1.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
2.
Lackawanna Cut-Off
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The Lackawanna Cut-Off is a railroad line that was built by the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad between 1908 and 1911. The line was part of a 400-mile main line between Hoboken, New Jersey, and Buffalo, New York, the Cut-Off ran west for 28. The Cut-Off also had no railroad crossings at the time of its construction, all but one of the lines 73 structures were built of reinforced concrete, a pioneering use of the material. The construction of the roadbed required the movement of millions of tons of material using techniques similar to those used on the Panama Canal. Conrail ceased operation of the Cut-Off in January 1979 and filed for abandonment of the line in 1983 and it removed the track in 1984, then sold the right-of-way to private developers. A partial restoration to Andover, New Jersey, is expected to be completed in late 2018, the lines origin involves two men who most likely never met, John I. Blair and William Truesdale. The 39-mile route had numerous curves that trains to 50 mph. As more and more traffic moved over the line, Oxford Tunnel became the Lackawanna Railroads worst bottleneck, Truesdale became DL&W president on March 2,1899 with a mandate to upgrade the entire 900-mile railroad. Early on, the focused on increasing freight capacity by using larger locomotives and cars. But by 1905 the railroad was looking to increase capacity. The most obvious place to start would the Old Road, during 1905-6,14 routes were surveyed, including several that would have required long tunnels. On September 1,1906, a route without tunnels was chosen, at 28.5 miles, the line would be about 11 mi shorter than the 39. 6-mile Old Road. The ruling grade was cut in half from 1. 1% to 0. 55%, the new line was also built without railroad crossings to avoid collisions with automobiles and horse-drawn vehicles. Construction officially began on August 1,1908, with the route divided into seven sections, sections 3-6 were 5 miles each, sections 1-2 and 7 were of varying lengths. The amount of work per mile varied, with Section 3, which included what would become Roseville Tunnel, DL&W chief engineer George G. Ray oversaw the project, although given the size and remote location of the project, Assistant Chief Engineer, F. L. Wheaton, was assigned the task of overseeing the construction in person, to accommodate the labor gangs, deserted farmhouses were converted to barracks, with tent camps providing additional shelter. These workers, many of whom came from Italy and other countries or other parts of the U. S. were recruited. Supervisory personnel and skilled laborers stayed in hotels, boarding houses, or in local farm houses
3.
Delaware River
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The Delaware River is a major river on the Atlantic coast of the United States. Its watershed drains an area of 14,119 square miles in five U. S. states—New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, not including Delaware Bay, the rivers length including its two branches is 388 miles. The Delaware River is one of nineteen Great Waters recognized by the Americas Great Waters Coalition, the Delaware River rises in two main branches that descend from the western flank of the Catskill Mountains in New York. The West Branch begins near Mount Jefferson in the Town of Jefferson in Schoharie County, the rivers East Branch begins at Grand Gorge near Roxbury Delaware County. These two branches flow west and merge near Hancock in Delaware County and the waters flow as the Delaware River south. The river meets tide-water at the junction of Morrisville, Pennsylvania and Trenton, the rivers navigable, tidal section served as a conduit for shipping and transportation that aided the development of the industrial cities of Trenton, Camden, and Philadelphia. The mean freshwater discharge of the Delaware River into the estuary of Delaware Bay is 11,550 cubic feet per second, in 1609, the river was first visited by a Dutch East India Company expedition led by Henry Hudson. Hudson, an English navigator, was hired to find a route to Cathay. Early Dutch and Swedish settlements were established along the section of river. Both colonial powers called the river the South River, compared to the Hudson River, lord de la Warr waged a punitive campaign to subdue the Powhatan after they had killed the colonys council president, John Ratcliffe, and attacked the colonys fledgling settlements. Lord de la Warr arrived with 150 soldiers in time to prevent colonys original settlers at Jamestown from giving up, the name of barony is pronounced as in the current spelling form Delaware and is thought to derive from French de la Guerre. It has often reported that the river and bay received the name Delaware after English forces under Richard Nicolls expelled the Dutch. However, the river and bay were known by the name Delaware as early as 1641, the state of Delaware was originally part of the William Penns Pennsylvania colony. In 1682, the Duke of York granted Penns request for access to the sea and leased him the territory along the western shore of Delaware Bay which became known as the Lower Counties on the Delaware. The Delaware Rivers watershed drains an area of 14,119 square miles and encompasses 42 counties and 838 municipalities in five U. S. states—New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Delaware. This total area constitutes approximately 0. 4% of the mass in the United States. In 2001, the watershed was 18% agricultural land, 14% developed land, there are 216 tributary streams and creeks—an estimated 14,057 miles of streams and creeks—in the watershed. The waters of the Delaware Rivers basin are used to fishing, transportation, power, cooling, recreation
4.
Interstate 80 in New Jersey
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Interstate 80 is a major Interstate Highway in the United States, running from the New York City Metropolitan Area westward to San Francisco, California. The New Jersey Department of Transportation also identifies I-80 as the Christopher Columbus Highway, I-80 in New Jersey runs 68.54 miles from the Delaware Water Gap Toll Bridge over the Delaware River at the Delaware Water Gap to its eastern terminus at I-95 in Teaneck, Bergen County. Throughout New Jersey, I-80 runs parallel to US46, the highway heads through rural areas of Warren and Sussex counties before heading into more suburban surroundings in Morris County. As the road continues into Passaic and Bergen counties, it heads into urban areas. A freeway along the I-80 corridor had been planned in 1936, with the establishment of the Interstate Highway System, this planned freeway, which had been identified in some planning documents as the Bergen-Passaic Expressway, would be incorporated into I-80. The freeway was built across New Jersey in various stages from the 1960s to 1973, the westernmost four miles in New Jersey was originally a rerouting of US611 when built, that route was later realigned back into Pennsylvania. In the 1990s, high-occupancy vehicle lanes had existed on a part of I-80 in Morris County but were opened to traffic due to underuse. The Delaware Water Gap Toll Bridge and its approach is planned to be widened from four to six lanes, I-80 enters Hardwick Township, Warren County from Pennsylvania on the Delaware Water Gap Toll Bridge over the Delaware River, maintained by the Delaware River Joint Toll Bridge Commission. In addition to carrying I-80, this also carries the Appalachian Trail over the Delaware River. From this point, the freeway heads south along the east bank of the river through the Delaware Water Gap, immediately reaching a westbound exit. Now maintained by the New Jersey Department of Transportation, the road makes a turn to the east. The highway heads south again and enters Knowlton Township, where it comes to another set of U-turn ramps that also includes a station in the eastbound direction. After turning southeast and leaving the Delaware Water Gap, the road has a westbound right-in/right-out for Hainesburg Road before crossing under the abandoned Lackawanna Cutoff. I-80 widens to six lanes and reaches an interchange with the western terminus of US46, Route 94, and Decatur Street in Columbia. A scenic overlook of the Delaware Water Gap is located in the direction while a rest area is located in the eastbound direction. Upon crossing into Blairstown Township, the eastbound direction narrows down to three lanes, in Hope Township, I-80 reaches an interchange with CR521 that also provides access to CR519 and the Land of Make Believe amusement park. The highway widens to eight lanes briefly after this interchange before narrowing to six lanes, in Frelinghuysen Township, the freeway carries four lanes eastbound and three lanes westbound. Upon coming into Allamuchy Township, I-80 has six lanes before gaining a fourth lane as it comes to the CR517 exit
5.
Portland, Pennsylvania
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Portland is a borough in Northampton County, Pennsylvania, United States. Portland is located in the Lehigh Valley region of the state and it is part of Pennsylvanias Slate Belt. It is located on the border with New Jersey, the population of Portland was 579 at the 2000 census. Portland is located at 40°55′14″N 75°5′52″W, according to the United States Census Bureau, the borough has a total area of 0.6 square miles, of which,0.5 square miles of it is land and 0.1 square miles of it is water. Portland was settled because of the trade and what buildings were here in the early 19th century came as a result of this industry. It served to increase at least one business – that of the taverns, records show that the Hibblertown Hotel, the Dill’s Tavern and the What Cheer Inn all prospered because of loggers. The railroad was a force in the development of Portland. It changed the mode of transporting goods, and attracted new residents. As a result of increased population, the community expanded to serve the needs of the village. By the time of the incorporation there were three stores, a hardware store, a drug store, four confectionery shops, two millinery shops, and jewelry store. Portland had a newspaper, the “Portland Enterprise. ”This weekly paper. Raymond, gave the people on both sides of the all the news. Coe Finch took over the paper in the 1880s and continued until John Wildrick became editor in 1900, the financial center of Portland and vicinity was the Portland National Bank. It was organized on February 7,1903, and received its charter as a Federal bank on March 11,1903 and it served the Portland area continuously except for a period during 1932 when it closed its doors under the pressure of the Great Depression. The population of the Portland community has remained stable during most of the past one hundred years, since the business community exists essentially to serve the townspeople, it too has remained constant. However, it has kept pace with the changing times, the number of businesses has not varied, but the types have changed to keep pace with modern times. The Delaware River provided easy transport, at first only the Indians skimmed their canoes over its surface, but by the mid-18th century, rafts were in use during spring floods. As late as 1870, the river near Portland would be full of rafts as far was the eye could see, rafting started to wane in the 1880s because railroads had reached the lumbering country
6.
Reinforced concrete
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The reinforcement is usually, though not necessarily, steel reinforcing bars and is usually embedded passively in the concrete before the concrete sets. Reinforcing schemes are designed to resist tensile stresses in particular regions of the concrete that might cause unacceptable cracking and/or structural failure. Modern reinforced concrete can contain varied reinforcing materials made of steel, Reinforced concrete may also be permanently stressed, so as to improve the behaviour of the final structure under working loads. In the United States, the most common methods of doing this are known as pre-tensioning and post-tensioning, durability in the concrete environment, irrespective of corrosion or sustained stress for example. François Coignet was a French industrialist of the century, a pioneer in the development of structural. Coignet was the first to use iron-reinforced concrete as a technique for constructing building structures, in 1853 Coignet built the first iron reinforced concrete structure, a four story house at 72 rue Charles Michels in the suburbs of Paris. Coignets descriptions of reinforcing concrete suggests that he did not do it for means of adding strength to the concrete, in 1854, English builder William B. Wilkinson reinforced the concrete roof and floors in the two-storey house he was constructing. His positioning of the reinforcement demonstrated that, unlike his predecessors, in 1877, Monier was granted another patent for a more advanced technique of reinforcing concrete columns and girders with iron rods placed in a grid pattern. Though Monier undoubtedly knew reinforcing concrete would improve its inner cohesion, before 1877 the use of concrete construction, though dating back to the Roman Empire and reintroduced in the mid to late 1800s, was not yet a proven scientific technology. His work played a role in the evolution of concrete construction as a proven. Without Hyatts work, more dangerous trial and error methods would have largely depended on for the advancement in the technology. G. A. Wayss was a German civil engineer and a pioneer of the iron, in 1879 Wayss bought the German rights to Moniers patents and in 1884 started the first commercial use for reinforced concrete in his firm Wayss & Freytag. Up until the 1890s Wayss and his firm greatly contributed to the advancement of Moniers system of reinforcing, ernest L. Ransome was an English-born engineer and early innovator of the reinforced concrete techniques in the end of the 19th century. With the knowledge of reinforced concrete developed during the previous 50 years, ransomes key innovation was to twist the reinforcing steel bar improving bonding with the concrete. Gaining increasing fame from his concrete constructed buildings Ransome was able to build two of the first reinforced concrete bridges in North America, one of the first concrete buildings constructed in the United States, was a private home, designed by William Ward in 1871. The home was designed to be fireproof for his wife, one of the first skyscrapers made with reinforced concrete was the 16-storey Ingalls Building in Cincinnati, constructed in 1904. Many different types of structures and components of structures can be built using reinforced concrete including slabs, walls, beams, columns, foundations, frames, Reinforced concrete can be classified as precast or cast-in-place concrete. Designing and implementing the most efficient floor system is key to creating optimal building structures, small changes in the design of a floor system can have significant impact on material costs, construction schedule, ultimate strength, operating costs, occupancy levels and end use of a building
7.
Abraham Burton Cohen
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Cohen was an active member of the American Concrete Institute and earned ACIs Wason Medal for Most Meritorious Paper in 1927. Cohen was born in Chicago and died in East Orange, New Jersey and he earned a degree in civil engineering from Purdue University in 1905 and an honorary doctorate in 1949. Cohen spent a majority of his career with the Delaware, Lackawanna, as a consulting engineer, he designed a number of concrete spans in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Binghamton, New York, and elsewhere. At least two of his works, the Tunkhannock Viaduct and Scrantons Harrison Avenue Bridge, are on the National Register of Historic Places and he died on February 11,1956. Correlated Considerations in Design and Construction of Concrete Bridges, in American Concrete Institute Proceedings, vol. Progress and Development of Concrete Work on the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad, in American Concrete Institute Proceedings, vol. In American Concrete Institute Proceedings, vol, repairs to Spruce Street Bridge, Scranton, Pennsylvania. In American Concrete Institute Proceedings, vol, in American Concrete Institute Proceedings, vol. Abraham Burton Cohen information at Structurae
8.
Delaware Water Gap
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The Delaware Water Gap is a water gap on the border of the U. S. states of New Jersey and Pennsylvania where the Delaware River cuts through a large ridge of the Appalachian Mountains. A water gap is a feature where a river cuts through a mountain ridge. The Delaware Water Gap began to form 500 million years ago when quartz pebbles from mountains in the area were deposited in a shallow sea. The Martinsburg Shale on the side of what was to be Kittatinny Mountain was uplifted 450 million years ago when a chain of volcanic islands collided with proto-North America. These islands slid over the North American plate, and deposited rock on top of plate, forming the Highlands, about 400 million years ago, a small, narrow continent collided with proto-North America. The heat from the pressure melted the quartzite, which allowed it to bend the quartz pebbles and this layer was then uplifted and cracked over thousands of years. During this period, the Delaware River slowly cut its path down through the shattered and cracked quartzite, if the quartzite had not been cracked, the river would not have been able to cut its path through the mountain to form the gap. Millions of years of rain, ice, snow, and wind erosion shaped the area, the Wisconsin glaciation, which occurred between 21,000 B. C. and 13,000 B. C. covered the entire Kittatinny Ridge and ended near Belvidere. When the glaciers retreated, the gap which was already there assumed its present form, the mountain consists of Silurian Shawangunk conglomerate. This is gray quartzite, which makes the mountain highly resistant to weathering, the Silurian High Fall formation of sandstone is on the western side of the gap near the base. The eastern side of the gap has Ordovician Martinsburg shale, sedimentary rock is along the river. The Bloomsburg Red Beds, a red shale, are at the gap under Dunsfield Creek, the Delaware Water Gap is about 300 meters across at river level and 1,400 meters wide at the top. The river through the gap is 283 feet above sea level, the ridge of the Appalachians that the Delaware crosses is called the Blue Mountains in Pennsylvania and the Kittatinny Ridge in New Jersey. This is the first major ridge of the Appalachian mountains, the New Jersey mountain is Mount Tammany, named after the Native American Chief Tamanend. The Pennsylvania mountain is Mount Minsi, named after the Native American tribe of the area, the summit of Tammany is 1,540 ft above sea level. A northern deciduous forest cloaks the slopes of the Delaware Water Gap, hardwood species comprising the forest include various oaks, hickories, maples, ash, elm, cherry, walnut, birch, sycamore, and beech. Coniferous species include Eastern White Pine, Pitch Pine, Eastern Red Cedar, black bear, whitetailed deer, gray squirrels, red squirrels, raccoons, gray fox, fisher, and chipmunks are some of the forest species of the area. Shad migrate up the river through the gap in the spring, other fish include bass, trout, carp, and walleye
9.
Paulinskill Viaduct
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The Paulinskill Viaduct, also known as the Hainesburg Viaduct, is a reinforced concrete railroad bridge that crosses the Paulins Kill in Knowlton Township, New Jersey. When completed in 1910, it was the largest reinforced concrete structure in the world, the E-L in turn operated the Cut-Off until 1976 when the railroad was conveyed into Conrail, which ran trains until 1979, abandoned the line in 1982, and removed the tracks in 1984. NJT has proposed to restore the rest of the Cut-Off, including the Paulinskill Viaduct, the Paulinskill Viaduct is also known for its internal chambers, which are popular among those who enjoy urban exploration. The graffiti-filled chambers have been featured on Weird NJ, Taber, Thomas Townsend, Taber, Thomas Townsend III. The Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad in the Twentieth Century, casey, Robert J. Douglas, W. A. S. The Lackawanna Story - The First Hundred Years of the Delaware, Lackawanna, the Wonders of Paulinskill Viaduct at weirdnj. com Paulinskill Viaduct at Structurae
