lunatech
Cartographer
Reged: 05/21/03
Posts: 658
Loc: Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
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After posting the Canadian Embassy in Washington in response to seer's list here , I figured I would look for other examples of one of my favorite architects, and one of Canada's most famous.
Pictures can be found here . After checking out the embassy post above, check out the following.....
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Catch the WAVE: Wonderously Advantageous Ventures in Education...www.millenniumwave.com
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lunatech
Cartographer
Reged: 05/21/03
Posts: 658
Loc: Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
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Canadian architect Erickson's San Diego Convention Center. Note the folks playing tennis on one of the roof courts in the eta!
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Catch the WAVE: Wonderously Advantageous Ventures in Education...www.millenniumwave.com
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lunatech
Cartographer
Reged: 05/21/03
Posts: 658
Loc: Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
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Erickson's Fresno City Hall, the stainless steel roof forming an image of the Sierra Nevada mountains.
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Catch the WAVE: Wonderously Advantageous Ventures in Education...www.millenniumwave.com
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lunatech
Cartographer
Reged: 05/21/03
Posts: 658
Loc: Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
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The Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. Zoom out for a view of probably the most beautiful campuses on the planet. Always admired this building, never been there...
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Catch the WAVE: Wonderously Advantageous Ventures in Education...www.millenniumwave.com
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seer
Master Chronicler
Reged: 12/09/02
Posts: 3107
Loc: Northern California
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Nice post. Did you know that the so-called 'Greg Ash' tree (Fraxinus greggii) is known as 'Fresno' in Spanish and that the city of Fresno took its name from this tree? There are several ash family members known as Fresno: Fraxinus greggii, Fraxinus cuspidata, Fraxinus velutina, Fraxinus berlandieriana are all known as "Fresno."
(There is a second interesting use of the word Fresno in the history of the heavy-equipment industry. It is related to the city and a nearby "great engineering wonder of the world" but I don't have the address handy.)
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Be seeing you,
Seer
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lunatech
Cartographer
Reged: 05/21/03
Posts: 658
Loc: Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
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Erickson's Simon Fraser University atop Burnaby Mountain, modeled after the Acropolis. See the photo gallery/slide shows at their web site. (Go to "About SFU")
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Catch the WAVE: Wonderously Advantageous Ventures in Education...www.millenniumwave.com
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seer
Master Chronicler
Reged: 12/09/02
Posts: 3107
Loc: Northern California
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The culinary secret of Fresno is hidden near your placemark. It is in the "Santa Fe Hotel." There is no sign. You enter the bar and walk past the pool tables. At the end is a door. Beyond that door is a huge room with a eighty or so picnic-style tables. Gathered here are Basque-heritage families enjoying great food served on heaping platters. Think of a Roman Feast with a considerably less glamour. Open 5-9 Tuesday through Sunday. Check it out, but only if you are hungry. 
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Be seeing you,
Seer
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stiuskr
Master Guide
Reged: 04/13/03
Posts: 1317
Loc: NearEarthOrbit over WV
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Seer, is this what you were refering too?
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"And sometimes is seen a strange spot in the sky A human being that was given to fly"....Eddie Vedder
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seer
Master Chronicler
Reged: 12/09/02
Posts: 3107
Loc: Northern California
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Yes! How wonderful that you were able to find that.
So the story starts with James Porteous who transformed an important task as old as time through a novel use of technologies that were well established even in Roman times. (Which is to say, he was very clever.) The Fresno Scraper instalntly became "the way it was done." As your post mentions, the only real change was in 1910 or so with the substitution of a tractor as the object pulling the scraper and the mechanization of the scrape, slide, dump control.
Then came the next very clever inventor, R. G. LeTorneau. a man that I admire with all my heart. His story is told in Mover of Men and Mountains (also available here.) So 'RG' is in the grading business and for interesting reasons decides to bid on building the Grapevine Pass, what is now the long winding canyon-following part of California's Highway 5 between Bakersfield and Los Angeles. He gets the contract largely because no one else thinks the job can be done. He hires lots of people and goes up into the canyons. Just below the surface soil he finds granite. This is very bad when you consider that the Fresno Scraper was the only element of earthmoving equipment at the time (1938).
It is a big moment in his life and I'll not give away the process, but what he comes up with is the realization that in addition to lots of dynamite he needs a huge Fresno, that no 'tractor' could pull or maneuver such a thing on a rocky slope (tractors in that day had flat metal wheels with bumps). He invents a self-powered single-axle scraper with rubber tires--the same thing you see at roadsides today scraping dirt. (Tournapull and Carayall.) He went on to complete the project (see the attachment) and later invented just about every important piece of earthmoving equipment there is. Not in advance as a researcher in a lab, but in the field when his back was against a wall and some inspired insight was necessary for his survival. (The book has the details.)
He built roads along the Amazon and a "Tree Stringer" to pop the trees out of his way, invented the "electric motor is the wheel" scheme, and literally hundreds of other clever mechanisms that remain the way it is done.
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Be seeing you,
Seer
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