41–50 of 127 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You’d think that they’d stop working if they saw 1/4th of their compatriots just drop dead.
It was a well-paid job for the time. Most of dangerous or otherwise physically taxing construction jobs still are well-paid, and for good reason.
> During construction of the Hudson River Tunnel in 1889, 25% of the workers died from decompression sickness. Less interesting but of far greater value to humanity has been the innovation in heath and safety regulations. According to this article [1] one worker died per foot of the Hudson River Tunnel. > In 1906, attitudes toward the sandhogs changed after a series of accidents beneath the East River. Blown-out tunn…
> During construction of the Hudson River Tunnel in 1889, 25% of the workers died from decompression sickness. Less interesting but of far greater value to humanity has been the innovation in heath and safety regulations. According to this article [1] one worker died per foot of the Hudson River Tunnel. > In 1906, attitudes toward the sandhogs changed after a series of accidents beneath the East River. Blown-out tunn…
This was not so much health and safety regulation-related, but simple ignorance. The dangers of rapid decompression were not recognized until early 20-th century when underwater construction became more common. That's why "decompression sickness" is called "caisson sickness" in several languages.
When you are hiring new people each day, to replace the ones who died, knowing that a quarter will lose their life, ignorance around exactly how they died is no excuse.
Today in my country at least a single workers death is not acceptable. Accidents happen but prosecution happens if everything was not done by the book.
> During construction of the Hudson River Tunnel in 1889, 25% of the workers died from decompression sickness. Less interesting but of far greater value to humanity has been the innovation in heath and safety regulations. According to this article [1] one worker died per foot of the Hudson River Tunnel. > In 1906, attitudes toward the sandhogs changed after a series of accidents beneath the East River. Blown-out tunn…
I think technology is inherently linked with standard of living which is inherently linked to the value of a life.
Funnily enough, my father is at the 11th international symposium on “Ground Freezing” in London at this very moment. Most of the time you have to freeze the ground before you can drill. He has been working in specialist civil engineering for many years and builds tunnels all over the world. He has told me many exciting and hard-to-believe stories about tunnel construction and tunnel boring machines. E.g. during the w…
Dara O`Briain has a hilarious stand-up about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFglJ3DyqK0
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unfortunately just severely less useful in the majority of the US.
The majority of people in the US live in urban and suburban areas. There’s plenty we can do in these areas to reduce car-dependency instead of paving more roadway (which ends up as waste of time due to induced demand).
The correct comparison should be comparing for each area and situation, which type of transport investment results in the greatest utility. The objective is not to minimise traffic, but to maximise peoples ability to get where they need to be.
Does anyone know why such machines aren't being used to create artificial rivers? It seems civilization and therefore economic activity follows where fresh water sources are. And there is already a problem in the US west with water shortage.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It was a well-paid job for the time. Most of dangerous or otherwise physically taxing construction jobs still are well-paid, and for good reason.
They were paid $2.50 a day. Which is around $91 in today dollars. On top of that wage theft was all too common. And that's a wage that they had to fight to unionize to get up to
For unskilled labor 6 days a week at 2.50/day = 15$/week which would have been quite tempting especially if the risks where unclear.
It’s worth remembering when doing inflation calculations just how poor people used to be. Take the average person’s budget today and remove their car, gadgets, AC, subscriptions, most of the pricy food options, etc. Healthcare was cheap and largely ineffective, collage was rare and minimalist by todays standards. Most of what people spend money on today simply didn’t exist so not having it was normal.
[0] http://atomic-skies.blogspot.com/2012/07/those-magnificent-m...