Peter Lovie admitted to being fully retired starting in 2019. That somehow did not mean the end of activity related to his past career!
Peter’s First Real Job is back in the news in 2024
Looks like the time has come for the Geodeteic Transmission Tower: UK, USA lookiing to add multiple transmission lines, this new design brings low visibility, structural robustness, economy. Design technologies to make it happen are better in 2024 than 58 years ago!
Peter’s first real job after grad school was in UK for 2 years. It had been long forgotten but in 2024 there was interest in the geodetic transmission tower he helped design and full scale test, now resulting in the June 13 article requested by New Civil Engineer and published in their weekly newsletter in UK – see attached.
The pictures here show the tower test assembled and then being full scale tested, using the jointing system Peter invented which made the project viable.
The British steel giant, Stewarts & Lloyds was behind the project. In 2023 Peter had a surprise request for pictures of the project from the great great grandson of a founder of Stewarts & Lloyds. Peter helped out and then slowly assembled records and slides from 1965-1966 to enable assessment of the potential of the design in today’s market 58 years after the project was shut down as part of the nationalization of the steel industry by the British government, despite the success of the pioneering work done..
The creation of this tower design coincided with the success of The Beatles who came from Liverpool and played at the Cavern night spot in Liverpool – which makes one wonder if there was something creative in the air in Liverpool back then . . .
Geodetic tower test assembled in 1965 at plant outside Liverpool, England – shows how the appearance would be in the open countryside.
In the 1960s and today there was public outcry in UK about the appearance of electricity transmission towers across the countryside. Then and now these towers were constructed from “angle iron” steel members that are more visible than the smaller 4-1/2 inch diameter tubes used in the geodetic tower.
Geodetic transmission tower in 1966 in a full scale test program at the Monkey Hole test site in Derbyshire, England
Climate change on a 172 year cycle is not what we commonly hear
Articles in the Houston Chronicle about severe weather always seemed to refer to extremes that were as bad or worse and were about a century ago. All the popular talk about climate change did not seem to make sense.
The bad hurricane that destroyed Galveston was back in 1900 and the last bad freeze like February 2021 was way back in 1897 according to media.
Peter Temple with the World Cycles Institute in Calgary talks of cycles of 172 years, drawing on data from cores in Greenland ice going back 8,000 years. Short term (decades) trends wobble up and down but the longer cycle look different and predictable. It’s rather difficult to prove from personal experience but it is rather strange that British art galleries have paintings of people skating on the River Thames about 200 years ago! In 2021 Peter Temple published “Global Cooling: A Bad Bet for Business” which he discusses in the video here.
The new round hulls of the offshore world – looks like Noah did it some time around 2,400 BC
Traditional thinking has been that Noah’s Ark was a barge shaped hull. However a curator at the British Museum in London uncovered strong evidence that it was actually a
round hull, much like smaller round hulls have been used in the Middle East and offshore in more recent times. Dr. Irving Finkel published a book on his findings: “The Ark before Noah: decoding the story of the flood”.
Book cover for The Ark Before Noah
Dr. Irving Finkel with the clay tablets that he used to reveal the design of Noah’s Ark when it was built some time around 2400 BC
A cross section of Noah’s Ark, shown in page 350 of Dr. Finkel’s book
The Royal Institution of Naval Architects in London has published in their 3Q 2015 issue of their Offshore & Marine Technology journal (pp. 10-13) some thought provoking entertainment.
Sevan has been successful introducing round hulled offshore drilling units and FPSOs, and establishing a patent position for them. It turns out that the first round FPSO at 64.3 meters in diameter was almost exactly the same diameter as Dr. Finkel’s finding of 63.2 meters for the diameter of Noah’s Ark, circa 2400 BC.
Which gives rise to the suggestion that Noah’s Ark may represent “prior art” to patent attorneys that is truly of biblical proportions!
Oilfield people working in Southeast Asia in the 1970s and 1980s often brought home souvenir hard hats, hammered and polished from a standard aluminum hard hat with the garuda bird symbol added: this one is by Tom Silver of Yogjakarta, Indonesia, circa 1976.
