I think about this a lot when it comes to "eyesores", particularly wind turbines. When you think of how windmills are considered picturesque, it always makes me a little surprised when people moan about modern wind generation, because I think they look great. Especially when most of the areas they are put up are crisscrossed with overhead power lines anyway, which are much less appealing.
Where I'm from in the Netherlands there's is much less resistance to them anyway because we know the alternative is for our country to be under the sea ;)
But generally I’m with you. I just don’t get it. Windmills look neat and do neat things.
The "real" complaints tend to be some absolute insanity about "medical issues" that are caused by the windmills. Or harm to wildlife, even though study after study debunks these views. Sometimes they try an environmental move, bringing up the waste from retired blades - all while ignoring the alternatives and their environmental harm.
The real story is, these are people who just don't want progress. They don't want change. They are perfectly content with their Folgers coffee in a styrofoam cup and iceberg lettuce with ranch dressing. They want their news in paper form. Those windmills are just totems representing a world that scares them because it doesn't fit into their neat little navel-gazing bread basket.
What I've noticed is that anger toward windmills in our area has grown over the decades since they started installing them rather than dissipated, as more of those angry old grumps realize that they won't get their old world back.
I don't think anyone would ever have gone for a field of tens or hundreds of them.
The wiki article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation-restoration_of_th...) has a lot of it, but IIRC after they installed stainless steel, at some point they passed electricity through it, which had the effect of making it susceptible to corrosion, and then had to do something else to restore its resistance.
I wish I could find it now, as it was a fascinating read, but I can't see anything easily online.
This WaPo article talks about it more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1986/07/02/b...
This article suggests that the DC current treatment was to avoid corrosion (also has some nice illustrations of the support framework for the skin):
https://copper.org/education/liberty/liberty_reclothed2.php
A related blurb just says they built some equipment (probably the equipment to do the DC annealing, but who knows):
https://www.romanmfg.com/roman-manuacturing-helps-restore-th...
The Wikipedia article mentions the annealing and then sand blasting to remove iron from the surface (contaminants on the surface of the stainless can compromise the oxide layer that forms).
Maybe something in there will jog your memory.
edit: I rabbit holed a little bit. apparently its not that straightforward. the acid encourages the iron to leave the surface layer (probably through oxidization and dissolution) with just the chromium and the nickel. this then oxides in the presence of air, leaving a protective layer without the surface iron to start to rust
From Wikipedia:
> Publisher Joseph Pulitzer, of the New York World, started a drive for donations to finish the project and attracted more than 120,000 contributors, most of whom gave less than a dollar (equivalent to $30 in 2021)
with "reparations" from the people of haiti
>Initially focused on the elites, the Union was successful in raising funds from across French society. Schoolchildren and ordinary citizens gave, as did 181 French municipalities.
That said, why did they go to Bell Labs rather than a building constructor in the first place? It's not like copper is an exotic material. Did the NPS just completely forget that people had been using copper on roofs for centuries... excuse me, millennia.
I don’t know the real answer, to be clear, and I had the same question when reading the story. But I suspect the answer is a combination of prestige (everyone wants to work with bell labs, not John smith of idahos metallurgy shop) and connections (someone at bell labs knew a local politician who knows a guy who knows a NPS worker in that team).
That’s usually what everything is.
Whilst this is interesting, Nick maintains a fantastic website full of interesting information about telephone software, antennas and all sorts of fascinating telephony articles.
Could you have imagined.
/snark
