At 09:35 PM 06/05/05 -0400, Maru wrote:
On 5/6/05, Keith Henson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > At 11:50 AM 06/05/05 -0400, Maru wrote: > snip
> Can you go on Google and point out a few places where John Henry is up > against a "track laying machine" or driving spikes to hold down the rails? > > I have *never* seen this, but your might be right. It has been a really > long time since I was a kid.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Henry_%28folklore%29
"In a bid to save his job, and the jobs of his men,
I should go fix the Wiki because while "steel driving men" were not the absolute bottom of the pecking order, they certainly didn't have an men under them--unless you count the poor dude turning the drill steel (shakers). Of course when an 8 pound hammer missed the drill steel you needed a new shaker.
John Henry challenges the inventor to a contest: John Henry VS. the Steam-Hammer. John defeats the Steam-Hammer in driving spikes, but in the process he suffers a heart attack and dies a martyr.
There is a decent account based more or less on what was historically possible here:
http://www.ancestry.com/learn/library/article.aspx?article=7228
Incidentally, a drill steel has a very different configuration to a "spike" Spikes are pointed. Drills today have carbide inserts half again as large as the stem that screw onto the end of the drill steel. But up to perhaps the middle of the last century rock drills had a wide chisel shape on the end. This was to drill a hole larger than the stem because otherwise the drill would get stuck.
There was a blacksmith shop associated with any rock drilling operation because the drills had to be reshaped in a forge after a few uses. If you were drilling any direction except up, the drill had to be frequently pulled out of the hole and the rock dust scraped out with a "spoon."
"1849 Jonathan Couch patents first practical American percussion-style steam powered rock drill."
http://www.explosives.org/HistoryofExplosives.htm
"Simon Ingersoll . . . . invented a steam-powered rock drill in 1871. Faster, lighter and more productive than its predecessors, the Ingersoll drill�the first to be mounted on a tripod�revolutionized the drilling industry."
http://www.irco.com/pressroom/irworld/irw1q05/centurydynamicgrowth1q05.html
"The first large-scale application of compressed-air energy occurred in 1871, during the excavation of the Mont Cenis railroad tunnel through the Alps. Engineers developed a water-wheel-driven air compressor that powered the rock drills used to dig the tunnel. Before the invention of air compressors, miners used steam-powered rock drills, but exhaust steam made working conditions in underground mines unbearable."
http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_1741500785_3/Air.html
In modern depictions John Henry is usually portrayed as hammering down rail spikes,
He would be spinning in his grave, different occupation, lower status. If you want a picture of what driving spikes using a spike maul looks like, try here a little more than half way down the page. (Volunteers rebuilding a old line.)
http://rypn.org/rypn_files/articles/Articles/031028WWF/Default.htm
but older songs often instead refer to him driving blasting holes into rock, part of the process of excavating railroad tunnels."
"Well, the men who built that steam drill, they thought they were mighty fine John Henry, he drove his fourteen feet That steam drill, it only made nine, Lord, Lord That steam drill, it only made nine."
Excuse me for being a grump, but I dislike abusing legends for cartoons, especially when they mash all the engineering and historical sense out of a story.
Keith Henson
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