Why Is the Panama Canal a Modern Wonder of the World?

was about simply surviving. Thousands of workers Perhaps his money is twenty two thousand died while the French first tried to dig the canal. Yellow fever was rampant, as was malaria. On the job accidents killed and maimed. Close to eighty percent of the workforce was fleeing what Americans took over

the job in nineteen oh three. When famed engineer John Frank Stevens arrived in nineteen oh five, First's job was to stop the carnage, and that meant accepting the new idea that controlling mosquitoes would prevent the spread of disease. We talked about this a bit in our recent episode about Hispanic scientists who changed the world Carlos Juan Finlay had been saying since the eighteen eighties that mosquitoes were the carrier of yellow fever, but this theory was only

just then around the turn of the century. Catching on for the article this episode is based on how Stuff Work. Spoke with Jay David Rogers, a professor of geological engineering at Missouri University of Science and Technology. He said, men of that era couldn't conceive of a mosquito being able to kill a strong man. They just couldn't respect that. The thing you had to conquer to make that project

work was the sanitation issues. Under the guidance of US Army physician William Crawford Gorges, Stevens had the local swamplands drained and grassland's cut to control the mosquitoes. They employed inicides, screened in workers quarters, and trapped adult mosquitos wherever they could. The workers were given quinine and anti malarial. The result, yellow fever in the area was all but eradicated, and deaths from malaria in the local population were reduced by

over eighty percent. The Panama Canal is considered a marvel of engineering, one of the seven Modern Wonders of the world. But it's debatable whether these medical feats were even more impressive. But okay, let's back up a bit. Oh, why were we going to all this trouble in the first place. Egypt's sUAS Canal, connecting the Red Sea to the Mediterranean had opened in eighteen sixty nine, revolutionizing water travel from

Europe to Asia. After seeing this success, America envisioned a shortcut through Central America as a way of strengthening its global position. Before the Panama Canal opened, the ships had to travel all the way around South America to get from the US's Atlantic coast to its Pacific coast. At the time, the trip took over sixty days and some eight thousand miles. That's nearly thirteen thousand kilometers of travel, not ideal if you wanted to move goods or naval

ships in any kind of a hurry. For years, the US had been considering building a canal through Nicaragua, but engineering concerns, not to mention worries about active volcanoes in the area prompted President Teddy Roosevelt to continue with the failed French site in Panama instead. In nineteen oh three, he agreed to pay the French forty million dollars to assume control of the project, worth the equivalent of about one point three billion in today's dollars. It'd take more

than a decade to complete. The French had helped build the Suez Canal in Egypt, but the Panama project was a different animal, immense and complex. As the Americans took control, the building of the Panama Canal became an audacious example of American ingenuity and know how and a loose sense of physical responsibility. By the end, the US had shelled out some three hundred and seventy five million dollars, somewhere close to eleven billion today. The project came in at

about four hundred and forty four percent over budget. Rogers said it was a national pride project. We'd just kept writing checks. Besides the deadly diseases that plagued the early days of the construction, there was also difficult weather to contend with tropical rains and intense heat, and there were political troubles as the United States cleared the way for the canal by deeply interfering with local governments in order to help Panama, then a province of Columbia, officially separate

and become its own country. Newly sovereign Panama was willing to seed the necessary land of the US where Columbia had balked. And we haven't even really talked about engineering yet, okay. American engineers abandoned ideas about a sea level canal like the Suez. Director Stephens instead insisted upon a series of locks that would raise or lower ships as needed. But

that designed necessitated construction of another big project. A dam had to be built across the sometimes raging Shagris River to ensure the proper flow of water between the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic. Called the Gottune Dam, it was at the time the largest dam in the world. It also formed Gatune Lake, a major component of the canal's operation. More on that in a minute. And then there was

the sheer scope of the project. Between the French and American builders, Some seven point two billion cubic feet of earth and rock had to be excavated two hundred and seventy million cubic meters, which is three times what was removed to build the Suez Canal. Most of that muck was placed on to railcars and shipped to the coasts, dumped into huge piles in the ocean. It now forms breakwaters and the foundation for towns and a military base,

and much was also dumped into the adjacent jungle. Rogers said they had to learn a lot while they were going. They used up all of the vitrified clay pipes to be produced in the United States, and all the cement produced in the United States, and all of the dynamite produced in the United States over this ten year period all diverted down to Panama. Yet despite the constant challenges, the Panama Canal opened in August of nineteen fourteen, spanning

some fifty miles or eighty kilometers through the land. In its first five years, the canal was barely used due to decreased commercial traffic because of World War One and a series of landslides which closed the passage for almost

all of nineteen fifteen and would continue for years. The different layers of earth and rock that made up the land interacted on predictably due to all that excavation, But by World War Two, the Panama Canal was traveled extensively by US warships and it's become a major shipping route between the Pacific and Atlantic. At one time, engineers again looked at making the passage a sea level canal, which would eliminate the need for locks and decrease travel time.

That idea was scrapped, and after World War II, when military ships became too big to pass through, engineers also considered detonating a series of underground nuclear devices to excavate more earth and expand the canal. That too, was dismissed. In nineteen seventy seven, the signing of the Turi Host Carter Treaties returned control of the canal from the United States to Panama, effective December thirty first of nineteen ninety nine.

Since then, the Panama Canal has been expanded so that even larger aircraft, carriers and cargo ships can pass through. The locks used to be about one hundred feet or thirty meters wide, and are now at about one hundred and seventy five feet or fifty meters. Even so, there are now some ships too big for the canal. But

let's talk about how the locks work. The Pacific Ocean sits at a slightly higher sea level than the Atlantic, and the rocky land in between the two through Panama rises to some three hundred and sixty feet or one hundred and ten meters above both. Rather than excavating down to the same sea level and letting the waters rip through, engineers determined that a series of massive locking gates could

lower and raise ships. That's where our human made Gatun Lake comes in, which risks at about eighty five feet above sea level that's twenty six meters from either side. Once a ship enters the Panama Canal, the goal is to get them up and over the terrain across Gattun Lake and then back down again, which is the job of locking system. A ship's entering the Panama Canal from the Atlantic enter the first of three Gatoon locks, where a massive chamber fills twenty six point seven million gallons

of water. To fill the chamber with water and raise the ship, the gates and lower lock valves are closed while the upper valves are opened. Water from Gatoon Lake rushes in through twenty holes in the chamber floor. It takes about eight minutes for the chamber to completely fill and raise the ship. The process is repeated two more

times until the ship is level with Gatoon Lake. The ship then travels across Gatoon Lake until it reaches the Pacific Ocean side, where it enters the Pedromaguel locks and the process goes in reverse. It's lowered through one lock down to a second human made lake Miraflorus, then through a second lock back to sea level. The entire trip takes an average of eight to ten hours. Ships don't

so through the Panama Canal for free. They pay a toll based on the measurements of the vessel each time they enter, and it earns Panama more than two point five billion dollars a year. There are now three lanes for ships and locks, so it's not a single file line going through. That means that there are forty six locking gates in total, and they're each massive of sixty five feet wide by seven feet deep in metric that's nine by two meters. Their heights vary from forty five

to eighty feet of fourteen to twenty four meters. The mere Floris gates are the tallest because of the Pacific Ocean tides. Each gate weighs from three hundred and twenty to six hundred metric tons. The canal hosts nearly fourteen thousand trips a year, mainly by container ships and others carrying fuel, coal, grains, minerals and metals. Though other smaller ships make the Crossing two. Now more than one hundred years after its opening, you can see why it remains

a modern wonderer. Today's episode is based on the article how the Panama Canal makes waterflow uphill on HowStuffWorks dot Com, written by John Donovan. Brain Stuff is production by Heart Radio in partnership with HowStuffWorks dot Com, and it's produced by Tyler Klang. Before more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows