HIST 100: Engineering The Past

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Engineering of Water
As humans we get so wrapped up in our everyday lives that many things go unnoticed. We are so focused on getting to work on time, feeding our families, not missing meetings and so on. What we don’t ever stop to think is how this all got here. We never stop to think about how power got us here, how earths materials gave us those buildings we work in, or how far water has gotten us. Water is something we use in our everyday lives, we don’t realize how much it really does for us. For thousands of years water has been an ongoing struggle, we have gained rights, lost rights, and have even been in wars because of water. It has been an ongoing battle and always will be.
Water has never been a plentiful resource; we had never had it like we thought. Some areas do have more than other, climate plays a large roll in amounts of water. Rainfall and snow pack are huge determinants of the amount of water in areas. There are still controversies today over water rights, especially amongst farmers and ranchers. But how did we get here? How did we get to the pivots, wheel lines, and floor irrigation that we have today? Let’s go back in time and examine our historical engineering of water.
In The Ottoman Era: Mid-19th the Juridical Provision Journal for the year 1293 was introduced. This was a journal discussing the different properties and rights for water use. In this journal from long ago it was discussed that water belonged to no one. No one owned water it belonged to the riverbeds and streams. A person was also not allowed to dig a well for their own personal use. A well was only allowed to be dug if it benefited population and not just one single person. This article also expressed that if a flow of water passed through a person’s land, they were responsible for any damaged done to the area of water and were expected to keep it up.
One can already see how the engineering of water has come so far. You are now allowed to put a well just about anywhere if you have a pocket deep enough. A person can see that we may have lost sight of the resource of water and focused ourselves more on the resource of money. What we do not realize is that water is actually very scarce. Water has many different elements that people do not know about. In our history it was first a fight over who got the land, then who got the water, how much water they got, then when they got the water crisis were faced such as pollution, drought, rainfall, and other environmental issues that we are still facing and that we always will.
Early engineering of water was a lot different from today. During the Neolithic era humans dug water wells from where vessels could be filled and carried by hand. Could you imagine seeing humans today doing this? There were also different methods of dropping tools underground and raising it up by hand to bring water out to the surface, like the one shown below.

These types of wells in our history are dug wells, today we drill wells. We use casing and electric pumps.

In this picture above this is casing that we send into the ground and it helps keep sand, rock and other materials out of our water. Placed in this casing is a pump the filters water out of the casing and into our water systems, which makes it come into our houses. These wells are not dug by hand, they are drilled with a well drilling truck, which is pictured below.

From just this short explanation of how we have engineered our water system from our past to present, one can see that we have come a long ways. We have not just improved our engineering in reaching water, but we have also improved our engineering in using water.
Early methods of irrigation mainly dealt with flood irrigations (pictured below) This method is still used today. How this method works is corrugates are dug into rows in a field which the water will flood into, it ts then transferred between rows of crops using syphon tubes.

Although floor irrigation is still used today, we have improved our engineering and are now using a lot of wheel lines and pivots. We use these methods because they are more water efficient because we can control where the water is going and how much is being used, instead of just flooding and wasting water. Pivots are hooked to an underground pipe system off a well, the water is trasfered from the underground pipes, through the pivot and out the sprinklers at the top, the pivot is called a pivot because it actually pivots back and forth watering the area as needed. A wheel line is just like a pivot although it doesn’t pivot from side to side, it goes back and forth, both of these systems electronically can do these things on their own. Pictured below is a wheel line and pivot watering areas for crops.

Overall, one can see just how far we have come in our engineering of our water systems. We no longer have to physically bring water from the ground to the surface just to get some for our houses. We no longer have to had dig wells, we have machines for that. We have new and improved methods for irrigating. We have come a long ways in our water system and people do not realize what we have actually gone through to get where we are today, not to mention what we still have ahead of us with this resource, it’s never been easy and it never will be.

Work Cited
Marei, Amer, Imad Abu-Kishk, and Huda Radaydeh. 2014. “Review of Water Legislation from the Pre-British Mandate Period through the Israeli Occupation.” Palestine-Israel Journal Of Politics, Economics & Culture 19/20, no. 4/1: 42-48. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed March 28, 2016).
Kumarasamy, Muthukrishna Vellaisamy, and Victor N. Dube. 2016. “Study on Recycling Urban Wastewater for Non-Potable Uses for Water Conservation.” Polish Journal Of Environmental Studies 25, no. 1: 167-171. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed March 31, 2016).
AVRAM, Lazăr, Claudiu TĂNASĂ, Marius STAN, and Dan ARON. 2015. “EVALUATION OF WELLHEAD LOADS AND TENSIONS USING FEM FOR DEEP WATER DRILLING WELLS.” Revista Minelor / Mining Revue 21, no. 4: 13-18. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed March 31, 2016).
Carpenter, Carl H.. 1983. “Engineering Water Wells”. Journal (american Water Works Association) 75 (8). American Water Works Association: 394–97. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41273002.
Finch, Lewis S.. 1941. “Control of Water Well Drilling”. Journal (american Water Works Association) 33 (1). American Water Works Association: 138–44. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41233227.

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1880s and 1890s cultural tensions

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Throughout what I’ve read thus far, I think the turmoil and grief engulfing Chicago and the rest of the United States can be traced back to the declining global economy. Whenever there is economic decrease, crime breaks out as people lose what they once had and can’t afford to feed themselves or their families. The collapse in economy shows movement towards a different way of running things and the World Fair in Chicago is an opportunity to bring revenue to the city and help improve the economy of the city through tourism and attracting thousands of people from around the world as Burnham and Root try to best the prior world’s fair in Paris. As the project begins its construction, problems arise as builders contract out labor jobs to foreigners for cheaper labor which causes riots with union workers along with mysterious disappearances that start popping up as crime levels increase in the city. The final lines of chapter 10 seemed to show how the intertwined stories of both Burnham and Holmes are important because Larson compares Chicago and Holmes by saying that neither wastes anything. This seems to be foreshadowing the next two chapters by expressing Holmes obsession with his soundproof basement and “glass” kiln in which will indefinitely be used to dispose of the bodies of everyone he kills. As crime increases, Chicago and Holmes “waste” many lives during this period.

Features of the Fair

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I think that for the urban areas in the United States during the 1880’s to 1890’s the biggest issue was the growing population. Not because the cities were overpopulated, but because of the issues that the huge populations caused. Larson wrote “So far the year had been a fine one. Chicago’s population had topple one million for the first time, making the city the second most populous in the nation after New York”. Obviously a big problem is the change a large number of people can have on the moral standards of society. It was impossible for the law and technology to catch up to the growth of the city. Another issue that the overpopulation caused was the city lost a sense of culture. It was as if everyone and their cultures just blended into one “Though Chicago was rapidly achieving recognition as an industrial and mercantile dynamo, its leading men felt keenly the slander from New York that their city had few cultural assets”. This quote led to the reasoning behind the city wanting the fair to be built there, on top of the recognition and profit it would bring the city.

I think that Burnham and the others involved in the building of the fair are not far off from that of Holmes. By connecting Holmes and his murders to the fair and Burnham I think Larson is trying to show the likeness between the characteristics of both of the characters, even though there are extreme differences between their actions.