Super-sized Projects

Engineers are now taking on gigantic projects that dwarf all previous efforts. This requires careful calculations of stresses and loads, prior to launching construction.

Beyond that, there are big new problems. Like how to erect an enormous stature, or stretch cables across a river span far longer than any other.


	Engineering Marvels Everywhere one looks, technology is erecting bigger and more impressive structures



	Brooklyn Bridge This drawing illustrates the submerged, pressurized chamber needed by workers who prepare foundations for the stone towers that support the bridge, which rest on the riverbed. Waste is hauled up and dumped into barges, after which the tower itself rises stone by stone, using cranes which also rise, as the construction continues


	Statue of Liberty The magnificent statue is made of sheets of copper, formed to shape in France, shipped to America, and then riveted together. Visitors reach the viewing platform by climbing a spiral staircase rising up the center of the supporting structure. An elevator was added in the 1930s.



→ Huge new displays of engineering wizardry pop up everywhere, from a suspension bridge taller than the masts of ships, to a giant statue gifted by France