Connecting Two Oceans
Led by Ferdinand de Lesseps, who developed the plans for the Suez Canal in 1869, construction to build a sea-level waterway began. His success building the Suez Canal made him a legend, though the Panama proved to be a much tougher environment than the Suez. He raised $60 million to establish a canal company.

Beginning at the Limon Bay in the Atlantic, the canal would follow the course of the Chagres River Valley for half its course, cutting through Central America at its narrowest point. But unlike the Suez Canal, they would encounter a mountain range. The plan was to dig through the mountains at the lowest point, the Culebra (meaning snake in Spanish) to build a sea-level canal. One hundred twenty million tons of earth had to be moved and progress was slow. Mud and rock slides created chaos at excavation sites, causing workers to make cuts shallower than they first anticipated, taking more time and money. Critics tried to persuade de Lesseps to reconsider building a lock system, but off-site in France, he convinced investors to quadruple the budget instead. The Chagres River flooded during rainy seasons, rising over three meters in a single hour. The rain washed away carved out dirt, machinery and men. The canal would take 15 years longer than first promised, and de Lesseps concealed this from his investors.

Aside from the dangers of the earth itself, workers were battling yellow fever, a mysterious tropical disease, assumed to be caused by poisonous gases in the air. Six thousand men died in the first five years, with an alarming 350 dying every month. Panama became known as the fever coast. By the end of 1885, only one tenth of the canal had been dug. De Lesseps’ principle engineers pushed for a lock system, and resigned when de Lesseps refused. In 1888, his canal company eventually went bankrupt, triggering the biggest financial crash in human history. De Lesseps died a ruined man, charged with bribery and found guilty of misappropriation of funds. The scandal of the Panama Affair, brought down the French government, and Panama would forever be associated with disgrace.

Reviving the Canal
Seventeen years later, another country picked up where the French had given up. In 1902, the U.S. Senate voted to pursue the French efforts in Panama. Purchasing the project for a mere $10 million, President Theodore Roosevelt wanted the canal so the U.S. Navy could dominate the oceans. He handpicked the primary engineer, John Stevens, who built railroads around the world. As a railroad engineer, Stevens had a new approach, using dynamite to blast his way through the Culebra. He built a train system as a giant conveyer belt to remove excavated rock out of the cut, before it could slide back in. Dirt trains, a plow system and moveable tracks did the work faster than 600 men. His use of industrialized steel tracks sped up excavation and reduced the risk of mudslides.

In May 1906, the rains returned and Stevens’ new methods and machinery were no match. Stevens realized digging through the Culebra would not be possible, and the dream of a sea-level canal was buried. He decided to dam the Chagres River where it met the Atlantic to build a lock system, flooding a huge section of the country. Thus, he created the largest man-made lake which would raise ships through the Culebra.

Suddenly, in March 1907, Stevens quit without reason. Roosevelt turned to the army, and Colonel George Goethals took over the project. The locks of the Panama Canal are the largest concrete structures on earth. Goethals worked for six years, blasting through 80 million tons of rock, shattering all excavation records. His steel lock gates stood six stories high, each chamber bigger than the Titanic. Nothing of this magnitude had been powered by electricity ever before. In 1913, the Culebra was finally conquered, changing the world forever by joining the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans. A humble tugboat was the first ship to make the journey through the Panama Canal.

A Modern Canal Made Possible with Steel
The Panama Canal has since been updated, under many phases of expansion. In 1935, another dam, the Madden Dam, was built to create another man-made lake to store water for the canal. Following WWII, relations between the U.S. and Panama became tense. In 1974, negotiations towards a settlement between the U.S. and Panama began. In 1999, the Panama Canal Authority (ACP) took control of the canal, and it is now one of the chief revenue sources for Panama.
A third set of locks are under construction, and in June 2015, flooding of the new locks began. The canal is set to reopen in April 2016. The electro-mechanical installation phase commenced with the installation of the first steel rolling gate on the Atlantic side. With 16 gates total, the massive steel structures weigh about 3,400 tons. The size of the gates vary depending on locations and positions on the lock chambers. The tallest is eleven stories high.
The American Society of Civil Engineers has named the Panama Canal as one of the seven wonders of the modern world. Steel played a large role in the construction of the canal, from the tracks, cranes and industrialized carts that removed the dirt from the Culebra. The great Panama Canal could never have been realized as a sea-level canal, as it was first dreamed. Only due to a system of large steel locks, does the canal exist today, finally connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

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This month’s theme, “Steel Wonders of the World,” will focus on stories about some of the greatest engineering and architectural structures of history.

The Great Ship

The Great Eastern was built on the dream of constructing a ship that could circumnavigate the world, and would be big enough to carry the 15,000 tons of coal necessary to do so. It was to be five time larger than any ship the world had seen, an engineering marvel. The engineer behind its design, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, is considered to be the most gifted engineer of the Victorian Age. He helped create the modern industrial world; from his revolutionary visions came the world’s first global transportation system and his railway designs made continental travel faster than ever possible. His bridges spanned distances never before seen.

Ship of Steel
The first ship made almost entirely of metal, the construction of the Great Eastern took years and over 8,600 tons of iron, four times more than any steel structure before it. Brunel engineered the all-iron double-skinned hull which was made from 30,000 steel plates, weighing six tons each. It was the first ship built with a double-skinned hull, and it would be decades before another ship employed the design that is standard today. Its steam engines were higher than four stories and produced the power of 8,000 horses. It combined a sail propulsion system with a single screw and paddle system.

Built to carry 4,000 passengers, it was the largest moving man-made structure of its time. It never saw the commercial success that Brunel envisioned, yet the Great Eastern revolutionized shipping engineering and design. It would be 50 years before the world saw another ship of its magnitude.
The gigantic ship of steel would be the final work of the great industrial engineer. Building the Great Eastern bankrupted Brunel and it was considered a failure during his life; however, it is now revered as one of the greatest feats in engineering.

Coming Up
Following our look into the history of steel, this month’s theme, “Steel Wonders of the World,” is inspired by the BBC documentary series, The Seven Wonders of the Industrial World.” You can find the full series, created by Deborah Cadbury, on YouTube.
The modern world we live in would not be possible without the influence of steel. As a global leader in steel production, POSCO is committed to leading innovations for the future. Stay tuned for the following stories.

• The Brooklyn Bridge: A historical look at the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge and other modern suspension bridges that it has inspired
• The Panama Canal: Building the Panama Canal took 25 years and the efforts of two nations. The Panama Canal connected the world by connecting two oceans
• The Hoover Dam: A true testament to the ingenuity of man, the Hoover Dam was built under budget and ahead of schedule
• Steel Innovations Driven by POSCO: Take a look at some of the most famous steel structures built with steel produced by POSCO
• Steel and Art: POSCO’s steel is used for art sculptors and the full scale construction of buildings. This is the story of the steel sculpture, “Steel Igloo,” created by POSCO architect, Chan Joong Kim.

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A historian, an Emmy award-winning British author and a BBC television producer, Deborah Cadbury has written a book called Dreams of Iron and Steel. The book’s main characters are those who ‘overcame the fear for a failure and did not give up on challenging’. Though the book’s time setting is distant from the ‘industrial revolution’, the story does not come across as irrelevant, because the details of each structure’s building process reflect ourselves who are also facing ‘new challenges’ today.

In addition, the subject of ‘steel’ overlaps with the history of POSCO, which started from nothing in the desolate Yeongil Bay in 1968. Both subjects are similar in the way that both had a person with a dream that comes to a reality and the world has changed from it. 

As a BBC television producer, Deborah Cadbury, produced a docudrama series known as ‘Seven Wonders of the Industrial World’ (2003) and started her writing for Dreams of Iron and Steel (2005) at the same time.

The Brooklyn Bridge (1883) 

John Roebling, a U.S immigrant from Germany, won the contract to build the largest bridge that stretches across the East River separating Manhattan and Brooklyn. According to Roebling’s blueprint, it was clear that the structure would develop as a 2km-long masterpiece that possesses both durability and symmetrical delicacy. The foundations were to sink 21m below the water level and the two main 84m-high towers would overlook a panorama of New York City.

However, while seeking for the right spot for the towers, John Roebling was faced with imminent death from a terrible accident. Thus, his son, Washington Roebling continued his father’s legacy as a ‘Man of Steel’ and 14 years of construction finally came to an end in May 24^th, 1883. Transforming the cityscape of New York, the Brooklyn Bridge has become a symbol of Roebling family’s great human spirit.

The Hoover Dam (1936) 

In the late 19^th century, the desert regions of Arizona and Nevada were considered as a hostile environment. Arthur Powell Davis, the Director of U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, realized that even the desert regions can flourish by making some improvements. Accordingly, he planned a project to drill through snow-covered highlands and valleys, and to use the 2,253 km-long Colorado River as a source of hydropower. He also intended to stabilize the river, which experiences severe floods and droughts. Started in 1931 and finished by 1936, the Hoover Dam was soon to break all world records with its height equivalent to 60 stories and a volume bigger than the Great Pyramids at Giza.​

At the height of the Great Depression, poverty-stricken workers had to face explosions, carbon monoxide poisoning and sunstrokes, only to earn a few dollars a day. But the construction had to go on. The chief engineer, Frank Crowe, nevertheless, managed to complete ahead of schedule and under budget with his own know-how in structural management. Remaining as another masterpiece that represents an extraordinary ability of humankind, the dam epitomizes a clear evidence of overcoming a limitation through revolutionary structural improvements.

The ‘Great Eastern’ Ship (1858) 

(Photo from Wikipedia http://bit.ly/13zlY2w)

The ‘Great Eastern’, also known as the ‘crystal palace of the sea’, is distinctive in many ways other than being the largest ship in the world when it first launched on the River Thames in London. For instance, the design incorporated a double hull on the side and the bottom part of the ship which improved the draft line. However, the scale of the ship was too out of the ordinary for its time. Intriguingly, a distinguished mechanical and civil engineer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel dreamt of ‘creating a floating city made of iron and transporting 4,000 people to Australia, the opposite side of the earth’. Finishing his blueprints in 1852, Brunel initiated the construction on the River Thames in 1857. Living on the ship for two years, he poured his passion into this project. Unfortunately, in September 1959, just before the Great Eastern’s maiden voyage, Brunel died of a terrible stroke. Despite the failure in commercial use, Brunel’s name remains in the shipbuilding history for his colossal-scale ship and shipbuilding techniques.

The Bell Rock Lighthouse (1811)

(Photo from Wikipedia http://bit.ly/1t5eBfA) 

A creator of the Bell Rock Lighthouse, Robert Stevenson is the grandfather of Robert Louis Stevenson, an author of Treasure Island. The lighthouse was built on a 400m-wide reef 17km out to sea.  Numerous ships went down by crashing into the large reef that was submerged for most of the day. Although everyone believed it to be impossible, the construction of a lighthouse lasted for three years from March 1807 to October 1810. During the process, many workers were sacrificed and the structure collapsed a few times. Battling against the difficulties, Stevenson finally completed the lighthouse in February 1811. To this day, the lighthouse shines out across the North Sea forever.

Bazalgette’s London Sewers (1874)

(Photo from Wikipedia http://bit.ly/1CtGfFM) 

In the 1800’s, over 30,000 people died from three epidemics of cholera in London. In the summer of 1858, while the Great Eastern was preparing for her maiden voyage, the ‘Great Stink’ was sweeping through the city. A 37-year-old civil engineer, Joseph Bazalgette proposed a bold scheme for the problem. It only took him 12 weeks to outline his solution for the problem that lasted for hundreds of years. The key to his proposal was ‘simplicity’.

Previous sewage system and pipes all lead to both sides of the river. Bazalgette’s plan was to simply move various pipes and link the sewers to be connected. The plan seemed easy on the surface but the reality required to link 130km of sewage superhighway and 1,600km of street sewers, creating one large network of underground sewer system. It seemed as an implausible challenge at the time but eventually Bazalgette’s design brought the first modern sewer system. It not only saved the city of London and its inhabitants, but also became a standard model of sewer systems worldwide.

The Panama Canal (1914) 

The first person to plan an excavation of the Panama Canal was Charles V, the emperor of Spain in 1529. However, the actual project was discussed only in 1881 by a Frenchman, Vicomte Ferdinand de Lesseps, who completed building the Suez Canal in 1869. Regardless of his age at 74, Ferdinand de Lesseps had a vision to cut a path across continent through Panama connecting the Atlantic Ocean and Pacific Ocean. Although the plan was grandiose, the project execution faced insurmountable difficulties. The workers faced the tropical heat of Panama, impenetrable jungle, devastating mudslides, deathly tropical diseases and other obstacles. The lavish dream had cost lives of many workers and left company to bankrupt in 1889. To top it off, Vicomte Ferdinand de Lesseps also died soon after. The vivid dream eventually came true 25 years under the leadership of civil engineer, Colonel George Washington Goethals.

The Panama Canal is perceived as a miraculous triumph of technology in modern history. Being the longest canal in the history, the 80km-long Panama Canal took 35 years to complete. Moreover, the construction cost approximately 639 million dollars and lives of 25,000 workers. This sacrifice, however, achieved a miracle of shortening a 22,000km-long journey to a 9,500km journey of traveling from New York to San Francisco.

The Transcontinental Railway (1869) 

(Photo from Wikipedia http://bit.ly/1ACtjLw) 

During the American Civil War in 1857, the hero of the Union Army General William T. Sherman said “This will be the work of giants. And, President Lincoln is the only person that I know who can battle through this.” ‘This’ refers to the Transcontinental Railway, reaching across the American continent. Back then, it took about 6 months to travel from New York to California by ship. Under the administration of Abraham Lincoln, the Transcontinental Railway’s construction came to a start in 1860, in the midst of the American Civil War. As a solution to reunite the separated nation, Lincoln decided to initiate the railway construction which was possible due to repeated successes in the steel industry. Two railroad companies, Central Pacific Railroad Company from the west and Union Pacific Railroad Company from the east, started the construction separately from each end of the line. The completed railways were finally opened in 1869. About a decade later, it was possible to make the record of 83 hours and 39 minutes to travel 5,600km across the continent. Consequently, the railways acted as a catalyst for the U.S to develop as a key industrial nation.

As these unique masterpieces suggest, the slow but evolving industrial revolution was accomplished by continuous effort and endless passion of our ancestors. As they were the individuals who struggled to realize their dreams and leave marks on the world, POSCO will inherit their ambitions and continue to pursue further advancements of the overall industry.