Ward Up

Thu, 04 Oct 2007 10:16:45 -0600

At risk of insulting the persons involved with the above advances, I would like to suggest one scientific achievment that did not make this Top Ten list. The advance that I am nominating is described in the following sentence from the Wikipedia entry for "Turbine": "....1903: Commonwealth Edison Fisk Street Station opens in Chicago, using 32 Babcock and Wilcox boilers driving several GE Curtis turbines, at 5000 and 9000 kilowatts each, the largest turbine-generators in the world at that time. Almost all electric power generation, from the time of the Fisk Station to the present, is based on steam driven turbine-generators..." It seems to me (and I'm not an engineer or anything) that this scientific advance (i.e., large-scale use of steam driven turbines to power a city) has had more impact on the daily lives of people around the world than has most of the Chicago-based achievements listed in the above Top Ten list. By the way, one of the original GE turbines from Fisk is in a museum somwhere out east, while the Fisk Station still operates at the south edge of Pilsen, though the building that stood in 1903 is gone.

Rachelle Bowden

Wed, 03 Oct 2007 17:05:59 -0600

james koh is going to kiss you for this post

Chicagoist: Science and Technology — It's Fun, You'll See!

Ward Up

Rachelle Bowden