In 1782, William Watts disrupted the shot ball industry by creating an unconvential simple solution that produced a cheaper, better output at a faster rate than the established method.<p>...How could any of you not understand how this applies to Hacker News? This is hacking at its finest!!!
I thought it was interesting that the modern "Bliemeister" manufacture method still consists of dropping molten lead drops. The difference apparently being the use of heated liquids and inclined surfaces for greater control. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bliemeister_method#Manufacture" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bliemeister_method#Manufacture</a><p>In contrast metal bearing balls are manufactured using cold metal working techniques. Sheering, pressing, grinding and polishing some wire. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_%28bearing%29#Metal" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_%28bearing%29#Metal</a><p>It seems as if lead should be easier to press into shape than steel so I wonder why the difference in techniques.
Natural Bridge in Virginia¹ was used as a shot tower during the American Revolutionary War. They simply dropped molten lead off the bridge into the water below. Someone would then collect them from the stream bed after they cooled.<p>¹ <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_Bridge_(Virginia)" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_Bridge_(Virginia)</a>
You can try something similar to this (although more related to the older barrel technique) at home with a soldering iron . Melt some tin at the tip while holding the iron at a sufficiently large enough height over a glass of water. It takes some practice to make nice round balls, but it works!
Ok, I get it, not HN material. But, write a blog post about creativity and simple solutions in startups, using shot towers as an illustration, and boom goes the dynamite. This post requires us to use our imagination and extrapolate to get the point, I guess.
I've lived in Dubuque, IA (there's a picture of our shot tower in the article) my entire life, and assumed that everyone knew what these were. It's a iconic symbol in our city's history. I guess I took them for granted.
I couldn't find any videos of shot towers in action, but I did find a video of a man demonstrating a handmade modern shot manufacturing machine: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwVvdIFyQ0Q" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwVvdIFyQ0Q</a>
Interestingly, we in Latvia still have a shot factory which produces shots this way: <a href="http://www.dsr.lv/?lang=en" rel="nofollow">http://www.dsr.lv/?lang=en</a>
This is also how you create urea in prill form, which you'll find in a bag of fertilizer.<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prill" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prill</a>
I saw the picture of the Clifton Hill shot tower at the top there and thought—“hey, that looks like—”. I’ve wondered precisely what it was meant to be every time I’ve passed it (not very frequently), but never enough to find out.<p>Cool stuff, even if I don’t quite see how it's relevant here. :P
How many feet taller does a tower in northern Alaska need to be compared to one in south Florida? (at 0 feet above average sea level)<p>Someone please calculate this.<p>Thank you.
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coop%27s_Shot_Tower" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coop%27s_Shot_Tower</a><p>It's been turned into an enclosed mall in the Melbourne (Australia) CBD. You can see the glass dome covering the whole shot tower building from all over Melbourne.
The article does not list Saint Jacques Tower in Paris. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint-Jacques_Tower" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint-Jacques_Tower</a>
Interesting. And here I thought they were all made by hand. I guess shot producers aren't nearly the highly patient and dextrous craftsmen that I made them out to be.
In my recollection, this is one in Austin, TX:<p><a href="https://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&q=119%20West%208th%20Street%20austin%2C%20tx" rel="nofollow">https://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&q=119%20West%208th%20Stre...</a><p>I may be wrong though. I wasn't able to find any references about it easily.
There's quite a big and famous one in Baltimore that's right in the middle of town and hard to miss. And it's open for tours.<p><a href="http://www.baltimore.to/ShotTower/photo1.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.baltimore.to/ShotTower/photo1.html</a>
In Montreal a shot tower was kept when converting an old industrial complex to high-end residential units. Result is pretty good and made me learn about shot towers before reading it here:
<a href="http://goo.gl/maps/WJZPj" rel="nofollow">http://goo.gl/maps/WJZPj</a>
The Dubuque shot tower is in my hometown. It's a really great piece of history but a shame that the site isn't more kept like the rest of the riverfront.
In the most restrained and calm way possible, I'm wondering why this is on Hacker News at the moment...<p>A Wikipedia article, concerning a technology that is effectively ancient and indisputably outdated, seemingly with no relevance to any recent events in the tech world, or the greater world in 2013 for that matter.<p>Occasionally it seems as if one could do "Random" Wikipedia click [0], find something marginally interesting, and post it here. It's strange that this would be the case, but I suppose the points voted on suggest that the community is interested in the subject. Don't get me wrong, I read the article and found it interesting, just to learn a little something new about history, but I then wondered how it could possibly relate to HN, and I went back to re-read before commenting as I was certain I must've been missing something regarding how this article relates to some current event / technology.<p>Edit 10:42EST, to restate the purpose as it seems people neglect to realize I too found it interesting and are saying "but it's interesting, I personally enjoyed it", please see the below sentence (Copied from above paragraph for clarity). This comment wasn't about personal interest, it's a question of relevance.<p>---<p>Don't get me wrong, I read the article and found it interesting, just to learn a little something new about history, but I then wondered how it could possibly relate to HN, and I went back to re-read before commenting as I was certain I must've been missing something regarding how this article relates to some current event / technology.<p>---<p>Ninja Edit: Note! The following will direct you to a random wikipedia page, may be NSFW. Follow at your own risk.<p>[0] <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random</a>