Often the kind of thing people hate for a while, and then with enough time becomes iconic and you'd probably end up with an article about how they were debating whether to preserve it or not as it aged.
I think about this a lot when it comes to "eyesores", particularly wind turbines. When you think of how windmills are considered picturesque, it always makes me a little surprised when people moan about modern wind generation, because I think they look great. Especially when most of the areas they are put up are crisscrossed with overhead power lines anyway, which are much less appealing.
Yeah I don't understand why people hate them so much either. I think they look nice too. Better than old-fashioned windmills.
Where I'm from in the Netherlands there's is much less resistance to them anyway because we know the alternative is for our country to be under the sea ;)
As a kid that grew up on the south plains (Texas panhandle). I have a love hate relationship with those windmills. On the one hand it's neat seeing all that green power generation. On the other, it does ruin the landscape to some extent, it can be visually jarring to be driving some back road, go over a rise that, and be smack in the middle of a wind farm. It also can be a little distracting at night, where the darkness is awashed in blinking red lights.
After seeing a video of someone showing how the nearby windmill cast a rotating shadow on their living room window some months of the year I understood it is a legitimate issue for some.
But generally I’m with you. I just don’t get it. Windmills look neat and do neat things.
I live in an area with lots of windmills, where land owners of otherwise useless scrub ground have made good money providing a space for them. It has become a political issue for people literally "titling at windmills" as it were. Any conversation you have with them isn't about the windmill at all, apart from as you point out, some highly subjective statements about "eyesores" (which is ironic considering the ground on which these things are most commonly installed).
The "real" complaints tend to be some absolute insanity about "medical issues" that are caused by the windmills. Or harm to wildlife, even though study after study debunks these views. Sometimes they try an environmental move, bringing up the waste from retired blades - all while ignoring the alternatives and their environmental harm.
The real story is, these are people who just don't want progress. They don't want change. They are perfectly content with their Folgers coffee in a styrofoam cup and iceberg lettuce with ranch dressing. They want their news in paper form. Those windmills are just totems representing a world that scares them because it doesn't fit into their neat little navel-gazing bread basket.
What I've noticed is that anger toward windmills in our area has grown over the decades since they started installing them rather than dissipated, as more of those angry old grumps realize that they won't get their old world back.
In (I think) the first edition of Zumdahl's chemistry textbook, there was a great summary of some of the things they had to do to preserve the statue, and it went beyond just repairing the skin.
The wiki article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation-restoration_of_th...) has a lot of it, but IIRC after they installed stainless steel, at some point they passed electricity through it, which had the effect of making it susceptible to corrosion, and then had to do something else to restore its resistance.
I wish I could find it now, as it was a fascinating read, but I can't see anything easily online.
The Wikipedia article mentions the annealing and then sand blasting to remove iron from the surface (contaminants on the surface of the stainless can compromise the oxide layer that forms).
stainless passivation usually involves an acid to form an oxide layer. wiki says nitric and citric, but we used to use an HF gel which was pretty damn nasty
edit: I rabbit holed a little bit. apparently its not that straightforward. the acid encourages the iron to leave the surface layer (probably through oxidization and dissolution) with just the chromium and the nickel. this then oxides in the presence of air, leaving a protective layer without the surface iron to start to rust
This is an issue with bronze statues. Washington, D.C. has many of them. The ones at Memorial Bridge are occasionally cleaned and polished, but most of the others are not and have turned green. New York City has some statues polished, some not, depending on who owns them. The Prometheus statue at Rockefeller Center and the Charging Bull at Bowling Green are kept shined up.
I would’ve liked to have seen the Statue of Liberty in its original copper glory. The green has certainly become iconic but I’m sure the copper brown color was a sight to see.
> Publisher Joseph Pulitzer, of the New York World, started a drive for donations to finish the project and attracted more than 120,000 contributors, most of whom gave less than a dollar (equivalent to $30 in 2021)
The Pulitzer fundraiser wasn't for the statue but for the pedestal on which it was to be placed. The statue was a gift of the people of France. That being said, crowdfunding campaigns were also a part of the the fundraising for the statue (that is, in France), together with a wide mix of other sources: state money, cities, chambers of commerce, and several other groups, huge donations by companies, banquet events, operas and other spectacles, merchandising, lottery etc.
>Initially focused on the elites, the Union was successful in raising funds from across French society. Schoolchildren and ordinary citizens gave, as did 181 French municipalities.
I’m currently reading the book this site referenced, “The idea factory” a wonderful account on Bell Labs with portraits of Shockley, Shannon and the other fathers of the information age.
It's very "Bell Labs" for them to be given a vaguely defined problem (So I hear you know a lot about copper.), immediately recognize that the solution is more complicated than it was suggested (Can you artificially weather copper so it looks 100 years old?), but rather than merely reject the idea instead come up with an alternate and unexpected solution that does what they wanted in the first place but didn't know how to ask. (No but 20-year aged copper looks the same as 100-year old.) Bonus points for making use of leftover parts they had lying around anyway.
That said, why did they go to Bell Labs rather than a building constructor in the first place? It's not like copper is an exotic material. Did the NPS just completely forget that people had been using copper on roofs for centuries... excuse me, millennia.
> That said, why did they go to Bell Labs rather than a building constructor in the first place?
I don’t know the real answer, to be clear, and I had the same question when reading the story. But I suspect the answer is a combination of prestige (everyone wants to work with bell labs, not John smith of idahos metallurgy shop) and connections (someone at bell labs knew a local politician who knows a guy who knows a NPS worker in that team).
What a strange article to see Nick featured on HN.
Whilst this is interesting, Nick maintains a fantastic website full of interesting information about telephone software, antennas and all sorts of fascinating telephony articles.
I feel like it might look quite cool if it was patched with new copper (at least if it was done well). A bit like kintsugi pottery.
Often the kind of thing people hate for a while, and then with enough time becomes iconic and you'd probably end up with an article about how they were debating whether to preserve it or not as it aged.
I think about this a lot when it comes to "eyesores", particularly wind turbines. When you think of how windmills are considered picturesque, it always makes me a little surprised when people moan about modern wind generation, because I think they look great. Especially when most of the areas they are put up are crisscrossed with overhead power lines anyway, which are much less appealing.
Yeah I don't understand why people hate them so much either. I think they look nice too. Better than old-fashioned windmills.
Where I'm from in the Netherlands there's is much less resistance to them anyway because we know the alternative is for our country to be under the sea ;)
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As a kid that grew up on the south plains (Texas panhandle). I have a love hate relationship with those windmills. On the one hand it's neat seeing all that green power generation. On the other, it does ruin the landscape to some extent, it can be visually jarring to be driving some back road, go over a rise that, and be smack in the middle of a wind farm. It also can be a little distracting at night, where the darkness is awashed in blinking red lights.
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After seeing a video of someone showing how the nearby windmill cast a rotating shadow on their living room window some months of the year I understood it is a legitimate issue for some.
But generally I’m with you. I just don’t get it. Windmills look neat and do neat things.
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People hated the Eiffel Tower for a long time.
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I live in an area with lots of windmills, where land owners of otherwise useless scrub ground have made good money providing a space for them. It has become a political issue for people literally "titling at windmills" as it were. Any conversation you have with them isn't about the windmill at all, apart from as you point out, some highly subjective statements about "eyesores" (which is ironic considering the ground on which these things are most commonly installed).
The "real" complaints tend to be some absolute insanity about "medical issues" that are caused by the windmills. Or harm to wildlife, even though study after study debunks these views. Sometimes they try an environmental move, bringing up the waste from retired blades - all while ignoring the alternatives and their environmental harm.
The real story is, these are people who just don't want progress. They don't want change. They are perfectly content with their Folgers coffee in a styrofoam cup and iceberg lettuce with ranch dressing. They want their news in paper form. Those windmills are just totems representing a world that scares them because it doesn't fit into their neat little navel-gazing bread basket.
What I've noticed is that anger toward windmills in our area has grown over the decades since they started installing them rather than dissipated, as more of those angry old grumps realize that they won't get their old world back.
People like a single windmill, standing picturesquely in the middle of the village.
I don't think anyone would ever have gone for a field of tens or hundreds of them.
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They are obnoxious at night when a large cluster of them are all flashing their warning lights.
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The modern wind turbines are absolutely massive and dominate the landscape in a mocking, domineering, ignorant hatred of nuclear power.
the only time I'd appreciate windmills from an aesthetic point of view is when they are very very far away. Nearby, they are horrible to all senses.
See this recent artwork by Danh Vo which plays with the idea of fragments of the copper skin. https://www.publicartfund.org/exhibitions/view/danh-vo-we-th...
In (I think) the first edition of Zumdahl's chemistry textbook, there was a great summary of some of the things they had to do to preserve the statue, and it went beyond just repairing the skin.
The wiki article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation-restoration_of_th...) has a lot of it, but IIRC after they installed stainless steel, at some point they passed electricity through it, which had the effect of making it susceptible to corrosion, and then had to do something else to restore its resistance.
I wish I could find it now, as it was a fascinating read, but I can't see anything easily online.
One of the NYT articles at the link mentions the stainless steel.
This WaPo article talks about it more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1986/07/02/b...
This article suggests that the DC current treatment was to avoid corrosion (also has some nice illustrations of the support framework for the skin):
https://copper.org/education/liberty/liberty_reclothed2.php
A related blurb just says they built some equipment (probably the equipment to do the DC annealing, but who knows):
https://www.romanmfg.com/roman-manuacturing-helps-restore-th...
The Wikipedia article mentions the annealing and then sand blasting to remove iron from the surface (contaminants on the surface of the stainless can compromise the oxide layer that forms).
Maybe something in there will jog your memory.
stainless passivation usually involves an acid to form an oxide layer. wiki says nitric and citric, but we used to use an HF gel which was pretty damn nasty
edit: I rabbit holed a little bit. apparently its not that straightforward. the acid encourages the iron to leave the surface layer (probably through oxidization and dissolution) with just the chromium and the nickel. this then oxides in the presence of air, leaving a protective layer without the surface iron to start to rust
That's fantastic, thank you!
This is an issue with bronze statues. Washington, D.C. has many of them. The ones at Memorial Bridge are occasionally cleaned and polished, but most of the others are not and have turned green. New York City has some statues polished, some not, depending on who owns them. The Prometheus statue at Rockefeller Center and the Charging Bull at Bowling Green are kept shined up.
Isn't the oxidation of the green sometimes part of the aesthetic though ?
I would’ve liked to have seen the Statue of Liberty in its original copper glory. The green has certainly become iconic but I’m sure the copper brown color was a sight to see.
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The statue was crowdfunded
From Wikipedia:
> Publisher Joseph Pulitzer, of the New York World, started a drive for donations to finish the project and attracted more than 120,000 contributors, most of whom gave less than a dollar (equivalent to $30 in 2021)
The Pulitzer fundraiser wasn't for the statue but for the pedestal on which it was to be placed. The statue was a gift of the people of France. That being said, crowdfunding campaigns were also a part of the the fundraising for the statue (that is, in France), together with a wide mix of other sources: state money, cities, chambers of commerce, and several other groups, huge donations by companies, banquet events, operas and other spectacles, merchandising, lottery etc.
> The statue was a gift of the people of France.
with "reparations" from the people of haiti
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The statue itself was as well, just in France.
>Initially focused on the elites, the Union was successful in raising funds from across French society. Schoolchildren and ordinary citizens gave, as did 181 French municipalities.
AIUI, the fundraising was for the pedestal, not the statue itself.
A classic scam. Free statue, just pay shipping and pedestaling.
3 replies →
I’m currently reading the book this site referenced, “The idea factory” a wonderful account on Bell Labs with portraits of Shockley, Shannon and the other fathers of the information age.
It's very "Bell Labs" for them to be given a vaguely defined problem (So I hear you know a lot about copper.), immediately recognize that the solution is more complicated than it was suggested (Can you artificially weather copper so it looks 100 years old?), but rather than merely reject the idea instead come up with an alternate and unexpected solution that does what they wanted in the first place but didn't know how to ask. (No but 20-year aged copper looks the same as 100-year old.) Bonus points for making use of leftover parts they had lying around anyway.
That said, why did they go to Bell Labs rather than a building constructor in the first place? It's not like copper is an exotic material. Did the NPS just completely forget that people had been using copper on roofs for centuries... excuse me, millennia.
> That said, why did they go to Bell Labs rather than a building constructor in the first place?
I don’t know the real answer, to be clear, and I had the same question when reading the story. But I suspect the answer is a combination of prestige (everyone wants to work with bell labs, not John smith of idahos metallurgy shop) and connections (someone at bell labs knew a local politician who knows a guy who knows a NPS worker in that team).
That’s usually what everything is.
Link is currently down; here's an archived copy: https://archive.is/PJlEX (missing pictures, unfortunately).
What a strange article to see Nick featured on HN.
Whilst this is interesting, Nick maintains a fantastic website full of interesting information about telephone software, antennas and all sorts of fascinating telephony articles.
When she was delivered, the statue had a copper colour like you’d see in Copper piping, not the green patina we see today
Could you have imagined.
[flagged]
This donation in 1986 was also approximately the last time that Bell Labs contributed something noteworthy to the country.
/snark