Today, harmony in the wake of an old battle. The
University of Houston's College of Engineering
presents this series about the machines that make
our civilization run, and the people whose
ingenuity created them.
A cable railway takes us off
the mountain in a slow 38-degree plunge. We fall
into a breathtaking view of eastern Tennessee. I
drink in the flowering dogwood and forget all the
people who've died in the forests around us.
I've been to the top of Lookout Mountain, just
south of Chattanooga, Tennessee. It's a strange and
ancient place. The explorer De Soto passed by it
450 years ago. We fought the last battle of the
American Revolution there in 1782, against
Chickamauga Indians sympathetic to the British.
This is where the tide of the Civil War finally
turned against the South. Our armies converged
there on a foggy November day in 1863. They swirled
through the clouds, sniping among rocks and trees.
In the end, far more were listed missing than dead.
Do some bleached bones still hide in the vast
forest? Or did many just grow sick of the slaughter
and go home?
After the war, this great mountain drew the wealthy
of Chattanooga to the top. A road was hacked to the
summit. Resort hotels and colleges sprang up.
Doctors claimed that the air made you immune to
consumption. And during the 1880s several rail
systems were built to take people up the mountain.
I'm riding the only rails that survive. It's a
pencil-straight track from the highway below to the
crest above. Two cars hang at each end of a
mile-long cable. As one falls, it helps pull the
other up. The design is simplicity itself. This is
the second of two inclined rail systems that were
built. It'll be a hundred years old in 1995.
The design arrests my eye. It has clearly survived
because it's simple and it fits its purpose so
well. The car rides at such a steep angle that its
seats are arranged like balcony seats at the opera.
Each one is a stair-step higher than the one below
it. You ride with your back to the mountain, gazing
out at the horizon through glass windows in the
roof.
Old photos in the museum above show General Grant
and Teddy Roosevelt striking heroic poses on rocks
that hang into empty space. Tired soldiers with
caps of gray or blue crumple against trees with
rifles ready. You run your eyes over them and then
re-enter the spring air. At other battlefields, the
ghosts speak to you. But not here! These ghosts are
at peace.
The mad chaos of the Civil War has been exorcised.
Now I ride down the mountain in this elegant,
elementary machine. It celebrates harmony. It
celebrates the beauty of the place. And that is
what survives war on Lookout Mountain today.
I'm John Lienhard, at the University of Houston,
where we're interested in the way inventive minds
work.
(Theme music)
Wilson, J., Scenic Historic Lookout
Mountain. 1977. (148 pages. No publisher
listed. Obtained through the National Parks Service
in Chattanooga.)
Image courtesy of ASME
Vintage photo of the original Lookout Mountain
incline
Image courtesy of ASME
Present-day view down the mountain from that
tramway car
Image courtesy of ASME
The present-day tramway at its lower station
Stereopticon image courtesy of
Margaret Culbertson
And, at last, the view from on top
The Engines of Our Ingenuity is
Copyright © 1988-1997 by John H.
Lienhard.
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