Great Engineering Feats

[Asher]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
The Great Wall

So you can build a wall with slaves, big deal.

It is in no way technically impressive, it's impressive only on its large scale of a very dumb idea.

[Gamecube64]

Colossus of Rhodes

[FrostyBoy]

Slaves or no slaves, they're all people.

I usually agree with you Asher, but the Great Wall is massive in length and overall size. It is definitely a great feat. Especially considering it traverses over hills and rocky jagged mountains. I'd say the Great Wall would be the next to rival The Pyamids. Which mind you, was also built by slaves.

[Kuciwalker]

The Pyramids involved fancyish engineering. The Great Wall is just a wall, a really long one.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Sn00py
Slaves or no slaves, they're all people.

I usually agree with you Asher, but the Great Wall is massive in length and overall size. It is definitely a great feat. Especially considering it traverses over hills and rocky jagged mountains. I'd say the Great Wall would be the next to rival The Pyamids. Which mind you, was also built by slaves.

There is nothing technically amazing about the wall. It was likely very expensive, but it's a frickin' wall.

Doing something mundane on a large scale is not a great feat.

[Asher]

I say the US should build a slightly taller wall on the border with Mexico and it would be teh GREATEST ENGINEERING FEAT EVAH!

[Bill3000]

Originally posted by joncha

The girl in the middle, correct?

[FrostyBoy]

If you thought the wall was worthless, I can't imagine what you'd think of the Taj Mahal, The Pyramids, The Collosus...

Infact.. come to think of it, practically every engineering feat before 1900 must all be a complete waste of time?

The Great Wall did actually HAVE an important purpose yknow? It was to keep those damn Mongols out, and they never attacked, so whether the Mongols were going to attack or not; the Wall just may have saved the Chinese arses.

[Asher]

Mongols.

[snoopy369]

Building anything of that size is not only a great feat of engineering - ie, making sure it doesn't FALL DOWN ... Tacoma Narrows anyone? ... but also a great feat in organization. Slaves or not, they're still people, and making sure all of the people are doing the right thing in the right place, for THAT FRICKIN' LONG ... and having the dedication to do that huge of a thing ... not to mention the supply train that needs.

I'm quite impressed. I'd love to see you do better with your own group of slaves

[snoopy369]

On a related note, I'm pretty sure the Mongols did eventually attack .... (Though the great wall in its current form was created during the post-mongol Ming dynasty, it'd been around for a LONG time before that...)

(And you could argue that the Manchus had a good bit of mongol blood in them, iirc)

[Lord Avalon]

Leonardo's Workshop

The Hoover Dam, in addition to being an impressive structure, was also built ahead of schedule AND under budget. Now that's impressive!

[Asher]

Originally posted by snoopy369
Building anything of that size is not only a great feat of engineering - ie, making sure it doesn't FALL DOWN ... Tacoma Narrows anyone? ... but also a great feat in organization. Slaves or not, they're still people, and making sure all of the people are doing the right thing in the right place, for THAT FRICKIN' LONG ... and having the dedication to do that huge of a thing ... not to mention the supply train that needs.

I'm quite impressed. I'd love to see you do better with your own group of slaves

You seem to be forgetting this is about great engineering feats. From an engineering perspective, the wall is absolutely mundane and ordinary.

[Dis]

if the wall is mundane, then you would have no problem going over there and pissing on it.

[Al B. Sure!]

not on as large a scale as some of yall picks but a modern fighter jet is an insanely complicated piece of engineering: