Here is a glimpse inside one of the SS United States' funnels. This looks not unlike some long lost mysterious tomb. But in fact it's just a big empty shape used to cover a purely functional sheet metal chimney. You'd never know it from the dark and dust and hints of aluminum framework, but from the outside, this funnel and its partner once conveyed the very essence of unprecedented speed.
Growing Up in a Boiler Room
At left is a photograph of the house I grew up in. The one we left in 1957. It is the same width and height (more or less) as one of the boilers on the ship (sketch above). ONE of the eight boilers. No wonder my mother was delighted when I offered to go out and play leaving my brother and sister at home with Mom.
David Macaulay Reflects on the SS United States
David shares a working sketch for his upcoming book, Ingenuity: A Journey, and explains why he chose the SS United States to be the central focus of this project.
When individual memory fails, we need reminders to help maintain our connections with the past. When collective memory fails, which it seems to do more quickly than individual memory, we need more frequent reminders. And for a society that all too often seems to place little importance on the past, a few big reminders or perhaps just one very big reminder may be the best way of holding on to shared memory. The idea is not to cling to or mimic the past, but to mix it with the present, to make it part of our real and imagined landscape.
The sketch is an attempt to show in a single image just a few of the complexities the book will explore. These include the SS United States' steam turbine power plant, the subassembly construction method that helped get the ship built in approximately a year and a half, the range of spaces required to satisfy the needs of two thousand passengers and a crew of one thousand, radar system used to keep the ship safe in poor visibility, and a couple of anchors just in case.
The SS United States, the fastest ocean liner in the world, not only connected the new world with the old, but every aspect of her design, construction, and technology built on centuries of human ingenuity, countless examples of gradual improvement along with occasionally surprising innovation, and brought them all together. The result was the realization/fulfillment of one man’s obsession/dream in a three dimensional form that still stirs wonder at the first glimpse of her iconic streamlined funnels. The lesson she suggests by her very presence, is that anything is possible. We don’t have to have all the answers, we need only look back at the ingenuity of our ancestors for ideas and inspiration as we confront new problems and redefine the old ones. Hard work and imagination will do the rest.— David Macaulay