Top Feats

To "an even dozen engineering and technical accomplishments of the first order now being completed or undertaken," the Review of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology last week pointed with pride.

Dams: 1) The Dnieprostroy, Soviet Russia's much-dramatized dam on the Dnieper River, which will give 70,000 sq. mi. of Russia their electric muscles. 2) The Lloyd Barrage on the River Indus which will send webs of water over six million acres of India. 3) The Alexander Dam on Kauai Island, Hawaii, noteworthy for advanced design, not bigness.

Power: 4) London Power Co.'s 80,000 kilowatt turbogenerator. 5) A 500-kilowatt radio tube, ten feet high, of steel & iron, no glass, made by England's Metropolitan-Vickers Electrical Co. Five times as powerful as the tubes used by biggest U. S. radio stations, it is not permanently sealed. The vacuum is maintained by oil pumps.

Buildings: 6) No. 60 Wall Street, Manhattan, first skyscraper to have double-deck elevators. 7) The dome on the planned Cathedral of Christ the King in Liverpool. With a 168-ft. diameter, it will be world's biggest. 8) The world's biggest single unit grain elevator at Albany, N. Y., covering eight acres, holding twice as much grain as all the elevators in New York Harbor. 9) The world's largest new type gas tank in Syracuse.

Bridges: 10) Missouri-Kansas-Texas R. R.'s five-span bridge across the Missouri River at Boonville, Mo., including a 408-ft. lift span, world's longest, which can be raised vertically to give clearance to river traffic, 11) The world's biggest all-welded bridge, 161 ft. long at Pilsen, Czechoslovakia, over the Skoda Works' railroad yards. The previous record-holder was the 134-ft. bridge at Chicopee Falls, Mass.

Air: 12) The first completely air-conditioned long distance sleeping car train, operated since May by Baltimore & Ohio R. R. between Manhattan and St. Louis.

Engineers last week, after reading the Review's list, made lists of their own. Some projects omitted by the Review:

Hoover Dam in Arizona.

Madden Dam in the Panama Canal Zone.

Holland's 18-mile dike in the Zuyder Zee (TIME, Dec. 28).

The world's most potent microscope at the Bell Telephone Laboratories.

Robert J. van de Graaff's machine to produce 15 million volts of electricity (TIME, March 7).

Massachusetts Institute of Technology's air-conditioned spectroscopic laboratory in which the temperature never varies more than one-tenth of one degree from 68DEGF.

Ajax Electrothermic Corp.'s furnace capable of producing a steady heat of 3,000DEGC.

The 1,000-mi. gas pipeline from Texas to Illinois.

The George Washington and Kill van Kull bridges.

The marine engineering feat of recovering, with the salvage ship Artiglio II, gold from the strong rooms of the sunken Egypt, 400 ft. below the surface at a pressure of 177.2 Ib. per sq. in. (TIME. July 4).

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