Macro-Engineering

MIT Brunel Lectures on Global Infrastructure

F P Davidson, E G Frankl, C L Meador

• Publisher: Woodhead Publishing
• Year: 1997
• Print ISBN: 9781898563334
• eBook ISBN: 9781782420576
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Civil Engineering
• Index: Technology & Engineering

This volume makes available a reflection on large-scale engineering for building a better world. International authorities from engineering, oceanography, academia, public service, and law describe how great and imaginative concepts may be refined, tested, adapted, financed, implemented and put to use. Here are records and commentaries about some of the world's significant engineering achievements, including the planning and design of Nigeria's new capital city, and the use of software by the US military to clean up the Exxon-Valdez oil spill pollution in Alaska.- Describes a method of large-scale engineering for building a better world- Provides records and commentaries about significant engineering achievements- International authorities from engineering, oceanography, academia, public service and law describe how great and imaginative concepts may be refined, tested, adapted, financed and implemented

1

The Suez Canal Re-Visited: 19th Century Global Infrastructure

Jean-Paul Calon, Former General Counsel, Suez Canal Company

Publisher Summary

This chapter discusses the 19th century global infrastructure of the Suez Canal. The building of the Suez Canal is an excellent example of the ambition of the time, a macro-project to which everyone associated devoted the best of their thinking. The project was also a global infrastructure solution, probably the first of modern times. To consider a macro-project as a global infrastructure solution is to be convinced that such a project is achieved by human beings and for them, and to act constantly under that conviction. The work site of the Suez Canal, in the open desert, for the 19th century, was of an unprecedented magnitude, even if it was undertaken in a land whose inhabitants were renowned for gigantic temples and tombs. When the first studies took place, public works more or less ignored machines. Their basic element was manpower using shovels, picks, and wheelbarrows. In the second half of the 19th century, science began making an effort to theorize the efficiency of a man working in a building yard; however, the question of machines taking man’s place had not yet been raised. The chapter also discusses the personality of Ferdinand de Lesseps because it concentrates some of the features of what can be imagined as the ideal macro-engineer.

The building of the Suez Canal is an excellent example of the ambition of our time, a macro-project to which everyone associated devoted the best of their thinking. This project was also a global infrastructure solution, probably the first of modern times. A macro-project is not a large one only by its unusual dimensions or by its technical perfection, but also because it is able to bring to all people more happiness, more friendship, more confidence in their capacity and future. To consider a macro-project as a global infrastructure solution is to be convinced that such a project is achieved by human beings and for them, and to act constantly under this conviction.

However, here I will not deal as much with the Suez Canal itself. Many people know that a plate of macaroni given daily to young Ismael, future Viceroy of Egypt, was the start of it all; that the Canal was the common undertaking of Ferdinand de Lesseps and the Egyptian viceroys, Ismael and Mohamed Said, against England; that it was solemnly inaugurated in 1869 and nationalized by Col. Nasser in 1956; that it links the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea; that it is 170 kilometers long and that ships pass through it in thirteen hours.

What seems to me much more worth telling is to emphasize that this macro-realization – which the Suez Canal was – created a waterway, but more than a waterway. It achieved the relief of men by machines. It gave a province to a desert. Such are the two items that I should like to consider here. Before that, however, I would like to briefly discuss de Lesseps’ personality, because I think it concentrates some of the features of what can be imagined as the ideal macro-engineer.

1.1 THE CHIEF MACRO-ENGINEER: FERDINAND DE LESSEPS

Ferdinand de Lesseps was not an engineer; he had no technical knowledge. He was not an economist; he knew almost nothing about finance and banking. If he had been both or one of them, he would never have undertaken the enormous risk of such an enterprise: the technical difficulties undoubtedly exceeded the means available at that time; the conclusion of a cold analysis of its financial prospects would have been negative.

De Lesseps was an amateur; in fact, he was a diplomat, a retired diplomat. But he was an amateur with two invaluable gifts: will and imagination. “A bit of imagination,” he said, “is not a bad leaven for the heavy dough of human affairs.”

Imagination is probably the main quality required of a macro-engineer. Imagination made de Lesseps a macro-engineer. By it, he overcame the objections that reason and men oppose to any project of exceptional magnitude, and thanks to imagination, he was able to conceive the undertaking he planned and to be aware of all its implications. He met technical difficulties, financial difficulties, political obstacles. His answer was always the same: imagine what the Canal will be in ten years; imagine what it will bring to its shareholders, to Egypt, to the navies of the world; even to England, his main enemy.

And he was right. De Lesseps was not only an imaginative amateur, he was a generous amateur. He belonged to the generation of men and women who, in the middle of the 19th century, dreamed of a better society, who considered the workers’ conditions of life, who brought to reality the first social welfare measures. The company established by de Lesseps was probably the first one to give, by a statutory provision, a part of its profits to all the members of its staff, including ordinary workers, and to build a system of family allowances, pensions, and social protection.

I wonder if generosity and disinterestedness are not, besides imagination, a defining feature of the ideal macro-engineer?

Ferdinand de Lesseps

Lastly, if de Lesseps was the leader, he never acted alone. He created around himself a team of men of ability and faith. The two Viceroys of Egypt (for Egypt was, at this time, under the theoretical authority of the Turkish government) supported the Canal project with intelligence and courage, for it was an important and dangerous undertaking for their country.

De Lesseps was helped by engineers of French birth but serving the Egyptian government: Linant Bey, Voisin Bey, and Mougel Bey. The contractors played an important part as well. And it should be mentioned that nearly all engineers and contractors had been trained in the Ecole Polytechnique, thus confirming again that a macro-project is necessarily linked to a team of people who share the same faith and the same dedicated enthusiasm.

1.2 THE BUILDING OF THE SUEZ CANAL

My first purpose is to show how the digging of the Suez Canal was a turning point in the management of important public works, and how, for men, it substituted machines.

The work site of the Suez Canal, in the open desert, was – for the 19th century – of an unprecedented magnitude, even if it was undertaken (by one of those historical coincidences) in a land whose inhabitants were renowned for gigantic temples and tombs. When the first studies took place, public works more or less ignored machines. Their basic element was manpower using shovels, picks, and wheelbarrows. In the second half of the 19th century, science began making an effort to theorize the efficiency of a man working in a building yard; however, the question of machines taking man’s place had not yet been raised.

1.2.1 Manpower

Workers on important public works were, as they had always been, agricultural seasonal workers, ordinary prisoners, prisoners of war, or soldiers. For road and canal maintenance, some governments had a forced labor formula, days of work being a substitute for taxes of those unable to pay them in cash.

This type of work was a normal institution in Egypt. Irrigation is vital in this country, and the maintenance of a network of canals to distribute water from the Nile is a permanent necessity. Every village supplied a contingent of peasants who paid their tribute in kind, that is, by their labor.

Such was the formula adopted for the digging of this new, other canal, the Suez Canal. Egypt, Turkey, and England did not wish the Compagnie to use foreign workers, fearing they might stay afterwards in the country and constitute foreign enclaves. So, in the Act of Concession, it was agreed that the Egyptian government would provide all the workers the Compagnie might need.

Fellahs, called upon by the Egyptian authorities, came from their villages along the Nile and began to dig the Canal. In serving the Compagnie, they were well paid by Egyptian standards, and had decent food and lodgings. They worked on the site normally for one month, but many stayed on for a longer time. Twenty thousand were working on the Canal simultaneously. They were supplied with shovels and picks, as well as with ropes, driving wheels, ramps, and wheelbarrows. But they refused to use tools to which they were unaccustomed. The wheelbarrow, ascribed to a northern origin, had never been used in Egypt.

The first diggings were accomplished by fellahs wielding a shovel and a short pick; 35,000 such picks were imported in 1862. The sand was removed in baskets made of palm tree staple, and carried on mens’ backs or by mules or camels.

Fig. 1.2 Local manpower working on the Suez Canal.

1.2.2 Manpower Replaced by Machines

Suddenly, in January 1864, everything changed: within a very few months; a revolution occurred. In 1863, the new Viceroy Ismael, pressed by England with the intent of ruining the Compagnie, told de Lesseps that he could no longer tolerate forced labor, which his government used. The Egyptian workers’ contingents were progressively reduced, and in January 1864, following an arbitration by Napoleon Ill, the manpower hitherto supplied by the government of Egypt disappeared, after receiving compensation.

The engineers went to work immediately. They imagined and then designed machines specially planned for the Canal work, and then got in touch with manufacturers in England, France, and Belgium. Soon, in separate parts, the machines were shipped to Port-Saïd or to Alexandria, and by the freshwater canals or on camel-back, and subsequently delivered to the appropriate Canal work sites.

One year after the arbitration award by Emperor Napoleon Ill, the canal works had jumped over centuries: where men whose methods closely resembled those of their forbears who built the pyramids, where their tools, their movements, their attitudes had not changed through 7,000 years, now steampower was operative.

A hundred different steam machines came into action along the Canal route and fewer than 2,000 workers were necessary. What were those machines?

The seven volumes of the Voisin Bey report on the Canal’s construction, which recount its progress month by month and set forth the original texts of the agreements with the various contractors, affords us a precise idea of the dynamics of a mechanized public works project in ...

Table of contents

• Cover image
• Title page
• Table of Contents
• Copyright
• Preface
• EDITORIAL NOTE
• Chapter 1: The Suez Canal Re-Visited: 19th Century Global Infrastructure
• Chapter 2: Operation Mulberry: A Floating Transportable Harbor for World War II Normandy Invasion
• Chapter 3: Financial Engineering of the Channel Tunnel
• Chapter 4: Old Cities and New Towns For Tomorrow’s Infrastructure
• Chapter 5: Inland Transport in Europe - Trends and Prospects
• Chapter 6: Lessons Learnt from Major Projects
• Chapter 7: Guided Transportation Systems: Low-Impact, High-Volume, Fail-Safe Travel
• Chapter 8: Prefabricated and Relocatable Artificial Island Technology
• Chapter 9: The Command Tactical Information System: Military Software for Macro-Engineering Projects
• Chapter 10: Prospects for the Next Century: Survey and Suggestions
• INDEX
• Inside Back Cover