• Calendar of Events
• May 12, 2008
  MIT Coop
• Nov 28, 2007
  Harvard Coop
• Nov 13, 2007
  Crawford Doyle Booksellers
• Jul 30, 2007
  System Dynamics Conf.
• Jul 26, 2007
  Channel Tunnel Anniversary
• Jun 14, 2007
  Conférence 2100
• Apr 26, 2007
  System Dynamics Society
• Apr 24, 2007
  Signet Society
• Apr 23, 2007
  Worcester Polytechnic
• Mar 06, 2007
  Harvard Club of Boston
• Dec 03, 2006
  Purrington House

National Train Day - The Time is Right

With May 10 celebrated as United States' National Train Day - commemorating the "Golden Spike" which, at Promontory Point in 1869 completed construction of the first transcontinental railroad in the United States, M.I.T. announces its own linked event: on Monday, May 12, at 5:15pm, at the MIT Coop (Kendall Square) there will be a book-signing for Building The World - An Encyclopaedia of the Great Engineering Projects in History, co-authored by Frank P. Davidson, JD, who for more than a quarter-century headed The Macro-Engineering Research Group in the School of Engineering, and by Kathleen Lusk Brooke, PhD, a Harvard-trained medievalist who has literally walked in the footsteps of Petrarch and now advocates "Sportsways" as a new priority for the international community. Sportsways are in proposals for Europe, Asia, and North America. Dr. Davidson is best known as the American co-founder, in 1957, of the Channel Tunnel Study Group, whose design was implemented in the 1986-1993 construction of Eurotunnel, linking England and Western Europe. Their book is the first compendium on "wonders of the world" which not only traces the history of iconic projects but also provides the key legal texts that authorized and launched them.

Building The World foreshadows impending efforts to identify those seminal technical achievements which can transcend the world's current concerns and introduce a new era of confidence, cooperation and success. Professor-Emeritus Ernst G. Frankel, for example, has designed a one-hour train service between Boston and New York which requires no new technology, simply the building of an immersed offshore tube, whose cost should not deter the financial community, in view of the immense benefits to the public and implicit boost to the economy of the Northeast. A feasible intersectoral formula should not be beyond the capabilities of bankers and public officials. And - correctly viewed - our "energy problem" is really one of choosing a compatible group of macro-solutions: what is needed is the kind of leadership exemplified by the late Thomas S. Lamont, Vice Chairman of Morgan Guaranty Trust Company of New York and a member of the Harvard Corporation, who did not hesitate to serve on the pioneering Channel Tunnel Study Group at a time when the "Chunnel" idea was out of favor.

We urge Faculty and Students to attend the May 12 open meeting at the MIT Coop and to press on with the designs and negotiations which will make Promontory Point a harbinger of even greater things to come. With the present price of gasoline, it is inevitable that more attention will be given to the various options of rail transport. And there is no conflict between the proliferation of high-speed, environmentally-friendly trains and the building of Sportsways - that is - parallel, separate trails for hiking, cycling, horseback riding, and, where possible, even kayaking! After all, Building The World, among its key documents, reprinted the 1921 article by Benton MacKaye, which led to the Appalachian Trail: Facta non Verba!