Researchers are claiming that one reason that the Titanic sank was the use of wrought iron rivets with excessive slag due to issues with procurement of steel rivets with low slag content. Apparently the shipbuilder's archives don't give sufficient information to completely verify or deny the theory, but the engineer in me does wonder if part of the problem was the production manager who would try to sell his own mother if it only gave him a shilling's reduction in the bill of materials cost.
Lots of other problems happened with the Titanic, of course. If you doubt that little things can add up to big problems, the Titanic tragedy is a great example.
Hot Gear Friday: The Swiss Army Guitar
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The word “iconic” is overused these days. I try to avoid it. It’ll be hard
in this next bit. If you are not a guitar player, and someone says
“electric gui...
19 hours ago
6 comments:
...sounds like two guys looking for a reason to write a book.
i thought it was the iceberg.
Bike - you write so prolifically I can't keep up with you! How do you do it?
BTW - I thought the Titanic story was a classic example of pride. They were so proud of their huge ship they thought it was invincible and thus didn't heed warnings when it was in danger.
Gino and Gabrielle -- disasters on the level of the Titanic are usually "massive failures," not a single cause.
If there had been no iceberg, obviously they wouldn't have hit it and sunk.
If there had been an iceberg, but if they had not been on a quest to break records with a ship they pridefully believed could not be sunk, they probably would have missed the iceberg.
If there had been an iceberg, and they'd been on a hubris trip, BUT they'd taken enough lifeboats, they might have saved most of the people.
AND, according to the theory offered above, if there had been an iceberg, and they'd been on a hubris trip, and they hadn't taken enough lifeboats, BUT the ship had been built with decent quality controls in place, they might not have actually sunk, or would have sunk more slowly at least, so that more of the survivors could have been rescued by ship.
Since shipyards have historically been notorious for this kind of thing, I don't find the theory implausible at all.
jroosh, gino, Gabrielle; right about "reason to write," "iceberg," and "pride." You can also add "brittle steel at 30F", "failure to train with lifeboats," "lack of key to storage locker for radio and flares," and a host of other things to "cheap rivets."
How so prolific? You write about things already going through your head, really, and it comes quickly. I'm nothing compared to, say, some of the Puritan divines.
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