Egyptomania--Our Three Thousand Year Obsession with the Land of the Pharaohs by Bob Brier

Author:Bob Brier
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group
Published: 2013-09-20T00:00:00+00:00

How to Move a Very Large Rock

This ingenious solution created another problem to be solved. How do you slide a 250-ton obelisk into a ship? Gorringe would also have to move the obelisk over land, first from where it stood in Alexandria to the transport ship, and then from the dock in New York to its final site in Central Park. As he searched previous attempts at moving heavy weights over land, he found an earlier engineering feat that would become his model, but it wasn’t an obelisk that was moved. It was something even heavier—the immense base for a statue of Peter the Great in Russia.

In 1768, Empress Catherine the Great of Russia was planning a massive equestrian statue of Peter the Great on his horse galloping up a steep craggy rock. It was decided that the base of this statue should be a single stone. The task of finding and transporting such a stone was entrusted to Count Marino Carburi, who had a reputation for engineering skills. For the base, Carburi found a 600-ton rock that was approximately 42 feet long, 27 feet wide, and 21 feet high. Like the Egyptian obelisks, it was granite, but it was more than twice the weight of the obelisk Gorringe would be moving a century later.

Carburi had to move the 600-ton rock over uneven terrain. Something that large couldn’t move on wheels. There was no material strong enough for an axle, and wheels would collapse under the heavy load. Carburi’s solution was parallel iron grooves containing metal balls that rolled freely—essentially giant ball bearings.

When Gorringe read of Carburi’s method, he decided to use cannonballs to move the obelisk. Now his plan was taking shape. He knew how to move the obelisk on land, and he knew that he would have a self-propelled ship that could navigate high seas with a 250-ton obelisk in the hold. The last major part of his plan was how to lower the obelisk from its pedestal in Alexandria.

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