The Path Between the Seas

by David McCullough

But as resourceful as Schildhauer had been in this and other designs, as notably as he and Goldmark succeeded in everything they undertook, the end results were, above all, a stunning demonstration of how very far industrial technology had advanced. Among the more fascinating facts about the Panama Canal, for example, is that all hardware for the lock gates—the lifting mechanisms for the stem valves, the special bearings, gears, and struts for the gate machines, all ninety-two bull wheels—was made by a single manufacturer in Wheeling, West Virginia. In 1878, only thirty-five years before, the Quaker ironmaster Daniel J. Morrell had marveled at certain relatively simple steel castings displayed by the French at their Universal Exposition in Paris. Most of what he had seen was quite beyond the most advanced work at Pittsburgh then or at his own mills in Johnstown. Now a comparatively small organization, the Wheeling Mold and Foundry Company, in a comparatively small industrial center, could produce castings in sizes and quantities unimagined in 1878, and of alloy steels formerly used in small quantities only for fine tools and cutlery. Carbon steel, nickel steel, vanadium steel, steels of exceptional strength and high resistance to corrosion, were being developed for naval armament before the turn of the century, but it was the advent of the automobile that spurred their real production. Vanadium steel, for instance, had been adopted by the Ford Motor Company for use in its ...