A Short History of Tall Buildings

The time-line of the tallest building before 1900 is quite intriguing. Three buildings became the tallest as a result of other spires collapsing. Here's a scale illustration I knocked together to show this.

1. In antiquity, the tallest structure was the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt, completed circa 2540 BC. It was originally 146.5 metres tall, but erosion and stripping reduced that to its current height of 138.8m.
2. In 1240, the spire of Old St Paul's in London topped out at 149.0m, becoming the new tallest building. The spire survived until 1561.
3. In 1311, the spire of Lincoln Cathedral, England, allegedly reached 159.7m. It was destroyed in a storm in 1549.
4. The 1549 collapse in Lincoln caused St Olaf's Church in Tallinn, Estonia, to become the tallest building at 159.0m. It was built around 1500 and survived until 1625 when a lightning strike caused the spire to burn down.
5. So in 1625, an even older church spire, that of St Mary's in Stralsund, Germany, became the tallest. Dating back to 1478, at a height of 151.0m, it too succumbed to fire caused by lightning in 1647.
6. In 1647, the spire of Strasbourg Cathedral, France, erected way back in 1439, became the tallest at 142.0m. It still stands.
7. The record wasn't broken for over two hundred years, when St Nicholas' Church in Hamburg reached 147.8m in 1874.
8. Next came a new 151.0m lantern tower at Rouen Cathedral, France, in 1876.
9. In 1880, the thirteenth-century Cologne Cathedral in Germany, was finally completed. The twin spires are 157.4m tall, but this was still not as tall as the reputed height of Lincoln Cathedral's lost spire.
10. In 1890, Ulm Minister was also finished in Germany, after five centuries of intermittent work. At 161.5m, the steeple is higher than originally intended, so as to out-do Cologne. It remains the tallest church in the world, but was surpassed for the record of "Tallest Building" by Philadelphia City Hall at 167.0m, which ushered in the age of the skyscraper in 1901.
11. The Eiffel Tower, debatably not a building, was completed in 1889. It is 300m tall and is shown for comparison.

Surprisingly, the tallest structure (let alone building) in the world struggled to get much beyond the ancient pyramids until very late in the nineteen century, when the Eiffel Tower almost doubled the record.

Alexandre Dumas Fiction

If, like me, you get confused with the chronology and grouping of Alexandre Dumas' fictional work, here's a handy table. It's particularly perplexing because different publishers divide his works many different ways; I've often bought a second-hand copy only to find I've already got all or part of the story under a different title. The chronology is also chaotic because Dumas often “back-filled” his romances by writing prequels or parallel pieces. He also re-wrote earlier works.

Interesting to see that his first book of prose, "Nouvelles Contemporaines", only sold four copies.

O'Reilly's Owl Pie T-Shirt

I thought of this one a long time ago, but have only just got around to throwing together the pixels.

One-Liners

For the last few weeks, Martyn Honeyford and I have been trying to come up with the shortest joke.

I think it's going to be difficult to beat:

"Pretentious? Moi?"

This has been variously attributed to Fawlty Towers and The Muppet Show, though the precise origin is unclear.

Martyn came up with:

"German sausage is the wurst."

This has apparently been independently 'discovered' many times.

From Jimmy Carr:

"Venison's dear!"

From elsewhere on the web:

"Stationery store moves."

"Dwarf shortage."

"Small medium at large."

"Putting 'sexy' into 'dyslexia'." 

But perhaps my favourite sources of surprisingly good one-liners are the Carry On films. In Carry On Up The Khyber (1968):

"Poor old Will! Why do they always fire at him?"

And, most famously, Carry on Cleo (1964) via Take It From Here on BBC radio:

"Infamy, infamy. They've all got it in for me!"

Surface-Mount Printed Circuit Board Pen

There's a retired gentleman just around the corner in our village who makes "hand crafted writing implements." As well as some beautiful turned-wood examples, he makes pens from surface-mounted PCBs. I've never seen anything quite like them. He heats a section of board and curls it into a tube, which he then encases in clear acrylic. He turns and polishes this to produce a pen shaft. In his shed.

The photos don't do it justice: the components are in glorious 3D in real life.

Makes a great present for geeks. Not surprisingly, my girlfriend not-so-secretly bought one from the village craft fair at the weekend. Hurrah for Christmas!

There's probably something profound about making an old-fashioned pen from new-fangled technology. Probably.

ZX Spectrum Fine Art 3

I'm finding this very therapeutic, but I may have bitten off a bit too much this time:

ZX Spectrum Fine Art 2

Following the resounding critical success of my last piece of ZX Spectrum Fine Art ("I rather like it"), I bring you an interpretation of "The Billy Boys" by Jack Vettriano. See if you can tell which is the original: