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| 1933 Century of Progress Exposition Documents |
Sky Ride Whets Curiosity of Out-of-Town Fair Visitors
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By Malcolm McDowell.
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Source: Chicago Daily News, 17 July 1933, pg. 6.
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Sky Ride continues to maintain its supremacy as the unique feature of the world's fair.
It presents an interesting paradox—as a structure it unobtrusively dominates the Century of Progress exposition. Out-of-town visitors come prepared to see a rather heavy bridgelike affair under which the painted buildings huddle somewhat modestly.
This erroneous idea, so the visitors, say, is given out by printed pictures of Sky Ride in which the steel wire ropes necessarily have been overemphasized, otherwise the cables would be lost in the reproduction of the photograph.
Instead of an overbearing aggregation of steel beams and heavy cables, observers view a steel cobweb airily suspended between two graceful towers of latticework which merge harmoniously into the whole architectural scheme of the big show. An oral questionnaire, haphazardly put to scores of out-of-towners, with the purpose of getting their first impressions of the fair developed a deal of curiosity concerning Sky Ride. Missouri has no monopoly on "show-me" people.
Visitors Ask About Sky Ride.
World's fairers from all parts of the country want to know if the towers really are named after Amos and Andy; if they are 500 or 1,000 feet high, etc. Information about Sky Ride has been publicized more or less. Here are some of the facts about the cloud-teaser compiled by Jack Morrison, Sky Ride representative at the world's fair, which answer many queries.
Both towers are 625 feet high and they are 1,850 feet apart. The west tower is named "Amos," the east "Andy." From the top of either tower, on a clear day, a visitor can see parts of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Wisconsin. The length of the suspension span is well over a third of a mile. Each tower has two observation platforms on top: the lower enclosed in glass and the upper open to the sky.
Their combined area is more than 9,000 square feet.
Ten "Rocket Cars" Used.
Ten "rocket cars" travel across the span between the towers: they are named "Amos," "Andy," "Kingfish," "Madame Queen," "Ruby Taylor," "Battle Ax," "Brother Crawford," "Mrs. Brother Crawford," "Lightnin,'", and "Henry Van Porter." The cars are double deckers and each has a capacity of thirty-six passengers. They travel at a speed of 520 feet a minute. Each car is 15 feet high, 32 feet long and 7 feet, 10 inches wide. When loaded to full capacity they weigh about 11,000 pounds each. The safety factor is four to one, so that each car could weigh 40,000 pounds and still be perfectly safe to travel.
Each tower has its own elevator system—two cars to the top and two to the landing platform where passengers take the rocket cars for the tower-to-tower trip.
There are 6,200,000 pounds of steel in each tower and 322 lengths and sizes of steel cable in the whole structure, varying from 5 inch to 1 3/4 inches in diameter. If all the steel wire ropes were strung into one connected rope it would stretch for a distance of 100 miles.
Cars Travel Suspended.
The ten cars travel suspended from the tramway or track cables, each cable weighing five pounds to the foot. The tramway and suspension of supporting steel wire ropes were "pre-stretched" against a breaking strain of approximately 500,000 pounds.
The whole cable system is so constructed that there is complete mutual support as to weight and counterweight so that if it were physically possible to bunch all the rocket cars between any two suspenders the two would easily and safely carry the whole load. In operation there is never more than one car on the tramway between two suspenders.
The location of the towers is on filled ground. Foundations are of concrete, supported on piles sixty-eight to seventy feet long so as to get proper bearing.
The back stays—steel wire rope—coming down from the high level of the towers are fixed in anchorages of reinforced concrete blocks 100 feet long on piles which also support the pivoted counterweight for the cables from the low level.
At no point is either tower more than half an inch out of vertical—a construction of exceptional accuracy.
[End of news article]
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Page compiled: 14 January 2006
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