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N0KFQ > TODAY 03.11.12 16:12l 53 Lines 2458 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 30753_KB0WSA
Read: GUEST
Subj: Today in History - Nov 3
Path: IZ3LSV<IK2XDE<ON4HU<CX2SA<LZ3NP<N4ZKF<N0KFQ<KB0WSA
Sent: 121103/1445Z 30753@KB0WSA.MO.USA.NA BPQK1.4.53
...
Nov 3, 1930:
Detroit-Windsor Tunnel opens to traffic
At 12:05 A.M. on this day in 1930, the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel
between the United States and Canada is officially opened to car
traffic. As Windsor Mayor Frederick Jackson had bragged at the
tunnel's elaborate dedication ceremony two days before, the
structure--the only international subaqueous tunnel in the
world--made it possible to "pass from one great country to the
other in the short space of three minutes." (For his part,
Detroit Mayor Frank Murphy cheered that the project signified "a
new appreciation of our desire to preserve peace, friendship, and
the brotherhood of man.") The first passenger car through the
tunnel was a 1929 Studebaker.
Construction on the tunnel began in May 1928 and relied on all
sorts of innovative methods and technologies. Workers known as
"sandhogs" excavated the gray muck under the river by blasting at
it with air-driver knives; then, they used powerful hydraulic
jacks to push a huge shield forward through the mud. Behind the
shield, workers lined the new tunnel with giant steel plates.
Next, they completed the underwater part of the tunnel using a
process they called the "trench-and-tube": After the sandhogs had
lined the underwater trench with steel plates, they sank nine
250-foot-long, 8,000-ton steel and concrete tubes to the bottom
of the river, where divers welded them together.
The tunnel had an amazingly sophisticated ventilation system.
Each end of the tunnel had a 100-foot-tall ventilation tower;
each tower held 12 huge fans, six for pumping fresh air into the
tunnel and six for exhaust. (Each tower had 3,000 of what one
engineer called "gill-like glass openings for the admission of
fresh air to the blower system.") The powerful blowers pumped
(and still pump) 1.5 million cubic feet of air into the tunnel
each minute, completely changing the air in the tunnel every 90
seconds. As a result, though many people were concerned about the
risk of carbon monoxide poisoning in the tunnel, the air under
the river was actually cleaner than the air on the Detroit
streets outside.
The tunnel's ventilation system still works just as well as it
did 80 years ago. In fact, the air quality is so good that every
year the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel is a part of the Free Press
Marathon--the only international underwater mile in road racing.
73, K.O. n0kfq
N0KFQ @ KB0WSA.MO.USA.NA
E-mail: kohiggs@gmail.com
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