Tallest in the World

The Great Pyramid of Egypt originally stood 481 feet (146.5 m) tall and was the tallest man-made structure on Earth for nearly 4000 years—basically until the late Middle Ages when the Gothic cathedrals of Europe were being built and were trying to outdo one another in terms of their dimensions.

Interestingly, a couple of these churches held their pre-eminent rank only briefly because their heavenward-reaching spires met some kind of mishap, and thus they yielded their number-one place to a lower structure and the record height goes down three times in the following record.

The Great Pyramid was first surpassed around 1311 AD by Lincoln Cathedral in England, which had a spire believed to have been 524 feet (159.7 m) tall. (It collapsed in a storm in 1549.)

St. Olaf's Church in Talinn, Estonia, built in 1500 (521.6 ft, 159 m), was the tallest building in the world from 1549 to 1625 when its spire was destroyed by lightning.

St. Mary's Church, Stralsund, Germany (495 ft, 151 m), was the tallest building in the world from 1625 to 1647 when its spire was destroyed by lightning.

Strasbourg Cathedral, France (466 ft, 142 m), was the tallest building in the world from 1647 to 1874.

St. Nikolai Church in Hamburg, Germany was the tallest building on earth (483 ft, 147.8 m) from 1874 to 1876.

When the Washington Monument was completed in 1884 it was the tallest structure in the world at 555 feet tall (169 m). The Washington Monument was not the tallest structure on Earth for very long. It was surpassed in 1889 by the Eiffel Tower, which is 1063 feet (324 m) tall. It was the tallest until the age of the great skyscrapers in the US began in the 1930s with such buildings as the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building.

Just for comparison purposes, the great ocean liner Titanic, which sank in 1912, was 882 feet long—longer than The Great Pyramid was tall but shorter than one of the great cathedrals was tall. The huge airship the Hindenburg, which burned in a famous disaster in 1937, was almost as long as the Titanic, with a length of 804 feet.

Copyright © 2012 by Richard Stein

American Engineering (May Still Be) Number One

Regular readers of this blog know that I have pointed out the many respects in which America is not, or is no longer, Number 1 in the world.

The world's tallest building does not have a nice American-sounding name like Sears Tower or Empire State Building. It's the Burj Khalifa, and if that does not sound very American, it's because it's not. The building is in the Middle East.

It's been a while since the tallest building was in America, although three of the 10 tallest are in the US and, in fact, are all here in Chicago.

However, the Burj Khalifa was designed by the American architectural firm of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. Consider that the design of very tall buildings is as much, or more, a matter of engineering than architecture; and America quite possibly still has the best engineers in the world.

Even during the period when American cars seemed to be sadly suffering in the quality area, I had no doubt that General Motors (or, to those partisan to other US car manufacturers, insert that name here if you like) employed some of the best engineers in the world. On the other hand, it must be admitted that many of the engineering features found very widely in modern cars were not American inventions or developments: things like the Macpherson suspension (now pretty much universal and invented by a Scotsman), fuel injection, disc brakes, and overhead camshaft engines.

I think one reason why these were mostly developed in Europe is one simple word: racing. Most of those engineering features in the list above were developed by car makers who had a racing program, and they first appeared in race cars. By contrast, with the exception of Ford, which has raced on and off, American car makers have not built cars for racing in modern times.

There is no doubt (at least in this mind) that many countries such as China and India have given the world many great scientists and musicians, not to mention the European countries which led the world for so long. Japan has been a leader in electronics. On the other hand, there has been concern that America's educational system has its failings, especially when it comes to science and mathematics. But I think that America still knows how to produce good engineers, or else why would an achievement like the world's tallest building ultimately come out of America?

Some people, I'm sure, have come to feel that I like to engage in America-bashing. I like to think I'm very fair-minded and dole out both praise and criticism where it is due.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein