h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Remember gasometers? There was a huge one right in the line of view from the main entrance of my school. As a school-leaving prank one year, the "big boys" climbed up it and wrote "Y-PHRUNTS" in huge letters, legible from the school. Very daring . Well, I suppose it was more original than the eternal hoisting-teachers'-cars-on-to-the-roof, or removing-all-the toilet-doors-in-the-girls'-loos.

On checking out the satellite picture on Google maps, I think they have removed that actual gasometer.

But some have been put to original uses. We went to see one on Sunday. It has been gutted and given a new coat and the inside is lined with a huge panorama of ancient Rome. You climb up a scaffold-type structure in the middle of the room, and can watch everyday life in the year 312, just after Constantine had taken over. You can then descend 5 levels, one at a time, and you see the scenes from different angles; the lighting progresses through day and night (with a day lasting about 10 minutes), there are accompanying noises (crickets and cicadas chirping, cocks crowing, and in the daylight hours the sounds of work - horses' hooves, hammering, stonemasons chipping away, a huge bull being sacrified to Jupiter and making quite a din about it, cats, dogs, sheep., human voices.)

The picture is printed/painted/drawn* onto a huge canvas which lines the walls of the huge cylinder. Unfortunately I couldn't look until I had descended to the second last level, as I felt quite ill at the great height from the top of the scaffold. (I remembered MMF and me cowering well away from the edge at the top of the Maintower in Frankfurt, he also suffers from vertigo)

Some of the disadvantages of the static panorama were that

- shadows did not change direction as the day progressed, or even disappear at night
- clouds did not move across the sky
- well, nobody moved at all really - individuals creeping round corners, or enormous crowds taking part in processions or watching building work going on.

But, despite that, because of the immense detail and the sheer size of the thing, you could still spend a good hour just looking at it.

Part of the exhibition is also devoted to the gasometer itself. Its history (built in 1912, half a million rivets, all hammered in by hand), its technology, its output and input. The rusty steel outer plates have been replaced by mirrored panels and the great cylinder is - literally! - shiny and new.


http://www.gasometer-pforzheim.de/

* they used various media to touch up the photos and paintings to make it look like one big picture.

What does Y-Phrunts mean?

Pants. But not trousers. Underwear.

Spelt wrong, but that was their idea of a joke.

Most of the gasometers in Dublin were removed, but one was converted into an unusual block of apartments.

http://www.google.ie/maps/@53.3387355,-6.2330296,3a,75y,290.95h,105.27t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sywga4wVALxOxICknjwUlbQ!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo0.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3Dywga4wVALxOxICknjwUlbQ%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D181.86931%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656

I couldn't live there. I'd be convinced I could smell gas.

They did an incredibly efficient job of removing the smell. It took years, but it converted the area (just south of the Liffey, towards the sea) from the most undesirable part of Dublin to live in to the most trendy and desirable.

Nowadays they have to add the smell to the (natural, odourless) gas, so that people will know when there's a gas leak.

Yes back in the days of me doing my PhD in chemistry at Southampton we once had to clear the building because of a very strong and persistent smell of gas leaking throughout the building.

Upon evacuation it turned out that some laser spectroscopy folks in the basement had a sample of the additive thiol that is used to impart this smell were doing some laser spectroscopy experiments on it... and crucially... hadn't told anyone.

So it just smelled like a gas leak and scared the bejaysus out of everyone else.

Actually mercaptan's (mercaptan is the older name) like that are really quite poisonous - but they are safer than something like hydrogen cyanide because they are nose-detectable at sub-toxic concentration. So if you can't smell it - THAT's when you're in trouble. HCN is the opposite and if you *can* smell it - you're dead. They used to keep canaries in the labs, just like down mines... if the canary drops dead - get out. Nice.

The only smell in the gasometer we were in was from the lentil soup in the cafeteria.

what a lovely idea, TC. It's on my bucket list.

I like the look of that gasometer that was turned into an apartment building. I just hope the windows stay solid.