The Raising of Chicago: the windy city

2017-08-28

[public] 126K views, 6.31K likes, 38.0 dislikes audio only

I had a great time in Chicago. Thanks to everyone who made it such a fantastic trip.

Here’s the page on my website for speaking at conferences etc:

http://standupmaths.com/speaking/

Rising Chicago timeline:

1830: Population below 100

1850s: Population around 100,000

1856: Sewer built above street level

1858: First building raised

1860: Half a block of buildings raised at once

1861: Tremont House hotel raised with guests inside

1871: Great Chicago Fire

I did enjoy my trip to the Chicago History Museum and the staff were very helpful.

https://www.chicagohistory.org/

This was the best online guide to the raising of Chicago which I found.

http://users.ox.ac.uk/~sedm1912/lch.html

This is also a good read.

https://chicagology.com/prefire/raising/

The quote from David Macrae is from the second volume of The Americans at Home on pages 190 and 191.

https://books.google.com/books/about/THE_AMERICANS_AT_HOME_PEN_AND_INK_SKETCH.html?id=Lbx6L4epEDUC

See the Edison video (actually filmed by William Heise and James H White) at the Library of Congress.

“Corner Madison and State Streets, Chicago”

https://www.loc.gov/item/00694183/

Photo of screw jack taken by Johnalden.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:House_Jack_2.5_tons.jpg

CORRECTIONS: Two slight additions below. Let me know if you spot anything else.

- I regret not adding metric conversions in subtitles. I was describing a historical engineering feat which was all done in feet but wish I'd pasted the metric values on-screen.

- I did not mention how the screw jacks got under the buildings to start with! I assume they just took them into the basement and began lifting from there.

Thanks to my many Patreon supports! Here is a subset:

Doug Jones

Andrew Mohlmann

Clément Brisset

Michael Tindall

Joshua

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Music by Howard Carter

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MATT PARKER: Stand-up Mathematician

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