How a lot pointless stuff is designed into trendy merchandise? How a lot will we undergo after we’re making an attempt to make use of software program merchandise generally described as “bloatware”? What was the origin of the time period “bells and whistles” as an attribute of merchandise which might be overly complicated?
Again in 1940, a then-new drawbridge was opened for service alongside the Belt Parkway in Brooklyn, NY. It was known as the Mill Basin Bridge.
That construction has since been changed by the next bridge with sufficient vertical clearance above the underlying waterway in order that boat site visitors can go out and in unimpeded, however again then, the roadway of that 1940 bridge needed to be repeatedly raised and lowered as boat site visitors got here and went beneath. Determine 1 is a screenshot of a roadway part in its up place.
Determine 1 A roadway part of the Mill Basin Bridge within the up place the place the attendant should deploy two giant metal boundaries that cease site visitors in order that they’ll increase the roadway.
There was an commentary tower at that bridge through which a bridge attendant could be stationed. It was his job to get that roadway raised and lowered when wanted and to halt car site visitors when the roadway was up. A part of his activity was to function two enormous metal boundaries that might cross the roadway in each instructions when the roadway was impassable. These boundaries had been multi-ton behemoths designed to make sure that no automotive was ever going to traverse a raised roadbed and fall into the water beneath.
At some point, as a water vessel wanted to get by, the attendant activated these enormous boundaries to enter place, however as he did so, he noticed a dashing motorist coming alongside who was not going to have the ability to cease in time earlier than crashing into the barrier forward. The attendant reversed the barrier management motors however as a result of it seemed just like the barrier wouldn’t be out of the best way in time, he left his submit within the tower and tried to bodily push that barrier by hand away from the automotive’s path. He didn’t succeed, the oncoming automotive crashed into the barrier and that attendant was killed.
My father was one of many emergency crew who responded to that catastrophe. He advised me all about it the next day. Dad was the foreman of that a part of the NYC Division of Bridges which serviced that bridge. There had been many different incidents of this ilk as effectively involving those self same boundaries and after they occurred, our home phone would ring at any time of day or night time and my father must go off to work in consequence.
Years later, these metal boundaries had been eliminated and changed with slender wood crossing gates painted with crimson and white stripes. These stripes could possibly be seen by oncoming motorists from fairly distant so no automotive ever went up a raised roadbed. Sure, the painted gates could have been from time to time smithereened, however no repeat of the above tragedy ever occurred, not less than as far as I used to be ever advised.
The overdesign facet of all that is that these immense metal boundaries weren’t solely pointless, they had been a hazard in their very own proper. Placing them in was a significant price merchandise with adverse affect (no pun supposed) on the drawbridge’s working historical past.
These boundaries had been a tragic instance of overdesign.
John Dunn is an electronics marketing consultant, and a graduate of The Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn (BSEE) and of New York College (MSEE).
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