| Transcript |
| · | Intro |
| 0:00 | · | serving you and now the star of paint your wife watch your host Lee Marvin man |
| · | Gutzon Borglum |
| 0:07 | · | has always strive for immortality some larger small way of letting generations |
| 0:13 | · | to come nobody has been here the task happens to be one that the experts say cannot possibly be done when the |
| 0:20 | · | challenge is even greater the urge to leave our individual mark on |
| 0:27 | · | this earth is with us all a child sandcastle might easily wash away but |
| 0:32 | · | his dreams might someday lead to conquering the impossible such a dreamer |
| 0:37 | · | was sculptor Gutzon Borglum in 1927 Borglum working on a model in the studio |
| 0:43 | · | near mount rushmore south dakota began a project of the experts said simply couldn't be done as a tribute to |
| 0:50 | · | American democracy Borglum had decided to carve the world's largest memorial out of the solid |
| 0:55 | · | granite of the Black Hills his son |
| 1:02 | · | Lincoln Borglum supervised much of the carving and remembers that for men's difficulties and his father faced this |
| 1:09 | · | was a thing to convince people that you could go up onto the side of a mountain a piece of raw granite and create a |
| 1:16 | · | memorial the usual reaction was that it was impossible but it couldn't be done |
| 1:23 | · | and of course this goes back to the basic thinking that most people feel |
| 1:28 | · | that nothing can be done if they haven't seen it done before we tried to use trained stone carvers when you took them |
| 1:36 | · | out of the environment of a stone quarry and hung them on the side of a mountain on the end of a cable and they look down |
| 1:42 | · | between their legs and they see 300 feet straight down to the ground their perspective all change and their work |
| 1:48 | · | suffered entirely from I mean they were not happy all they were interested in was getting back up that cable to the top of the mouth |
| 1:55 | · | I think you constantly lived with danger |
| 2:00 | · | but it was a calculated risk so that you worked really worried about it you knew |
| 2:06 | · | that if you stepped back off the scaffolding you'd fall a couple hundred feet so you didn't step back off the scaffolding work often stopped because |
| 2:14 | · | of the lack of money Gutzon Borglum had to make frequent trips to Washington to plea for additional funds with good weather and |
| 2:23 | · | sunlight only available a few months of each year Lincoln Borglum and his co-workers struggled against the odds |
| 2:28 | · | and the granite of the Black Hills there was no textbook on mountain carving and Gutzon Borglum the artist |
| 2:35 | · | also had to become an engineer a geologist in the minor but the artist always prevailed Abraham Lincoln's eyes |
| 2:45 | · | are life light because Borglum recessed the pupil to remain in the shadow except for shafts of granite to reflect the |
| 2:52 | · | light since the granite here erodes less than one inch every 100,000 years |
| 2:57 | · | Borglum was confident that his memorial would last for eternity |
| 3:08 | · | one of borglum's assistant mountain carvers remembers a tourist Oh some of the questions that marvelous I |
| 3:14 | · | remembered I worked on Rushmore they wanted to know what they did with the heads in the winter time we always told them will you put him in the studio |
| 3:21 | · | after all you can't leave him out there in a cold father and son work together for 13 |
| 3:27 | · | years and then sadly Gustin died a year before Rushmore was completed it had not |
| 3:32 | · | been for his dedication to this concept it would never have been done he mortgaged his immortal soul to see that |
| 3:39 | · | it was going to be tired it's not basically a monument to the four figures |
| 3:45 | · | that are up there but to what these men represented and the growth and the |
| 3:50 | · | progress of the United States as much as I have been there crawl all over that |
| 3:56 | · | damn piece of rock measured every inch of it time after time I can't ever go back up |
| 4:05 | · | there without getting a lump in my throat Oh gonna change that |
| 4:15 | · | [Music] |
| 4:22 | · | Meeta but Mount Rushmore was not to be the |
| 4:27 | · | last of the mountain - we have the same principle as a jet engine it has the |
| 4:32 | · | same fuel and we are carving with the backlash from the torch at Stone |
| 4:38 | · | Mountain Georgia the largest single work of sculptural art in the world has just been completed a tribute to the |
| 4:44 | · | Confederacy featuring general robert e lee Jefferson Davis and general Stonewall Jackson the carved out area is |
| 4:52 | · | approximately the size of a football field |
| 4:57 | · | we talk with large Falkner sculptor over the torch in the old days in the 20s |
| 5:03 | · | when they were working up them there was 30 and 35 men today we have myself doing |
| 5:10 | · | the carving and I have two young men helping me so that's a big crew of three |
| 5:16 | · | one man with a torch can carbonate ours what used to take eight men a week to do by hand but the danger is still there I |
| 5:23 | · | think the funniest expression you can see on a man's face there is where he'll be working on a platform a scalpel and |
| 5:31 | · | to be working and take one step backwards and maybe step from just the |
| 5:36 | · | thickness of a board from one level to the other and you see his face go right he looks right on the see if anybody saw |
| 5:42 | · | him this is something that is a little humorous but dangerous at the same time |
| 5:48 | · | [Music] [Applause] [Music] |
| 5:53 | · | then was cordial Kowski just a few miles from Mount Rushmore also in the Black |
| 5:59 | · | Hills of South Dakota he and his five sons are carving the figure of Chief Crazy Horse's a tribute to the American |
| 6:05 | · | Indians Jule Kowski now 61 has been planning and working on the project for over 30 years ever since an Indian Henry |
| 6:13 | · | Standing Bear asked him to carve a memorial for his people |
| 6:18 | · | I had $174 to stop this project though I bought a cow and dug a well visit a tent |
| 6:25 | · | down there about seven months people kind of skeptical about it to show the |
| 6:32 | · | people this concept Tsiolkovsky carved a huge detail model of Chief Crazy Horse but when the monument is carved in the |
| 6:38 | · | mountain its size will be staggering the Indians head alone will be as large |
| 6:43 | · | as the foreheads of Mount Rushmore combined and four thousand people could stand in the area under the art jewel |
| 6:51 | · | Kowski works without the benefit of government funds preferring to keep his work independent mr. Stewart Udall I |
| 6:57 | · | like you very much he's the Secretary of the Interior came here about six years ago yes said Mr shokalskiy how long it |
| 7:04 | · | take you to finish this project and I said I don't know five or ten million dollars he said that's what I've heard |
| 7:09 | · | well he said I'll tell you what you do you come to Washington in wisht to town we'll have a will draw up an ironclad |
| 7:15 | · | contract and between the government yourself Secretary of Interior and the |
| 7:24 | · | crazy earth Commission I said an ironclad contract isaac mr. secretary |
| 7:31 | · | tell me about those ironclad treaties you drove with the Indians well you know he didn't get angry with |
| 7:38 | · | me thank heavens because we are still good friends today but you asked how |
| 7:44 | · | much it gonna cost it could have been done yes the skeptics and the doubters continued to question Corps shocked one day years and years |
| 7:51 | · | ago I went down to watch the blast down at the studio this fellow said to me |
| 7:58 | · | mister how do you know that crazy was in that mountain well I looked at mine I |
| 8:04 | · | didn't quite believe him but he was serious and I said what I'll tell you what I do every morning I bid I drill |
| 8:10 | · | about 810 16-foot holes then I fill them |
| 8:15 | · | full of dynamite and just as I pull up the plunger I say crazy are you there and I push the plunger down he says |
| · | Indian Cultural Center |
| 8:25 | · | horshack jewel Kowski calls himself a storyteller installed but this veteran |
| 8:31 | · | of Omaha Beach is also a dreamer who wants to build here someday an Indian cultural center and university |
| 8:37 | · | and medical complex there are experts who say it can't be done and skeptics who say it will never be done the core |
| 8:45 | · | Jacque continues his dream a tribute to the Indians of America and to Mans endurance to build the impossible |
| 8:52 | · | [Music] |
| · | Washington Monument |
| 8:58 | · | area code 202 Washington DC the nation's |
| 9:05 | · | capital the Lincoln Memorial [Music] Jefferson rotunda |
| 9:12 | · | and the Washington Monument in 1832 when money was raised by subscription and |
| 9:18 | · | blocks of stone were sent from every state a lot of people said it couldn't be done but it was the Washington |
| 9:27 | · | Monument went to the public in 1888 [Music] |
| 9:33 | · | a hollow shaft of stone over 555 feet high it has a high-speed elevator inside |
| 9:39 | · | that whisks you to the top in 70 seconds from here you can see all of Washington |
| 9:46 | · | when you take your trip to Washington share all the fun and excitement with your family by long distance the bridge |
| · | James YZ |
| 9:56 | · | builders of America certainly lead the parade when it comes to building what people said couldn't be done for example |
| 10:03 | · | it was a guy back in 1867 James YZ was his name and he announced through the |
| 10:08 | · | world that he was going to bridge the mighty Mississippi River well all the experts said that he was crazy |
| 10:14 | · | in fact the convention of 27 of the world's leading engineer's condemned the idea as foolhardy and he responsible but |
| · | George Washington Roebling |
| 10:23 | · | EADS knew more about the turbulent Mississippi than any man alive and he was a natural engineering genius at st. |
| 10:30 | · | Louis he created a triple span arch bridge over 1500 feet and to end but he |
| 10:36 | · | did it with a material that had never before been used for a bridge superstructure steel in 1873 EADS |
| 10:44 | · | completed the so-called impossible bridge across the Mississippi where it stands today nearly a century later |
| 10:52 | · | at the same time another gifted engineer George Washington Roebling took over the |
| 10:57 | · | construction of the Brooklyn Bridge which had been started by his father while fighting it underwater fire on the |
| 11:02 | · | bridge foundation roebling's suffered caisson disease from rapid decompression what they call today the bends ahead of |
| 11:12 | · | him was a decade of work demanding the most exacting knowledge and technical skill but now he was crippled with some |
| 11:18 | · | brain damage and scarcely able to talk and then began the unbelievable story although every movement was torture |
| 11:25 | · | roving devised a code with his wife Emily tapping on her arm to give her instructions Emily in turn studied |
| 11:33 | · | mathematics engineering and bridge design eventually she was able to take her husband's tapped out instructions |
| 11:38 | · | and transmit his orders to his assistant engineers and to inspect construction |
| 11:44 | · | Roebling when he was able watch the progress from his window through binoculars Thomas Edison took these rare |
| 11:51 | · | pictures of the construction of the new Brooklyn Bridge |
| 11:56 | · | and then on May 24th 1883 Roebling looking through his binoculars saw what |
| 12:01 | · | his wife described as gray granite towers standing tall and strong for the |
| 12:06 | · | cables shimmering in the Sun and as the mayors of New York and Brooklyn joined with the president Chester Arthur |
| 12:12 | · | and Governor Grover Cleveland to officially open the bridge tears streamed on the faces of Emily and |
| 12:17 | · | George Rowland after 13 tortures he is they had completed their Brooklyn Bridge |
| 12:24 | · | [Music] [Applause] [Music] |
| 12:36 | · | since then many famous and beautiful bridges have been created in America such as the verrazano-narrows in New |
| 12:42 | · | York and the Royal Gorge Bridge in Colorado and then there is what the |
| 12:48 | · | bridge builders around the world call the bridge by 1920 bridge designer |
| 12:54 | · | Joseph Strauss had built 399 bridges throughout the world and he dreamed that his 400th bridge would do the impossible |
| 13:01 | · | bridge the world-famous harbor of San Francisco for 10 years Strauss had |
| · | The Impossible Bridge |
| 13:07 | · | opposition from all sides vested interests brought court injunctions claiming tolls would be excessive |
| 13:13 | · | eminent geologists said that an earthquake would completely demolish any bridge across the Golden Gate some of |
| 13:19 | · | the world's leading engineers claims it would be totally impossible to work under the ferocious winds and tides of the channel many people protested that |
| 13:26 | · | any bridge would ruin the natural beauty of the harbor but in 1933 the voters of |
| 13:31 | · | five Bay area counties passed a 35 million dollar bond issue and Strauss |
| 13:37 | · | started to build the bridge that couldn't possibly be built |
| 13:42 | · | [Music] Strauss designed the towers to rise 746 |
| 13:50 | · | feet above the bay 190 feet taller than the Washington Monument he had little |
| 13:57 | · | trouble with the North Tower since its foundation was on solid rock but the foundation of the South Tower seemed to |
| 14:03 | · | be an impossibility fighting channel depths of over 300 feet with currents up to 15 and 20 knots and |
| 14:09 | · | winds sometimes as high as 75 miles an hour Strauss Atta constructs what would be |
| 14:15 | · | the equivalent of a ten-story building under water the access trestles to the |
| 14:21 | · | foundation site were wrecked twice first by a fog-bound ship and then by a storm and critics of the bridge scream for a |
| 14:29 | · | halt to the construction for over a year the bridge builders waged their historic fight in conditions equivalent to the |
| 14:35 | · | open sea they blasted bombs on the channel floor and poured concrete into those 10-story underwater foundations as |
| 14:43 | · | the pier finally broke through the surface of the channel it was held around the world as one of the |
| 14:48 | · | engineering marvels of all time however the bridge builders battle against the Golden Gate had only begun during |
| 14:58 | · | earthquakes the towers swayed violently and the men working at the top actually got seasick |
| 15:10 | · | [Music] but the towers continue their dramatic rise above the golden gate we're all set |
| 15:17 | · | here are you ready barge okay we're coming |
| 15:22 | · | across [Music] we're riding fair reeling out bad the |
| 15:30 | · | first cable was carried across the channel and hauled to the top of the tower the first of 80,000 miles of wire |
| 15:36 | · | the cable spinning operation was underway they had a fight storms winds |
| · | The Marin Tower |
| 16:09 | · | cars and fog throughout the next three years inspector Wesley gets remembers his days |
| 16:15 | · | on the towers we go out take the elevator to the top of a San Francisco |
| 16:21 | · | Tower and then walk across the catwalk to the Marin Tower was usually foggy and |
| 16:28 | · | windy and cold good deal like today and you are rubber rain gear to keep dry by |
| 16:35 | · | the time you had hiked up the catwalk to the top of the Marin Tower it was like rubber rain gear like being in a Turkish |
| 16:42 | · | bath you were just soaked to the skin you might as well lucked the rain gear off |
| 16:50 | · | one day trouble developed out on one of the cables - bridge builders volunteered to climb out and fix the broken work |
| 16:56 | · | carriage one of the men client Hepworth recalls his tightrope act high above the Golden Gate we got to be six and set it |
| 17:07 | · | on to the cables and slid out to clear up the cable and they were gonna bring |
| 17:13 | · | us back but they got it scared when we got out and we had to walk those cables |
| 17:18 | · | we walked from one cage the other and made mugs and I first to who that ever |
| 17:23 | · | crossed the Golden Gate as the bridge builders continued to fight the elements |
| 17:28 | · | and fate itself Bay Area residents watched in amazement as the bridge builders built the road in the sky |
| 17:34 | · | slowly the great steel arms inch closer together with man's first attempt to bridge a major harbour with the longest |
| 17:41 | · | single span in history the huge safety nets under the workmen |
| 17:47 | · | had already caught and saved 19 lives when tragedy finally struck one day a wooden platform collapsed and crashed |
| 17:53 | · | through the safety nets there were two men directly under me maybe 200 feet |
| 18:01 | · | from the tower it rolled those two men up like in a cocoon it hung there for |
| 18:08 | · | possibly a minute and then broke loose |
| 18:13 | · | and that's the last we saw those two fellows those were 2 of 10 bridge |
| 18:22 | · | builders who fell to the death on that tragic afternoon [Music] |
| 18:34 | · | but the bridge builders continue to fight the odds struggling on to finish the bridge that couldn't be built |
| 18:47 | · | [Applause] Strauss decided to give the bridge of distinctive color international RNG |
| · | Strauss Bridge |
| 18:53 | · | called it and over 60,000 gallons were needed but his Bridgman water Cathy |
| 18:58 | · | recalls not all of the paint were on the bridge we had a man he had quite a |
| 19:04 | · | little time on his hands and he'd set snares and catch seagulls he'd paint the |
| 19:12 | · | tops of their heads red and then he'd turned them loose and one day we looked in the paper and there was quite an |
| 19:18 | · | article in there about the new species of seagulls at the redheads and I guess he'd painted half the seagull phones in |
| 19:24 | · | San Francisco and then in May of 1937 |
| 19:30 | · | four and a half years after the start of construction Strauss completed his 400th bridge the |
| 19:36 | · | bridge builders had created a poem in Steel [Music] |
| 20:12 | · | [Music] |
| 20:37 | · | [Music] [Applause] |
| 20:43 | · | [Music] |
| 20:53 | · | [Music] |
| 21:50 | · | [Music] |
| 22:11 | · | [Music] |
| 22:22 | · | area code nine one nine kilowatt North |
| 22:28 | · | Carolina summer resort deep-sea fishing area |
| 22:33 | · | waterfowl Haven and the Wright brothers Museum |
| 22:39 | · | before 1903 everybody said it couldn't be done man wasn't meant to fly but on |
| 22:46 | · | this tiny field for Ville and Wilbur Wright made the first airplane flights under perfect control and under their |
| 22:53 | · | own power [Music] |
| 23:02 | · | the longest flight that road linking California in the East Coast and the Panama Canal joining ocean to ocean |
| 23:08 | · | we're all considered in possibilities by many leading experts of their time man |
| 23:16 | · | kids get flown on Spears would think that we'll get a tree to get above |
| 23:22 | · | [Music] between 1817 and 1825 Irish immigrants |
| 23:27 | · | attracted by the wage of 80 cents a day use pick and shovel to create what was the longest man-made waterway in history |
| 23:33 | · | the Erie Canal they carved out a Canal 363 miles long over a trackless mosquito |
| 23:40 | · | infested wilderness working with primitive equipment and untested engineering ideas but the builders of |
| 23:47 | · | the Erie Canal created the impossible and joined the Great Lakes with the Atlantic Ocean revolutionising Commerce |
| 23:53 | · | and trades throughout the northeastern United States |
| 24:03 | · | [Music] |
| 24:11 | · | long before then the green dark forest moves to smile to be read out in |
| 24:21 | · | California citizens were laughing at a man a nickname crazy Judah Judah had the insane idea of building a railroad |
| 24:27 | · | through the gigantic Sierra Nevada in 1865 thousands of Chinese laborers |
| 24:33 | · | working with the Central Pacific began construction of theater judah's railroad over some of the most treacherous |
| 24:38 | · | mountains in the world with no heavy machinery or dynamite available at the time every foot was gained by pick and |
| 24:44 | · | shovel blasting was done first with black powder and later with nitroglycerin and the danger of |
| 24:50 | · | landslides was chronic nevertheless in 1869 the workers of the Central Pacific |
| 24:56 | · | and the Union Pacific met a promontory Utah and the United States was linked |
| 25:01 | · | from ocean to ocean another attempt to |
| 25:07 | · | link the Oh shows this one across the Isthmus of Panama had been started in the 1880s by the French engineer |
| 25:13 | · | Ferdinand de Lesseps the builder of the Suez Canal but after fifty thousand of |
| 25:19 | · | his Canal workers had died from the combined effects of malaria yellow fever in the extreme heat de Lesseps abandoned |
| 25:25 | · | the project but in 1903 the Americans |
| 25:30 | · | attacked the impossible man's centuries-old dream of joining the Atlantic in the Pacific and thus |
| 25:36 | · | eliminating the ten thousand mile voyage around the southern tip of South America general Glen Edgerton was there when I |
| 25:44 | · | arrived in the Canal Zone in nineteen eight malaria was rampant then every |
| 25:51 | · | employee was supposed to take three grains of Hainan a day as a per minute |
| 25:56 | · | if she got sick by of course they gave you much more they quickly put full force in the common labor was with West |
| 26:03 | · | India Ireland but for the British and the French they British workers were |
| 26:10 | · | very elderly but the fish workers were a |
| 26:16 | · | little further and fiercer they'd attack performing a case later statistics were overwhelming over 55,000 men struggling |
| 26:24 | · | in the hundred degree heat while medical officers attacked the problems of malaria yellow fever and engineers tried |
| 26:30 | · | to solve the infinite problems of construction it would eventually take 60 |
| 26:37 | · | million tons of dynamite to remove 270 million cubic yards of Earth and rock sometimes at the cost of 10 million |
| 26:44 | · | dollars a mile the American medical team our oculus Li solved the problems of disease and the engineers and the work |
| 26:51 | · | has created the unbelievable locks the locks 1,000 feet long and 110 feet wide |
| 26:56 | · | are the largest in the world the impossible Panama Canal became a fact |
| 27:03 | · | former Canal Zone governor and congressman Maurice Thatcher age 99 recalls something as well said what the |
| 27:13 | · | restriction of the Panama Canal constituted evidence of the greatest |
| 27:21 | · | liberty that man was taking with nature [Music] |
| 27:33 | · | that could be worn for the attempted faith they want disease and 11 years |
| 27:39 | · | they joined the to prove the impossible is indeed on |
| 27:48 | · | [Music] |
| · | Dam Builders |
| 28:11 | · | they're just as many the most colorful groups of them all the dam builders |
| 28:16 | · | Americans have become the biggest builders of bands in the history of man since 1902 the Bureau of Reclamation has |
| 28:23 | · | constructed over 195 dams without a single failure but the life of the dam |
| 28:31 | · | builder is the most hazardous and non our construction accounting for more deaths than any other construction part |
| 28:37 | · | I scaler Joe kine worked on the most famous and controversial is amol Hoover |
| 28:42 | · | Dam one times while working here down here on the ropes one of my very close |
| 28:47 | · | buddies is working directly with me he is not slipped a little and of course when you're not slips in there's four or |
| 28:53 | · | five hundred feet below you to fall it gives you a rather a thrill and he grabbed the hold of his rope and held up |
| 28:59 | · | there and he put his hands up right quick and says hold on there buddy hold on he was talking to me not located on |
| 29:05 | · | the border of Arizona and Nevada Hoover Dam was born in controversy |
| 29:15 | · | [Music] engineers and geologists insisted that it would be impossible to build a wall across the treacherous Colorado River |
| 29:22 | · | they claimed that the first big flood would sweep the dam away and wipe out half of California in the process but |
| 29:31 | · | starting in 1930 barked by the dreams of Arthur Paul Davis the government started the pour of 7 million tons of concrete |
| 29:38 | · | the greatest weight that man has ever placed on earth [Music] |
| 30:02 | · | so that the concrete mass would knit together in one piece the pouring went on 24 hours a day 365 days a year |
| 30:10 | · | continuously for two years temperatures in the desert heat often reached well over a hundred degrees as recall by |
| 30:17 | · | Tommy Nelson well country does run a very high temperature and some of these peddlers are toppers back in the diversion |
| 30:24 | · | tunnels the temperature perhaps exceeded 135 degrees Fahrenheit Moore also |
| 30:30 | · | remembers the heat when you came home off the job you didn't have to worry |
| 30:36 | · | about hanging your clothes up they were sweat soaked and still was salty to stand up in the corner where you got up |
| 30:42 | · | to make the next shift like just step into them and readied will work even in |
| 30:49 | · | the depression days there were some compensations Anderson's mess all fed the man very very good for a dollar and |
| 30:55 | · | a half a day and it's surprising how much lunch some of those guys could get into one of these boxes they could cram |
| 31:03 | · | 12 sandwiches and three or four oranges in two or three pieces of pie it just |
| 31:10 | · | made you wonder I'll be crammed at all in there despite unprecedented safety measures at |
| 31:16 | · | Hoover Dam danger and death haunted those trying to tame the Colorado the wild river having been shut off by the |
| 31:22 | · | huge dice rolls 50 feet above the heads of the workers and seed through rock tunnels on either side of them |
| 31:28 | · | eventually 98 men would lose during construction but after six long |
| 31:39 | · | years hoover dam was completed it had introduced an unprecedented stroke style |
| 31:44 | · | and technique to dam building it had created Lake Mead the largest man-made lake in the world |
| 31:50 | · | a scenic wonder and it was to irrigate the barren southwest and to like the homes of millions in Southern California |
| 31:56 | · | joke time recalls the final working days the hard work real hard was one man got |
| 32:02 | · | laid off and that beaten me as we was going home and as weasel on our way home up by the hairpin curve will be turned |
| 32:08 | · | around the man looks back at this dance and looked at the great achievement a man's ability there is he filament and |
| 32:14 | · | he just stopped when he looked at it and he said I hope at least [Music] |
| 32:34 | · | area code three one for st. Louis |
| 32:39 | · | Missouri on the banks of the Mississippi it's here on the way north from New Orleans that the Blues stayed for good |
| 32:47 | · | sports and breweries cereals and chemicals and the arch the Gateway part |
| 33:01 | · | even today when it's all finished you look at it and you say to yourself it couldn't be done but there it is a |
| 33:08 | · | gateway to the west |
| 33:14 | · | 630 feet of stainless steel just standing there and you can even ride up |
| 33:20 | · | one side and down the other that's a trip you really ought to take I please phone ahead for your rooms before you |
| 33:27 | · | head to the arch the part can be mighty cold the dreamers of the impossible have |
| · | Holland Tunnel |
| 33:34 | · | always confounded the experts in 1920 engineer Clifford Holland start a |
| 33:40 | · | construction of a tunnel between New York and New Jersey they're building of |
| 33:46 | · | the whole long term though the actual building of it Boston as much of a problem as finding a plan because that |
| 33:54 | · | was the first of no build tunnel and there were people that thought that that |
| 34:01 | · | was an impossibility to take so many automobiles through so long a tunnel |
| 34:07 | · | without the strip shaping people when Holland's chief designing engineering holy sings dad created a revolutionary |
| 34:14 | · | ventilation system for the Holland Tunnel and had the last laugh sure we have estimated that ultimately the |
| 34:22 | · | tunnel would carry 38,000 vehicles but it would take a number of years before |
| 34:28 | · | you to reach them but at Sunday midnight after the first 24 hours their traffic |
| 34:37 | · | count was 52 thousand acres and one of the new york daily papers reported fish |
| 34:45 | · | and it said the air in the tunnel was |
| 34:51 | · | better than on fifth avenue and then |
| 34:56 | · | there was the so-called impossible skyscraper the Empire State his creator said that they could fill it in less |
| 35:03 | · | than two years and then it would be able to withstand and even less than 14 months as to his endurance this was |
| 35:10 | · | tested in 1945 when a b25 ranked 50 miles an hour ripping out a large section of the 79th |
| 35:17 | · | floor but no major structural damage occurred but perhaps one of America's greatest |
| 35:24 | · | engineering achievements is the highway system of the United States often taken for granted by Americans and often |
| 35:31 | · | maligned for its effect on our natural environment the American highway network is nevertheless the engineering wonder |
| 35:37 | · | of the 20th century the most dramatic Road building story in our lifetime |
| 35:43 | · | happened just thirty years ago early in 1942 government contractors posted this |
| 35:48 | · | notice in employment offices throughout the United States and Canada this is no picnic working in living conditions on |
| 35:55 | · | this job or as difficult as any encountered on any construction job ever done in the United States or foreign |
| 36:00 | · | territory temperatures will range from 90 degrees above 0 to 70 degrees below zero mosquitoes flies mice will not only |
| 36:07 | · | be annoying but will cause bodily harm if you are not prepared to work under these conditions do not apply |
| 36:14 | · | [Music] with the start of World War two there |
| 36:20 | · | was an immediate strategic necessity to build an alaskan highway an oil pipeline to the Arctic Circle the road builders |
| 36:26 | · | had less than a year to complete the 1600 mile highway before the spring thaw of 1943 the builders had across the mass |
| 36:34 | · | of Canadian Rockies bridge countless streams and swamps and tear into hundreds of miles of bush |
| 36:40 | · | when temperatures hit 40 degrees below zero machinery broke down to add to the |
| 36:45 | · | difficulties the first thaw came before the job was completed sessions of the road were threatened by melting ice |
| 36:51 | · | bulldozers frequently sank in the ice or mud it seemed an impossible task but the |
| 36:57 | · | builders completed the road on schedule and now nearly three decades later |
| · | Bridge of Peace |
| 37:02 | · | another Road builder desires to go one step further the alaska highway was |
| 37:07 | · | conceived in war this new road is conceived in peace dr. t wine Lynn of |
| 37:13 | · | the University of California recently made world headlines when he proposed a highway to connect the United States |
| 37:19 | · | with Russia it would be a highway bridge across the Bering Sea 50 miles long the |
| 37:26 | · | purpose is step to demonstrate to the world that it is quite possible to link the continents together bring the |
| 37:32 | · | country and the peoples together and this can be easily done by bridging |
| 37:38 | · | across the Bering Strait from Alaska to Siberia in a distance of 50 miles it's |
| 37:46 | · | not very deep at maximum depth of 180 feet if we can build a bridge across it |
| 37:52 | · | proved to the peoples of the world that we can work together and the whole world |
| 37:58 | · | is one dr. Lynn would like to finance this billion-dollar project by having every American in every Russian |
| 38:03 | · | contribute two dollars many experts say it can't be done but dr. Lynn has no |
| 38:09 | · | doubt that he will someday build his bridge of peace there is another symbol of international understanding the World |
| 38:16 | · | Trade Center in New York City it will become the world's tallest building rising over 1300 feet into the sky from |
| 38:24 | · | a helicopter we see the New York skyline that will appear from the top of the Trade Center even New York's tallest |
| 38:30 | · | building seem to shrink in comparison |
| 38:35 | · | a steelworker John McKeever looked at this United Nations of Commerce which he's helping to build that kangaroo up |
| 38:41 | · | is the one I'm working on right now and his job is over maybe 15 years from now |
| 38:48 | · | I'll bring my children back here my three sons and I'll show them what we built here that old building in the |
| 38:54 | · | world and throughout the United States stand other impressive landmarks of |
| · | Other Impressive Landmarks |
| 38:59 | · | man's ingenuity [Music] |
| 39:07 | · | do some traveling way down |
| 39:17 | · | ha ha ha |
| 39:23 | · | [Music] get it on |
| 39:30 | · | I've been leading on pressure drill wait |
| 39:36 | · | [Music] |
| 40:25 | · | that pilgrims be [Music] |
| 40:35 | · | [Music] |
| 41:03 | · | I'm cooking in a Hanukkah Oh I've been leading on pressure field |
| 41:12 | · | I'm oh my [Music] |
| · | Cog Railway |
| 41:25 | · | area code 603 not Washington New |
| 41:30 | · | Hampshire the highest mountain in the eastern part of the country and it's the |
| 41:36 | · | hub of the world's first cog railway |
| 41:41 | · | back in 1869 when the railway was first built a lot of folks said it couldn't be |
| 41:47 | · | done but it was [Music] |
| 41:56 | · | round trip up Mount Washington on the cog railway takes about two hours the incline gets as steep as 37 degrees |
| 42:04 | · | it's an exciting and beautiful trip lots to see and enjoy you ought to try and |
| 42:13 | · | when you do keep in touch with home by phone |
| · | The Future |
| 42:22 | · | and what about the future what's seemingly impossible drains the |
| 42:27 | · | designers and engineers share for the decades ahead powerful laser beam |
| 42:35 | · | capable of drilling holes and diamonds and welding metals are just one revolutionary tool for the future |
| 42:40 | · | working math helicopters will be adapted for even more extensive use in construction nucular excavation of |
| 42:47 | · | mountains and oceans will create everything from new canals linking in the Atlantic in the Pacific to harbours |
| 42:53 | · | in Alaska to new roads and rail passages through mountain ranges to new methods |
| 43:01 | · | of recovery of natural resources many designers are testing the feasibility of |
| 43:07 | · | living in caves with all the modern conveniences while others are creating |
| 43:12 | · | homes of new plastics which can float on water the city of Baltimore is testing the |
| 43:18 | · | feasibility of floating an entire community of five thousand in the same way that the Astrodome covers the |
| 43:24 | · | Houston Stadium designers are now planning to put entire cities under glass with perfect environmental control |
| 43:30 | · | year-round prefabricated housing on a massive scale |
| 43:36 | · | is being tested for possible elimination of swamped and methods of pollution abatement through engineering are being |
| 43:42 | · | designed by dreamers of the future they told the Wright brothers that a heavier than air machine couldn't be built |
| 43:49 | · | they told for that the mass-produced automobile would never work and they told professor Robert Goddard in the |
| 43:55 | · | 1920s that he'd never see Rockets get off the ground and today some of the experts disagree with Arthur Clarke's |
| 44:01 | · | contention that the next revolution in transportation will be what is called the ground effect machine a vehicle that |
| 44:08 | · | floats on air and can go anywhere in the world over land or water and Buckminster |
| 44:14 | · | Fuller predicts that we'll all put jet wings on our backs and fly out the window on frequency billions you're |
| · | Ground Effect Machine |
| 44:19 | · | going to see that outer space industry can driven into the development how that |
| 44:24 | · | renting service industry where you see a whole cities being delivered by air and in one day just to see a whole freedom |
| 44:32 | · | ships of the sea coming into a harbor in the day coming in from the air is even |
| 44:37 | · | easier as we really apply a highest capability you see them buildings a |
| 44:43 | · | sized Empire State can be built horizontally in the aircraft plan I was there environment of their environmental |
| 44:50 | · | control be produced in a controlled environment and the most extraordinary advanced tooling had no human man hands |
| 44:57 | · | factory touch a thing everything automated machine is very rapid assemblies of these environment controls |
| 45:03 | · | and then they will be brittle lifters that come out of it out of their hangar factory and then they when they get to |
| 45:10 | · | the site they will be made the tent from the horizontal which is the easy way to move through the air into the vertical |
| 45:16 | · | so this is this is what you understand you see this with him ten years from today and as the Clarkes and the |
| 45:22 | · | Fuller's and other world planners and designers contemplate the year 2000 when |
| 45:27 | · | 100 million more Americans will join the present 210 million population their |
| 45:33 | · | dreams turn to the great oceans where 7/10 of the world exists |
| 45:38 | · | some designers have speculated that we will have floating cities of 50,000 people or more by the 21st century |
| 45:44 | · | actually we have learned in the next year decades how to divert hurricanes and typhoons and these floating cities |
| 45:50 | · | will be able to move about and take advantage of the best climates available around the world |
| 45:55 | · | John Lindbergh son of another man who did what the experts said couldn't be done is one of the foremost pioneers in |
| 46:02 | · | underwater exploration he and an associate spent forty nine hours living |
| 46:07 | · | in a 4x8 rubber tent at a depth of four hundred and thirty two feet in the Bahamas wildly died have we made in the |
| · | John Lindbergh |
| 46:15 | · | Bahamas helped to establish that is possible for men to work at depths in |
| 46:21 | · | excess of 400 feet and since then we know that he can work at depths at a thousand feet and more in the years |
| 46:28 | · | ahead is going to be increasingly important that we learn how to utilize the resources of the sea in depths |
| 46:33 | · | beyond that which man can dive beyond which he can exist if the pressures |
| 46:39 | · | involved I think we can look forward to deep-sea oil exploration deep sea |
| 46:44 | · | mineral exploitation the development of biological resources that we can do all |
| 46:51 | · | of these without damaging the ecology but I think we will have to consider the ecology with every move that we make |
| 46:57 | · | often in the past we have not done so and as the dreamers try to find |
| 47:03 | · | solutions on land and on ocean floors man continues his quest of the universe of the moon of Mars of the solar system |
| 47:11 | · | itself in a never-ending quest to do the impossible vision in every weekend you can |
| · | Coast to Coast |
| 47:17 | · | telephone to coast for as little as seventy cents it all began in Boston 1876 with |
| 47:24 | · | Alexander Graham Bell first telephone the first switchboards the first |
| 47:29 | · | operators soon telephone lines to New York to Chicago |
| 47:37 | · | in Westwood |
| 47:42 | · | and from San Francisco East lines from East and West meet in Utah the year 1915 |
| 47:51 | · | the minimum rate on a call from New York to San Francisco in 1915 four dollars |
| 47:57 | · | and seventy cents years past phone |
| 48:05 | · | service expands and long-distance rates drop dramatically the minimum rate for a |
| 48:11 | · | coast-to-coast call by 1920 was $8.25 1927 five dollars and fifty cents 1943 |
| 48:24 | · | dollars [Music] |
| 48:33 | · | by 1963 $1.00 of toys tax now in 1970 |
| 48:38 | · | the minimum is 70 cents plus tax coast to coast all calls you die |
| 48:44 | · | yourself and weekends 70 cents for a 3-minute call from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. |
| 48:49 | · | Saturday and 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday in |
| 48:55 | · | 1915 $20 be 70 cents in 1970 70 cents |
| 49:03 | · | plus tax they said it couldn't be done |
| 49:10 | · | but it was now these great stories of |
| · | Conclusion |
| 49:15 | · | American engineering and not all glamorous chapters created by superheroes these builders were men not |
| 49:21 | · | Saints and many of the workers especially in the 19th century we're often grossly abused overworked |
| 49:28 | · | and underpaid but under good conditions and bad these workers and the designers |
| 49:34 | · | and the engineers who did their dreaming we're certainly builders of the impossible astronauts report it feels |
| 49:41 | · | good ignition sequence three astronaut |
| 49:56 | · | Neil Armstrong when he returned from America's greatest engineering achievement stated I felt a successful |
| 50:02 | · | lunar landing might inspire a man around the world to believe that impossible goals are possible that there really is |
| 50:10 | · | hope for solutions to humanity's problems and the religious philosopher |
| 50:15 | · | TR de chardin has predicted someday after mastering the winds the waves the |
| 50:21 | · | tides we shall harness for God the energies of love and then for a second |
| 50:28 | · | time in the history of the world man will have discovered fire |
| 50:35 | · | it would seem that if American know-how running talent perseverance and just |
| 50:41 | · | plain guts could build this town this roadway this canal this bridge in |
| 50:48 | · | certainly this know-how should be able to come up with imaginative answers the pessimists are saying that we can't |
| 50:54 | · | solve our problems just as the pessimist told the Strauss's and the board lines and it couldn't be done but perhaps we |
| 51:02 | · | have in our mist today visionaries who will be able to do with communication but builders have done in engineering to |
| 51:08 | · | solve the impossible perhaps we can start building new bridges between each |
| · | Credits |
| 51:13 | · | other [Music] |
| 51:24 | · | [Music] the name |
| 51:34 | · | my [Music] |
| 51:52 | · | [Applause] [Music] |
| 52:08 | · | [Applause] [Music] |
| 52:32 | · | bacon [Music] |
| 52:44 | · | [Music] |
| 53:30 | · | [Applause] [Music] |
| 53:35 | · | we are [Music] |
| 53:52 | · | Oh [Music] [Applause] |
| 53:59 | · | [Music] |
| 54:18 | · | [Music] |
| 54:43 | · | [Applause] |
