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The Structural Engineer, Volume 11, Issue 2, 1933
SIR,-. Kent’s comments relating to my communication on “Dynamic Effects in Railway Bridges," published in the November number of The Structural Engineer, are very much to the point, but I think he is perhaps unduly pessimistic. There is no getting away from the fact that the state of oscillation in a bridge, when synchronism is encountered, is governed to a large extent by those somewhat elusive characteristics, damping in the bridge and damping in the spring movement of the locomotive; but it should not be impossible to assign numerical values to the coefficients prescribing those characteristics with a degree of accuracy sufficient for all practical purposes.
DURING the last few years the term "Stadia" has frequently been used in describing sports enclosures. It is derived from the old Greek word " Stadium," which originally applied to the foot race course at Olympia. This structure was erected in the 3rd century, B.C., and was 630 feet in length, with two parallel tiers of stone seats along each side, joined at one end by a semicircular curve. It is interesting to note that the distance between the two end pylons measured 606.75 feet, and that this was afterwards adopted by the Romans as a measure of distance, eight "Stadia" being equal to one Roman Mile. James Reed
WHEN the fist oil well was sunk by Col. Edwin L. Drake in 1859, the chief aim of the oil refiners from then until the late nineties, when the automobile made its appearance, was the production of paraffin or lamp oil, and all the by-products were surreptitiously emptied into any near-by creek or river, as being the easiest way of disposing of this residue, which was of no apparent use. George Noble