Today, The Grandma has been reading about YerbaBuena, that was renamed San Francisco on a day like today in 1847.
Yerba Buena was the original name ofthesettlement that later became SanFrancisco.
Located near the northeastern end of the SanFrancisco Peninsula, between the Presidio of SanFrancisco and the Mission San Francisco de Asís, it was originally intended as a trading post for ships visiting San Francisco Bay. The settlement was arranged in the Spanish style around a plaza that remains as the present day Portsmouth Square.
The name of the town was taken from the yerba buena (Clinopodiumdouglasii) plant, a native herb of the West Coast of North America and abundant in the region surrounding San Francisco Bay.
Franciscan missionary Pedro Font, accompanying the Juan Bautista de Anza expedition of 1775–76, applied the Spanish name to the common native herb he found abundant in the landscape.
The plant's common name, yerba buena, the same in English and Spanish, is an alternate form of the Spanish hierba buena (meaning good herb).
The earliest report of the use of Yerba Buena as a place name comes from the log of George Vancouver, who in 1792 sailed his ship HMS Discovery into SanFrancisco Bay and anchored about a league below the Presidio in a place they called Yerba Buena.
The Spanish Portolá expedition, led by Don Gaspar de Portolá, arrived overland from Mexico on November 2, 1769. It was the first documented European visit by land to the San Francisco Bay Area, claiming it for Spain as part of the Viceroyalty of New Spain.
A second group of soldiers, this time accompanied by settlers, arrived in June 1776, led by the Spanish explorer Juan Bautista De Anza. One of De Anza's officers, José Joaquín Moraga, was given the task of building a Spanish mission, Mission SanFrancisco de Asís (Mission Dolores), and a military fort, the Presidio of SanFrancisco. Moraga chose a location approximately halfway between the two sites to build housing for the workers, which became known as YerbaBuena. A supply ship arrived about two months later and the settlers began building.
In 1804, Las Californias province was split into Alta California province (upper) and Baja California province (lower), both still within the Spanish Viceroyalty of New Spain.
Upon independence from Spain in 1821, the territory of Alta California became part of Mexico, but the faraway Mexican government paid little attention to YerbaBuena. Over the years the area between the port facilities at YerbaBuena Cove and the housing area of Yerba Buena filled in. The old plaza is today's Portsmouth Square.
In 1835, William A. Richardson, a naturalized Mexican citizen of English birth, erected a homestead near the boat anchorage of Yerba Buena Cove. Together with Alcalde Francisco de Haro, he laid out a street plan for the expanded settlement, which retained the name Yerba Buena.
In early 1841, James Douglas of the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), operating on the Pacific coast from Fort Vancouver, went to Yerba Buena to establish an HBC trading post. A large building on the water's edge was purchased. The HBC post had several purposes. It operated as a wholesale store, selling goods exported from Fort Vancouver such as salmon, lumber, and British manufactures in exchange for hides and tallow. The post improved diplomatic relations between the British HBC and the Mexican government of California, making the HBC's fur trapping expeditions into California's Central Valley politically acceptable.
Despite the mercantile potential of the HBC store in Yerba Buena, in 1842 it was ordered to be closed by George Simpson as part of Simpson's general reorganization of the HBC's Columbia District. The HBC store in Yerba Buena was sold in 1846, two years before the California Gold Rush transformed Yerba Buena into the major city on the North American west coast.
On July 7, 1846, US Navy Commodore John D. Sloat, in the Battle of YerbaBuena, claimed Alta California for the United States during the Mexican-American War, and US Navy Captain John Berrien Montgomery and US Marine Second Lieutenant Henry Bulls Watson of the USS Portsmouth arrived to claim YerbaBuena two days later by raising the American flag over the town plaza, which is now Portsmouth Square in honor of the ship.
Henry Bulls Watson was placed in command of the garrison there.
On July 31, 1846, Yerba Buena doubled in population when about 240 Mormon migrants from the East coast arrived on the ship Brooklyn, led by Sam Brannan.
In August 1846, Lt. Washington Allon Bartlett was named alcalde of YerbaBuena.
On January 30, 1847, Lt. Bartlett's proclamation changing the name YerbaBuena to San Francisco took effect. The city and the rest of Alta California officially became a United States military territory in 1848 by the terms of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican-American War.
California was admitted for statehood to the United States on September 9, 1850. The State soon chartered San Francisco as both a City and a County.
Today, The Grandma has been reading about one of the most interesting andamazing trains, the TranscontinentalExpress,that arrived in San Francisco on a day like today in 1876.
The TranscontinentalExpress arrived in San Francisco, California, via the FirstTranscontinentalRailroadon 4 June 1876,only 83 hours and 39 minutes after having left New York City. The feat was reported widely in U.S. newspapers.
North America's first transcontinental railroad, known originally as the Pacific Railroad and later as the Overland Route, was a 3,077 km continuous railroad line constructed between 1863 and 1869 that connected the existing eastern U.S. rail network at Council Bluffs, Iowa with the Pacific coast at the Oakland Long Wharf on San Francisco Bay.
The rail line was built by three private companies over public lands provided by extensive US land grants. Construction was financed by both state and US government subsidy bonds as well as by company issued mortgage bonds.
The Western Pacific Railroad Company built 212 km of track from the road's western terminus at Alameda/Oakland to Sacramento, California.
The Central Pacific Railroad Company of California (CPRR) constructed 1,110 km eastward from Sacramento to Promontory Summit, Utah Territory.
The Union Pacific Railroad (UPRR) built 1,746 km from the road's eastern terminus at the Missouri River settlements of Council Bluffs and Omaha, Nebraska westward to Promontory Summit.
The railroad opened for through traffic between Sacramento and Omaha on May 10, 1869, when CPRR President Leland Stanford, ceremonially tapped the gold Last Spike, later often referred to as the Golden Spike, with a silver hammer at Promontory Summit.
In the following six months, the last leg from Sacramento to San Francisco Bay was completed. The resulting coast-to-coast railroad connection revolutionized the settlement and economy of the American West.
It brought the western states and territories into alignment with the northern Union states and made transporting passengers and goods coast-to-coast considerably quicker, safer and less expensive.
The first transcontinental rail passengers arrived at the Pacific Railroad's original western terminus at the Alameda Terminal on September 6, 1869, where they transferred to the steamer Alameda for transport across the Bay to San Francisco. The road's rail terminus was moved two months later to the Oakland Long Wharf, about a mile to the north, when its expansion was completed and opened for passengers on November 8, 1869. Service between San Francisco and Oakland Pier continued to be provided by ferry.
The CPRR eventually purchased 85 km of UPRR-built grade from Promontory Summit (MP 828) to Ogden, Utah Territory (MP 881), which became the interchange point between trains of the two roads. The transcontinental line became popularly known as the Overland Route after the name of principal passenger rail service to Chicago that operated over the length of the line until 1962.
Congress agreed to support the idea. Under the direction of the Department of War, the Pacific Railroad Surveys were conducted from 1853 through 1855. These included an extensive series of expeditions of the American West seeking possible routes. A report on the explorations described alternative routes and included an immense amount of information about the American West, covering at least 1,000,000 km2. It included the region's natural history and illustrations of reptiles, amphibians, birds, and mammals.
The report failed however to include detailed topographic maps of potential routes needed to estimate the feasibility, cost and select the best route. The survey was detailed enough to determine that the best southern route lay south of the Gila River boundary with Mexico in mostly vacant desert, through the future territories of Arizona and New Mexico. This in part motivated the United States to complete the Gadsden Purchase.
The U.S. Congress was strongly divided on where the eastern terminus of the railroad should be -in a southern or northern city. Three routes were considered:
-A northern route roughly along the Missouri River through present-day northern Montana to Oregon Territory. This was considered impractical due to the rough terrain and extensive winter snows.
-A central route following the Platte River in Nebraska through to the South Pass in Wyoming, following most of the Oregon Trail. Snow on this route remained a concern.
-A southern route across Texas, New Mexico Territory, the Sonora desert, connecting to Los Angeles, California. Surveyors found during an 1848 survey that the best route lay south of the border between the United States and Mexico. This was resolved by the Gadsden Purchase in 1853.
Today, The Grandma has gone to the library to search information about LeviStrauss, the American businessman, who founded the first company to manufacture blue jeans and who was born on a day like today in 1829.
Levi Strauss (February 26, 1829-September 26, 1902) was an American businessman, whofounded the first company to manufacture blue jeans.
His firm of Levi Strauss & Co. (Levi's) began in 1853 in San Francisco, California.
Levi Strauss was born to an Ashkenazi Jewish family in Buttenheim on February 26, 1829, in the Franconia region of the Kingdom of Bavaria in the German Confederation. He was the son of Hirsch Strauss and his second wife Rebecca Strauss.
At age 18, Strauss travelled with his mother and two sisters to the United States to join his brothers Jonas and Louis, who had begun a wholesale dry goods business in New York City called J. Strauss Brother & Co.
Levi's sister Fanny and her husband David Stern moved to St. Louis, Missouri, while Levi went to live in Louisville, Kentucky and sold his brothers' supplies there. Levi became an American citizen in January 1853.
The family decided to open a West Coast branch of their dry goods business in San Francisco, which was the commercial hub of the California Gold Rush. Levi was chosen to represent them, and he took a steamship for San Francisco,where he arrived in early March 1854 and joined his sister's family.
Strauss opened his wholesale business as Levi Strauss & Co. and imported fine dry goods from his brothers in New York, including clothing, bedding, combs, purses, and handkerchiefs. He made tents and later jeans while he lived with Fanny's growing family.
Jacob W. Davis was one of his customers and one of the inventors of riveted denim pants, and in 1871, and he went into business with Strauss to produce blue jeans. The two men patented the new style of work pants in 1873.
Levi Strauss died on September 26, 1902, and was buried in the Home of Peace Cemetery and Emanu-El Mausoleum in Colma, California. He left his company to his four nephews, Jacob, Sigmund, Louis, and Abraham Stern, the sons of his sister Fanny and her husband David Stern.
Levi Strauss, a member of the Reform branch of Judaism, helped establish Congregation Emanu-El, the first Jewish synagogue in the city of San Francisco. He also gave money to several charities, including special funds for orphans. The Levi Strauss Foundation started with an 1897 donation to the University of California, Berkeley that provided the funds for 28 scholarships.
The Levi Strauss museum is located in the 1687 house where Strauss was born Buttenheim, Germany. There is also a visitors centre at Levi Strauss & Co. headquarters in San Francisco, which features historical exhibits.
In 1994, he was inducted into the Hall of Great Westerners of the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum.
Today, The Grandma is resting at home. Winter has come with force and the temperatures are going down. Although Barcelona has a Mediterranean climate, humidity is a terrible condition for old people because it affects their bones and TheGrandma is not an exception.
Being at home in front of a big fireplace and reading is one of the best options to survive during these days and TheGrandma has chosen Jack London'snovels, the American novelist who is considered a pioneer in the world of commercial magazine fiction and who was born on a day like today in 1876.
John Griffith London (January 12, 1876-November 22, 1916) was an Americannovelist, journalist, and social activist. A pioneer in the world of commercial magazine fiction, he was one of the first writers to become a worldwide celebrity and earn a large fortune from writing. He was also an innovator in the genre that would later become known as science fiction.
His most famous works include The Call of the Wild and White Fang, both set in the Klondike Gold Rush, as well as the short stories To Build a Fire, An Odyssey of the North, and Love of Life. He also wrote about the South Pacific in stories such as The Pearls of Parlay, and The Heathen.
London was part of the radical literary group The Crowd in San Francisco and a passionate advocate of unionization, workers' rights, socialism, and eugenics. He wrote several works dealing with these topics, such as his dystopian novel The Iron Heel, his non-fiction exposé The People of the Abyss, The War of the Classes, and Before Adam.
London was born near Third and Brannan Streets in San Francisco. The house burned down in the fire after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake; the California Historical Society placed a plaque at the site in 1953. Although the family was working class, it was not as impoverished as London's later accounts claimed. London was largely self-educated.
In 1885, London found and read Ouida's long Victorian novel Signa. He credited this as the seed of his literary success. In 1886, he went to the Oakland Public Library and found a sympathetic librarian, Ina Coolbrith, who encouraged his learning. She later became California's first poet laureate and an important figure in the San Francisco literary community.
Jack London
In 1889, London began working 12 to 18 hours a day at Hickmott's Cannery. Seeking a way out, he borrowed money from his foster mother Virginia Prentiss, bought the sloop Razzle-Dazzle from an oyster pirate named French Frank, and became an oyster pirate himself.
In his memoir, John Barleycorn, he claims also to have stolen French Frank's mistress Mamie. After a few months, his sloop became damaged beyond repair. London hired on as a member of the California Fish Patrol.
In 1893, he signed on to the sealing schooner Sophie Sutherland, bound for the coast of Japan. When he returned, the country was in the grip of the panic of '93 and Oakland was swept by labor unrest. After grueling jobs in a jute mill and a street-railway power plant, London joined Coxey's Army and began his career as a tramp. In 1894, he spent 30 days for vagrancy in the Erie County Penitentiary at Buffalo, New York.
On July 12, 1897, London (age 21) and his sister's husband Captain Shepard sailed to join the Klondike Gold Rush. This was the setting for some of his first successful stories. London's time in the harsh Klondike, however, was detrimental to his health. Like so many other men who were malnourished in the goldfields, London developed scurvy. His gums became swollen, leading to the loss of his four front teeth. A constant gnawing pain affected his hip and leg muscles, and his face was stricken with marks that always reminded him of the struggles he faced in the Klondike.
Father William Judge, The Saint of Dawson, had a facility in Dawson that provided shelter, food and any available medicine to London and others. His struggles there inspired London's short story, To Build a Fire (1902, revised in 1908), which many critics assess as his best.
His landlords in Dawson were mining engineers Marshall Latham Bond and Louis Whitford Bond, educated at Yale and Stanford, respectively. The brothers' father, Judge Hiram Bond, was a wealthy mining investor. The Bonds, especially Hiram, were active Republicans. Marshall Bond's diary mentions friendly sparring with London on political issues as a camp pastime.
London left Oakland with
a social conscience and socialist leanings; he returned to become an
activist for socialism. He concluded that his only hope of escaping the
work trap was to get an education and sell his brains.
Jack London
He saw his
writing as a business, his ticket out of poverty, and, he hoped, a means
of beating the wealthy at their own game.
On returning to California in 1898, London began working to get published, a struggle described in his novel, Martin Eden, serialized in 1908, published in 1909. His first published story since high school was To the Man On Trail, which has frequently been collected in anthologies. The Overland Monthly offered him only five dollars for it -and was slow paying- London came close to abandoning his writing career. In his words, literally and literarily I was saved when The Black Cat accepted his story A Thousand Deaths, and paid him $40 -the first money I ever received for a story.
London began his writing career just as new printing technologies enabled lower-cost production of magazines. This resulted in a boom in popular magazines aimed at a wide public audience and a strong market for short fiction.
In 1900, he made $2,500
in writing, about $77,000 in today's currency. Among the works he sold
to magazines was a short story known as either Diable (1902) or Bâtard (1904), two editions of the same basic story; London received
$141.25 for this story on May 27, 1902.
In the text, a cruel French
Canadian brutalizes his dog, and the dog retaliates and kills the man.
London told some of his critics that man's actions are the main cause of
the behavior of their animals, and he would show this in another story,
The Call of the Wild.
In early 1903, London sold The Call of the Wild to The Saturday Evening Post for $750, and the book rights to Macmillan for $2,000. Macmillan's promotional campaign propelled it to swift success.
While
living at his rented villa on Lake Merritt in Oakland, California,
London met poet George Sterling; in time they became best friends. In
1902, Sterling helped London find a home closer to his own in nearby
Piedmont. In his letters London addressed Sterling as Greek, owing to
Sterling's aquiline nose and classical profile, and he signed them as Wolf.
Jack London
London
was later to depict Sterling as Russ Brissenden in his autobiographical
novel Martin Eden(1910) and as Mark Hall in The Valley of the Moon
(1913).
In
later life London indulged his wide-ranging interests by accumulating a
personal library of 15,000 volumes. He referred to his books as the
tools of my trade.
London married Elizabeth "Bess" Maddern on April 7, 1900, the same day The Son of the Wolf was published. Bess had been part of his circle of friends for a number of years. She was related to stage actresses Minnie Maddern Fiske and Emily Stevens.
Stasz says, Both
acknowledged publicly that they were not marrying out of love, but from
friendship and a belief that they would produce sturdy children.
Kingman says, they were comfortable together... Jack had made it clear
to Bessie that he did not love her, but that he liked her enough to make
a successful marriage.
On July 24, 1903, London
told Bessie he was leaving and moved out. During 1904, London and Bess
negotiated the terms of a divorce, and the decree was granted on
November 11, 1904.
London accepted an assignment of the San Francisco Examiner to cover the
Russo-Japanese War in early 1904, arriving in Yokohama on January 25,
1904. He was arrested by Japanese authorities in Shimonoseki, but
released through the intervention of American ambassador Lloyd Griscom.
After travelling to
Korea, he was again arrested by Japanese authorities for straying too
close to the border with Manchuria without official permission, and was
sent back to Seoul. Released again, London was permitted to travel with
the Imperial Japanese Army to the border, and to observe the Battle of
the Yalu.
London asked William
Randolph Hearst, the owner of the San Francisco Examiner, to be allowed
to transfer to the Imperial Russian Army, where he felt that
restrictions on his reporting and his movements would be less severe.
However, before this
could be arranged, he was arrested for a third time in four months, this
time for assaulting his Japanese assistants, whom he accused of
stealing the fodder for his horse. Released through the personal
intervention of President Theodore Roosevelt, London departed the front
in June 1904.
Jack London & Charmian Kittredge
After divorcing Maddern, Londonmarried Charmian Kittredge in 1905. London had been introduced to Kittredge in 1900 by her aunt Netta Eames, who was an editor at Overland Monthly magazine in San Francisco. The two met prior to his first marriage but became lovers years later after Jack and Bessie London visited Wake Robin, Netta Eames' Sonoma County resort, in 1903.
London was injured when he fell from a buggy, and Netta arranged for Charmian to care for him. The two developed a friendship, as Charmian, Netta, her husband Roscoe, and London were politically aligned with socialist causes. At some point the relationship became romantic, and Jack divorced his wife to marry Charmian, who was five years his senior.
In 1905, London
purchased a 4.0 km2 ranch in Glen Ellen, Sonoma County, California, on
the eastern slope of Sonoma Mountain. He wrote: Next to my wife, the
ranch is the dearest thing in the world to me. He desperately wanted
the ranch to become a successful business enterprise.
London died November 22, 1916, in a sleeping porch in a cottage on his ranch. London had been a robust man but had suffered several serious illnesses, including scurvy in the Klondike. Additionally, during travels on the Snark, he and Charmian picked up unspecified tropical infections, and diseases, including yaws. At the time of his death, he suffered from dysentery, late-stage alcoholism, and uremia; he was in extreme pain and taking morphine.
London's ashes were buried on his property not far from the Wolf House. London's funeral took place on November 26, 1916, attended only by close friends, relatives, and workers of the property. In accordance with his wishes, he was cremated and buried next to some pioneer children, under a rock that belonged to the Wolf House.
After Charmian's death in 1955, she was also cremated and then buried with her husband in the same spot that her husband chose. The grave is marked by a mossy boulder. The buildings and property were later preserved as Jack London State Historic Park, in Glen Ellen, California.
Today, The Grandma has been classifying their travel photos. She has found some photos of her travel with her Addams, Beans,and Poppins families to SanFrancisco. They spent some fantastic days and they visited the most important sight of the city, The GoldenGateBridge, one of the most popular bridges around the world whose construction in San Francisco Bay began on a day like today in 1933.
The Golden Gate Bridge is a suspension bridge spanning the Golden Gate, the one-mile-wide (1.6 km) strait connecting SanFrancisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean. The structure links the American city of San Francisco, California -the northern tip of the San Francisco Peninsula- to Marin County, carrying both U.S. Route 101 and California State Route 1 across the strait. The bridge is one of the most internationally recognized symbols of SanFrancisco, California, and the United States. It has been declared one of the Wonders of the Modern World by the American Society of Civil Engineers.
The Frommer's travel guide describes the Golden Gate Bridge as possibly the most beautiful, certainly the most photographed, bridge in the world. At the time of its opening in 1937, it was both the longest and the tallest suspension bridge in the world, with a main span of 1,280 m and a total height of 227 m.
Before the bridge was
built, the only practical short route between SanFrancisco and what is
now Marin County was by boat across a section of SanFrancisco Bay. A
ferry service began as early as 1820, with a regularly scheduled service
beginning in the 1840s for the purpose of transporting water to San
Francisco.
The Sausalito Land and
Ferry Company service, launched in 1867, eventually became the Golden
Gate Ferry Company, a Southern Pacific Railroad subsidiary, the largest
ferry operation in the world by the late 1920s. Once for railroad
passengers and customers only, Southern Pacific's automobile ferries
became very profitable and important to the regional economy. The ferry
crossing between the Hyde Street Pier in San Francisco and Sausalito
Ferry Terminal in Marin County took approximately 20 minutes and cost
$1.00 per vehicle, a price later reduced to compete with the new bridge.
The trip from the San Francisco Ferry Building took 27 minutes.
Many wanted to build a bridge to connect San Francisco to Marin County. San Francisco was the largest American city still served primarily by ferry boats. Because it did not have a permanent link with communities around the bay, the city's growth rate was below the national average. Many experts said that a bridge could not be built across the 2,000-metre strait, which had strong, swirling tides and currents, with water 113 m deep at the center of the channel, and frequent strong winds. Experts said that ferocious winds and blinding fogs would prevent construction and operation.
Although the idea of a
bridge spanning the Golden Gate was not new, the proposal that
eventually took hold was made in a 1916 San Francisco Bulletin article
by former engineering student James Wilkins.
San Francisco's City
Engineer estimated the cost at $100 million, equivalent to $2.3 billion
today, and impractical for the time. He asked bridge engineers whether
it could be built for less. One who responded, Joseph Strauss, was an
ambitious engineer and poet who had, for his graduate thesis, designed a
89 km railroad bridge across the Bering Strait.
The Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco
At the time, Strauss had completed some 400 drawbridges -most of which were inland- and nothing on the scale of the new project. Strauss's initial drawings were for a massive cantilever on each side of the strait, connected by a central suspension segment, which Strauss promised could be built for $17 million, equivalent to $399 million today.
Local authorities agreed to proceed only on the assurance that Strauss would alter the design and accept input from several consulting project experts. A suspension-bridge design was considered the most practical, because of recent advances in metallurgy. Strauss spent more than a decade drumming up support in Northern California. The bridge faced opposition, including litigation, from many sources. The Department of War was concerned that the bridge would interfere with ship traffic. The US Navy feared that a ship collision or sabotage to the bridge could block the entrance to one of its main harbors. Unions demanded guarantees that local workers would be favored for construction jobs. Southern Pacific Railroad, one of the most powerful business interests in California,opposed the bridge as competition to its ferry fleet and filed a lawsuit against the project, leading to a mass boycott of the ferry service.
In May 1924, Colonel Herbert Deakyne held the second hearing on the Bridge on behalf of the Secretary of War in a request to use federal land for construction. Deakyne, on behalf of the Secretary of War, approved the transfer of land needed for the bridge structure and leading roads to the Bridging the Golden Gate Association and both San Francisco County and Marin County, pending further bridge plans by Strauss. Another ally was the fledgling automobile industry, which supported the development of roads and bridges to increase demand for automobiles.
The bridge's name was first used when the project was initially discussed in 1917 by M.M. O'Shaughnessy, city engineer of San Francisco, and Strauss. The name became official with the passage of the Golden Gate Bridge and Highway District Act by the state legislature in 1923, creating a special district to design, build and finance the bridge.
San Francisco and most of the counties along the North Coast of California joined the Golden Gate Bridge District, with the exception being Humboldt County, whose residents opposed the bridge's construction and the traffic it would generate.
Strauss
was chief engineer in charge of overall design and construction of the
bridge project. However, because he had little understanding or
experience with cable-suspension designs, responsibility for much of the
engineering and architecture fell on other experts.
Strauss's
initial design proposal, two double cantilever spans linked by a
central suspension segment, was unacceptable from a visual standpoint.
The final graceful suspension design was conceived and championed by
Leon Moisseiff, the engineer of the Manhattan Bridge in New York City.
Irving
Morrow, a relatively unknown residential architect, designed the
overall shape of the bridge towers, the lighting scheme, and Art Deco
elements, such as the tower decorations, streetlights, railing, and
walkways. The famous International Orange color was Morrow's personal
selection, winning out over other possibilities, including the US Navy's
suggestion that it be painted with black and yellow stripes to ensure
visibility by passing ships.
The Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco
Senior engineer CharlesAlton Ellis, collaborating remotely with Moisseiff, was the principal engineer of the project. Moisseiff produced the basic structural design, introducing his deflectiontheory by which a thin, flexible roadway would flex in the wind, greatly reducing stress by transmitting forces via suspension cables to the bridge towers.
Although the Golden Gate Bridge design has proved sound, a later Moisseiff design, the original Tacoma Narrows Bridge, collapsed in a strong windstorm soon after it was completed, because of an unexpected aeroelastic flutter. Ellis was also tasked with designing a bridge within a bridge in the southern abutment, to avoid the need to demolish Fort Point, a pre–Civil War masonry fortification viewed, even then, as worthy of historic preservation. He penned a graceful steel arch spanning the fort and carrying the roadway to the bridge's southern anchorage.
Ellis was a Greek scholar and mathematician who at one time was a University of Illinois professor of engineering despite having no engineering degree. He eventually earned a degree in civil engineering from the University of Illinois prior to designing the Golden Gate Bridge and spent the last twelve years of his career as a professor at Purdue University. He became an expert in structural design, writing the standard textbook of the time. Ellis did much of the technical and theoretical work that built the bridge, but he received none of the credit in his lifetime.
In November 1931,
Strauss fired Ellis and replaced him with a former subordinate, Clifford
Paine, ostensibly for wasting too much money sending telegrams back and
forth to Moisseiff. Ellis, obsessed with the project and unable to find
work elsewhere during the Depression, continued working 70 hours per
week on an unpaid basis, eventually turning in ten volumes of hand
calculations.
With an eye toward
self-promotion and posterity, Strauss downplayed the contributions of
his collaborators who, despite receiving little recognition or
compensation, are largely responsible for the final form of the bridge.
He succeeded in having himself credited as the person most responsible
for the design and vision of the bridge. Only much later were the
contributions of the others on the design team properly appreciated.
In
May 2007, the Golden Gate Bridge District issued a formal report on 70
years of stewardship of the famous bridge and decided to give Ellis
major credit for the design of the bridge.
The Golden Gate Bridge and Highway District, authorized by an act of the
California Legislature, was incorporated in 1928 as the official entity
to design, construct, and finance the Golden Gate Bridge. However,
after the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the District was unable to raise
the construction funds, so it lobbied for a $30 million bond measure,
equivalent to $447 million today.
The bonds were approved
in November 1930, by votes in the counties affected by the bridge. The
construction budget at the time of approval was $27 million, $413
million today. However, the District was unable to sell the bonds until
1932, when Amadeo Giannini, the founder of San Francisco–based Bank of
America, agreed on behalf of his bank to buy the entire issue in order
to help the local economy.
Construction began on
January 5, 1933. The project cost more than $35 million, $514 million in
2018 dollars, and was completed ahead of schedule and $1.3 million
under budget, equivalent to $24.2 million today.The Golden Gate Bridge
construction project was carried out by the McClintic-Marshall
Construction Co., a subsidiary of Bethlehem Steel Corporation founded by
Howard H. McClintic and Charles D. Marshall, both of Lehigh University.
The Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco
Strauss remained head of the project, overseeing day-to-day construction and making some groundbreaking contributions. Of eleven men killed from falls during construction, ten were killed on February 17, 1937, when the bridge was near completion and the net failed under the stress of a scaffold that had fallen. The workers' platform that was attached to a rolling hanger on a track collapsed when the bolts that were connected to the track were too small and the amount of weight was too great to bear.
The platform fell into the safety net, but was too heavy and the net gave way. Two out of the twelve workers survived the 61 m fall into the icy waters, including the 37-year-old foreman, Slim Lambert. Nineteen others who were saved by the net over the course of construction became members of the Half Way to Hell Club.
The project was finished and opened May 27, 1937. The Bridge Round House diner was then included in the southeastern end of the Golden Gate Bridge,adjacent to the tourist plaza which was renovated in 2012. The Bridge Round House, an Art Deco design by Alfred Finnila completed in 1938, has been popular throughout the years as a starting point for various commercial tours of the bridge and an unofficial gift shop. The diner was renovated in 2012 and the gift shop was then removed as a new, official gift shop has been included in the adjacent plaza.
During
the bridge work, the Assistant Civil Engineer of California Alfred
Finnila had overseen the entire iron work of the bridge as well as half
of the bridge's road work. With the death of Jack Balestreri in April
2012, all workers involved in the original construction are now
deceased.
Aesthetics
was the foremost reason why the first design of Joseph Strauss was
rejected. Upon re-submission of his bridge construction plan, he added
details, such as lighting, to outline the bridge's cables and towers. In
1999, it was ranked fifth on the List of America's Favorite
Architecture by the American Institute of Architects.
The color of the bridge is officially an orange vermilion called international orange. The color was selected by consulting architect Irving Morrow because it complements the natural surroundings and enhances the bridge's visibility in fog.
The bridge was originally painted with red lead primer and a lead-based topcoat, which was touched up as required. In the mid-1960s, a program was started to improve corrosion protection by stripping the original paint and repainting the bridge with zinc silicate primer and vinyl topcoats. Since 1990, acrylic topcoats have been used instead for air-quality reasons. The program was completed in 1995 and it is now maintained by 38 painters who touch up the paintwork where it becomes seriously corroded. The ongoing maintenance task of painting of the bridge is continuous.
Since its completion, the Golden Gate Bridge has been closed because of weather conditions only three times: on December 1, 1951, because of gusts of 111 km/h; on December 23, 1982, because of winds of 113 km/h; and on December 3, 1983, because of wind gusts of 121 km/h.
An anemometer, placed midway between the two towers on the west side of the bridge, has been used to measure wind speeds. Another anemometer was placed on one of the towers.
Modern knowledge of the effect of earthquakes on structures led to a program to retrofit the Golden Gate to better resist seismic events. The proximity of the bridge to the San Andreas Fault places it at risk for a significant earthquake. Once thought to have been able to withstand any magnitude of foreseeable earthquake, the bridge was actually vulnerable to complete structural failure triggered by the failure of supports on the 98 m arch over Fort Point.
A $392 million program was initiated to improve the structure's ability to withstand such an event with only minimal repairable damage. One challenging undertaking is completing this program without disrupting traffic. A complex electro-hydraulic synchronous lift system was custom built for construction of temporary support towers and a series of intricate lifts, transferring the loads from the existing bridge onto the temporary supports. This was completed with engineers from Balfour Beatty and Enerpac, accomplishing this task without disrupting day-to-day San Francisco commuter traffic.
Although the retrofit was initially planned to be completed in 2012, as of 2017, it was expected to take several more years to complete all of the necessary work.
Today, the Mobile World Congress returns to Barcelona as every year. The Grandma loves technology and science and this exposition is a great opportunity to know the last proposals in this sector.
Mobile has become one of the most important world markets earning lots and lots of millions, creating thousands of employments and developing incredible applications. It's impossible to stop progress although we must work to grow up respecting environment and labour conditions. Technology helps to improve our lives but destroy thousands of employments and we must arrive to a balance between create and destroy.
The Grandma remembers Noemí Bond and she wants to talk about one of the most important genius of the last century, Steve Jobs, the man who created Apple Inc., a technologic empire which has changed our lives, our present and future. He was born on a day like today in 1955.
Before talking about Steve Jobs, The Grandma has studied a new lesson of her Intermediate Language Practice manual (Grammar 13).
Steven Paul Jobs (February 24, 1955-October 5, 2011) was an Americanbusiness magnate and investor. He was the chairman, chief executive officer (CEO), and co-founder of Apple Inc.; chairman and majority shareholder of Pixar; a member of The Walt Disney Company's board of directors following its acquisition of Pixar; and the founder, chairman, and CEO of NeXT. Jobs is widely recognized as a pioneer of the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s, along with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.
Steve Jobs
Jobs was born in San Francisco, California, and put up for adoption. He was raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. He attended Reed College in 1972 before dropping out that same year, and traveled through India in 1974 seeking enlightenment and studying Zen Buddhism.
His declassified FBI report states that he used marijuana and LSD while he was in college, and once told a reporter that taking LSD was one of the two or three most important things he had done in his life.
Jobs and Wozniak co-founded Apple in 1976 to sell Wozniak's Apple I personal computer. Together the duo gained fame and wealth a year later for the Apple II, one of the first highly successful mass-produced personal computers.
Jobs saw the commercial potential of the Xerox Alto in 1979, which was mouse-driven and had a graphical user interface (GUI). This led to development of the unsuccessful Apple Lisa in 1983, followed by the breakthrough Macintosh in 1984, the first mass-produced computer with a GUI.
The Macintosh introduced the desktop publishing industry in 1985 with the addition of the Apple LaserWriter, the first laser printer to feature vector graphics. Jobs was forced out of Apple in 1985 after a long power struggle with the company's board and its then-CEO John Sculley.
That same year, Jobs took a few of Apple's members with him to found NeXT, a computer platform development company that specialized in computers for higher-education and business markets. In addition, he helped to develop the visual effects industry when he funded the computer graphics division of George Lucas's Lucasfilm in 1986. The new company was Pixar, which produced Toy Story, the first fully computer-animated film.
Apple merged with NeXT in 1997, and Jobs became CEO of his former company within a few months.
He was largely responsible for helping revive Apple, which had been at the verge of bankruptcy.
He worked closely with designer Jony Ive to develop a line of products that had larger cultural ramifications, beginning in 1997 with the Think differentadvertising campaign and leading to the iMac, iTunes, iTunes Store, Apple Store, iPod, iPhone, App Store, and the iPad.
In 2001, the original Mac OS was replaced with a completely new Mac OS X, based on NeXT's NeXTSTEP platform, giving the OS a modern Unix-based foundation for the first time.
Jobs was diagnosed with a pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor in 2003. He died of respiratory arrest related to the tumor at age 56 on October 5, 2011.
Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, that designs, develops, and sells consumer electronics, computer software, and online services. It is considered one of the Big Four of technology along with Amazon, Google, and Facebook.
The company's hardware products include the iPhone smartphone, the iPad tablet computer, the Mac personal computer, the iPod portable media player, the Apple Watch smartwatch, the Apple TV digital media player, and the HomePod smart speaker. Apple's software includes the macOS and iOS operating systems, the iTunes media player, the Safari web browser, and the iLife and iWork creativity and productivity suites, as well as professional applications like Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, and Xcode. Its online services include the iTunes Store, the iOS App Store and Mac App Store, Apple Music, and iCloud.
Steve Jobs & Steve Wozniak
Apple was founded by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne in April 1976 to develop and sell Wozniak's Apple I personal computer.
It was incorporated as Apple Computer, Inc., in January 1977, and sales of its computers, including the Apple II, grew quickly. Within a few years, Jobs and Wozniak had hired a staff of computer designers and had a production line. Apple went public in 1980 to instant financial success.
Over the next few years, Apple shipped new computers featuring innovative graphical user interfaces, such as the original Macintosh in 1984, and Apple's marketing advertisements for its products received widespread critical acclaim. However, the high price tag of its products and limited software titles caused problems, as did power struggles between executives at the company.
In 1985, Wozniak stepped away from Apple, while Jobs resigned and founded a new company—NeXT—with former Apple employees.
As the market for personal computers increased, Apple's
computers lost share to lower-priced products, particularly ones that
ran the Microsoft Windows operating system, and the company was
financially on the brink. After more executive job shuffles, CEO Gil
Amelio in 1997 bought NeXT to bring Jobs back.
Steve Jobs shows iPhone Smartphone
Jobs regained leadership within the company and became the new CEO shortly after. He began to rebuild Apple's status, opening Apple's own retail stores in 2001, acquiring numerous companies to create a portfolio of software titles, and changing some of the hardware used in its computers. The company returned to profitability.
In January 2007, Jobs renamed the company Apple Inc., reflecting its shifted focus toward consumer electronics, and announced the iPhone, which saw critical acclaim and significant financial success.
In August 2011, Jobs resigned as CEO due to health complications, and Tim Cook became the new CEO. Two months later, Jobs died, marking the end of an era for the company.
Apple is well known for its size and revenues. Apple is the world's largest information technology company by revenue and the world's third-largest mobile phone manufacturer after Samsung and Huawei.
The company employs 123,000 full-time employees and maintains 504 retail stores in 24 countries as of 2018. It operates the iTunes Store, which is the world's largest music retailer. The company also has a high level of brand loyalty and is ranked as the world's most valuable brand.
However, Apple receives significant criticism regarding the labor practices of its contractors, its environmental practices and unethical business practices, including anti-competitive behavior, as well as the origins of source materials.
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