How the Hoover Dam Works: A 3D Animated Introduction

In terms of vacationer pil­grim­age websites within the Unit­ed States, the Hoover Dam could not fairly rank up there with the Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty, the Lin­coln Memo­r­i­al, Mount Rush­extra, the Grand Canyon, or Dis­ney­land. However that’s not attributable to a scarcity of impor­tance, nor even a scarcity of impres­sive­ness. Prop­er appre­ci­a­tion of its man-made majesty, how­ev­er, requires an underneath­stand­ing of not simply the very important func­tion it serves, however the enor­mous process of its con­struc­tion. The guides on the Hoover Dam have been skilled to clarify simply that to its many vis­i­tors, in fact, however all of us might ben­e­match from getting into pre­pared with a lit­tle knowl­edge. Watch the hour-long video on the dam’s design and con­struc­tion from Ani­ma­graffs above, and you could be pre­pared with sufficient knowl­edge to inform the guides a factor or two.

Ani­ma­graffs is the YoT­tube chan­nel of Jacob O’Neal, which we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured right here on Open Cul­ture for its acclaimed expla­na­tions on a six­teenth-cen­tu­ry explor­er’s sail­ing ship and the Gold­en Gate Bridge, anoth­er icon­ic con­struc­tion venture of the Nice Depres­sion. Like these, his Hoover Dam video makes use of detailed 3D mod­els based mostly on seri­ous analysis, not least into the professional­jec­t’s orig­i­nal design doc­u­ments.

This permits O’Neal to point out every ele­ment of the dam and its com­plex sys­tem of sup­port­ing infra­struc­ture intimately and from each angle, in addition to in a sort of x‑ray imaginative and prescient. We’ve all seen pho­tographs of the Hoover Dam, and perhaps even purchased some from its reward store, however even essentially the most sub­lime aer­i­al view does­n’t reveal as a lot about its ambi­tion as a glance into its internal work­ings.

And the ambi­tion of the Hoover Dam is one side guar­an­teed to impress any view­ers. It required thou­sands of labor­ers about 5 years to re-shape the Neva­da and Ari­zona land­scape at a grand sufficient scale to make pos­si­ble human con­trol of the mighty — and, extra to the purpose, would possibly­i­ly unpre­dictable — Col­orado Riv­er. With its massive tur­bines, the engi­neer­ing and instal­la­tion of which O’Neal explains in full, it man­aged to gen­er­ate sufficient elec­tric­i­ty to repay its con­struc­tion value of greater than $811 mil­lion in right this moment’s dol­lars by 1987, simply over 50 years after it opened. And in an obtain­ment virtually impos­si­ble to consider right this moment, it opened greater than two years forward of sched­ule. We hear a great deal right this moment in regards to the con­cept of “state capac­i­ty,” and the way the U.S. might regain it. On the Hoover Dam, we behold state capac­i­ty fairly lit­er­al­ly made con­crete.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Incred­i­ble Sto­ry of the Hoover Dam

The Genius City Design of Ams­ter­dam: Canals, Dams & Lean­ing Hous­es

How Medieval Islam­ic Engi­neer­ing Introduced Water to the Alham­bra

The Genius Engi­neer­ing of Roman Aque­ducts

The Bril­liant Engi­neer­ing That Made Venice: How a Metropolis Was Constructed on Water

Dis­cov­er Ansel Adams’ 226 Pho­tos of U.S. Nation­al Parks (and Anoth­er Facet of the Leg­endary Pho­tog­ra­ph­er)

Based mostly in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the creator of the newslet­ter Books on Cities in addition to the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social web­work for­mer­ly generally known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.