7 ms·

Bell Labs gave up its roof to patch the Statue of Liberty

319 points by jmurphyau 3y ago

TheHappyOddish 3y ago
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.
ushakov 3y ago
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)
- silisili 3y ago
  AIUI, the fundraising was for the pedestal, not the statue itself.
  - testplzignore 3y ago
    A classic scam. Free statue, just pay shipping and pedestaling.
    - labster 3y ago
      Sometimes they don’t even send the monument and you’re just stuck with a random plinth. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zócalo https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zócalo
      - schiffern 3y ago
        TIL the etymological origin of "The Zócalo" in Babylon 5. https://babylon5.fandom.com/wiki/Zócalo https://babylon5.fandom.com/wiki/Zócalo
    - dylan604 3y ago
      We'll continue to ship you a new one each month until you finally remember to jump through the hoops, er, call our operators who are standing by to cancel
- soperj 3y ago
  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.
- EntrePrescott 3y ago
  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.
  - cultofmetatron 3y ago
    > The statue was a gift of the people of France. with "reparations" from the people of haiti
    - selimthegrim 3y ago
      That’s what the broken chains on the bottom are for
    - cultofmetatron 3y ago
      [flagged]
nicoburns 3y ago
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.
- Latty 3y ago
  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.
  - trgn 3y ago
    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.
  - NotYourLawyer 3y ago
    People hated the Eiffel Tower for a long time.
    - oh_sigh 3y ago
      It is said that Guy de Maupassant ate lunch everyday at the base of The Eiffel Tower, because it was the only place in Paris where he couldn't see it
      - WJW 3y ago
        It's a great story, but surely even at places that had a clear view of the Eiffel tower he could simply sit facing away from it?
  - llimos 3y ago
fnordprefect 3y ago
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_the_Statue_of_Liberty 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.
- maxerickson 3y ago
  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/beauty-stood-test-of-time/4bbc1517-b5c1-40f8-831d-af73db5c69cf/ 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 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-the-statue-of-liberty/ 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.
  - convolvatron 3y ago
    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
geocrasher 3y ago
[flagged]
lokimedes 3y ago
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.
- whoopdedo 3y ago
  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.
  - vineyardmike 3y ago
    > 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.
supernova87a 3y ago
This donation in 1986 was also approximately the last time that Bell Labs contributed something noteworthy to the country. /snark
ComputerGuru 3y ago
Link is currently down; here's an archived copy: https://archive.is/PJlEX https://archive.is/PJlEX (missing pictures, unfortunately).
justinator 3y ago
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.
Animats 3y ago
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.
- bilekas 3y ago
  Isn't the oxidation of the green sometimes part of the aesthetic though ?
  - wil421 3y ago
    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.
    - Animats 3y ago
      There's monel metal, which has copper and nickel. That resists corrosion and remains a smooth dull brown for at least a century. There were some monel metal sculptures in the art deco era, but it never caught on. Stainless steel is an option. That lasts, and you can pressure wash it. There's some nice Art Deco stainless work from the 1930s, most notably at the Chrysler Building. But it's too shiny for most artistic uses.

319 points by jmurphyau 3y ago

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.

ushakov 3y ago

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)

silisili 3y ago
AIUI, the fundraising was for the pedestal, not the statue itself.
- testplzignore 3y ago
  A classic scam. Free statue, just pay shipping and pedestaling.
  - labster 3y ago
    Sometimes they don’t even send the monument and you’re just stuck with a random plinth. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zócalo https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zócalo
    - schiffern 3y ago
      TIL the etymological origin of "The Zócalo" in Babylon 5. https://babylon5.fandom.com/wiki/Zócalo https://babylon5.fandom.com/wiki/Zócalo
  - dylan604 3y ago
    We'll continue to ship you a new one each month until you finally remember to jump through the hoops, er, call our operators who are standing by to cancel
soperj 3y ago
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.
EntrePrescott 3y ago
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.
- cultofmetatron 3y ago
  > The statue was a gift of the people of France. with "reparations" from the people of haiti
  - selimthegrim 3y ago
    That’s what the broken chains on the bottom are for
  - cultofmetatron 3y ago
    [flagged]

nicoburns 3y ago

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.

Latty 3y ago
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.
- trgn 3y ago
  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.
- NotYourLawyer 3y ago
  People hated the Eiffel Tower for a long time.
  - oh_sigh 3y ago
    It is said that Guy de Maupassant ate lunch everyday at the base of The Eiffel Tower, because it was the only place in Paris where he couldn't see it
    - WJW 3y ago
      It's a great story, but surely even at places that had a clear view of the Eiffel tower he could simply sit facing away from it?
- llimos 3y ago

fnordprefect 3y ago

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_the_Statue_of_Liberty 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.

maxerickson 3y ago
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/beauty-stood-test-of-time/4bbc1517-b5c1-40f8-831d-af73db5c69cf/ 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 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-the-statue-of-liberty/ 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.
- convolvatron 3y ago
  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

geocrasher 3y ago

[flagged]

lokimedes 3y ago

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.

whoopdedo 3y ago
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.
- vineyardmike 3y ago
  > 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.

supernova87a 3y ago

This donation in 1986 was also approximately the last time that Bell Labs contributed something noteworthy to the country. /snark

ComputerGuru 3y ago

Link is currently down; here's an archived copy: https://archive.is/PJlEX https://archive.is/PJlEX (missing pictures, unfortunately).

justinator 3y ago

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.

Animats 3y ago

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.

bilekas 3y ago
Isn't the oxidation of the green sometimes part of the aesthetic though ?
- wil421 3y ago
  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.
  - Animats 3y ago
    There's monel metal, which has copper and nickel. That resists corrosion and remains a smooth dull brown for at least a century. There were some monel metal sculptures in the art deco era, but it never caught on. Stainless steel is an option. That lasts, and you can pressure wash it. There's some nice Art Deco stainless work from the 1930s, most notably at the Chrysler Building. But it's too shiny for most artistic uses.