if you have last minute changes that means you did not understand your problem space well enough. Perfectly understandable in this case, that construction technique was really cutting edge, and the change has been born out by the real acid test of engineering, it has stood for this long.
- sacrosancty 4y ago
  TFA suggests Bartholdi may have made the changes after Eiffel left the project to fit more with his own artistic vision. That's not poor engineering, just maybe change of leadership and direction of the project.
  - somat 4y ago
    That is extremely poor engineering, an inherent problem with good engineering is that any change tends to provoke a need to reevaluate much of the design. this is expensive and slow. So the design change gets pushed without the rest of the engineering processes that should have accompanied it and now you have critical sections that are poorly engineered. In the software world we call this "technical dept"
- NickRandom 4y ago
  Your comment is not inaccurate. According to the almighty wikipedia, during a 1986 survey of the statue.. [1] Careful study had revealed that the right arm had been improperly attached to the main structure. It was swaying more and more when strong winds blew and there was a significant risk of structural failure. In addition, the head had been installed 2 feet (0.61 m) off center, and one of the rays was wearing a hole in the right arm when the statue moved in the wind. The armature structure was badly corroded, and about two percent of the exterior plates needed to be replaced.[138] Although problems with the armature had been recognized as early as 1936, when cast iron replacements for some of the bars had been installed, much of the corrosion had been hidden by layers of paint applied over the years.[139] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statue_of_Liberty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statue_of_Liberty (Renovation and rededication 1982–2000)

by tomcam 4y ago

pavlov 4y ago

The quite new museum on Liberty Island (opened in 2019) is surprisingly interesting and well executed. The decade-long campaign to raise money in both France and US was an impressive feat of crowdfunding. And the sculptor himself had terrific business acumen, selling tickets to tour his workshop and exhibiting full-scale parts of the statue in Paris to large crowds to keep up interest while it was still years away from completion.

technologia 4y ago
If you get the opportunity, there is a Bartholdi museum in a small town on the French German border called Colmar that was originally his home. It’s interesting the evolution of the artist over the decades leading up to the Statue of Liberty

IncRnd 4y ago

sp332 4y ago
Curtain wall construction had only been invented less than 20 years earlier, and this was the tallest such structure at the time.
- IncRnd 4y ago
  > Curtain wall construction had only been invented less than 20 years earlier The comment was about understanding that the statue needed to handle winds in the harbor - not about curtain wall construction. > and this was the tallest such structure at the time. The wind load acting on lighthouses and chimneys was formulated in France by L. Fresnel in 1825. One of the Seven Wonders of The Ancient World was also a lighthouse, Egypt’s Pharos of Alexandria. As the first known lighthouse it stood 450' or 145' taller than today's Statue of Liberty.
yunohn 4y ago
- IncRnd 4y ago
  I was simply replying to those who commented to me. There was no political stance against the use of "they" in my comments. There was a bias in people who replied to me, but I ignored those biased statements. I literally don't care either way as to how people live.

somat 4y ago

Conversely the fact that it was such a late change means it was poorly engineered. engineering as a discipline means understanding your problem space and creating a well formed solution to it, if you have last minute changes that means you did not understand your problem space well enough. Perfectly understandable in this case, that construction technique was really cutting edge, and the change has been born out by the real acid test of engineering, it has stood for this long.

sacrosancty 4y ago
TFA suggests Bartholdi may have made the changes after Eiffel left the project to fit more with his own artistic vision. That's not poor engineering, just maybe change of leadership and direction of the project.
- somat 4y ago
  That is extremely poor engineering, an inherent problem with good engineering is that any change tends to provoke a need to reevaluate much of the design. this is expensive and slow. So the design change gets pushed without the rest of the engineering processes that should have accompanied it and now you have critical sections that are poorly engineered. In the software world we call this "technical dept"
NickRandom 4y ago
Your comment is not inaccurate. According to the almighty wikipedia, during a 1986 survey of the statue.. [1] Careful study had revealed that the right arm had been improperly attached to the main structure. It was swaying more and more when strong winds blew and there was a significant risk of structural failure. In addition, the head had been installed 2 feet (0.61 m) off center, and one of the rays was wearing a hole in the right arm when the statue moved in the wind. The armature structure was badly corroded, and about two percent of the exterior plates needed to be replaced.[138] Although problems with the armature had been recognized as early as 1936, when cast iron replacements for some of the bars had been installed, much of the corrosion had been hidden by layers of paint applied over the years.[139] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statue_of_Liberty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statue_of_Liberty (Renovation and rededication 1982–2000)