WEBVTT
Kind: captions
Language: en

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These days if you want to simulate something
in the physical world

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you use a computer.

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But what if you couldn't?

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What if it was, say, the 1950s

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and you needed to work out if a bold but questionable
plan

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to dam the San Francisco Bay was a good idea?

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The answer is this: The US Army Corps of Engineers
Bay Model.

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The Bay Model is one and a half acres or more.

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What you're looking at is one of our former
scientific, hydrodynamic,

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engineering testing facilities.

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And this was the tool, the instrument, that
they used to see

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what the unforeseen consequences of the John
Reber Plan was going to be.

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In the 1940s and 50s a man named John Reber

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had a plan to completely change the San Francisco
Bay.

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Enormous dams would create freshwater lakes.

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There'd be brand-new reclaimed land for industry
and for air and naval bases.

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Reber said it would make the bay a defensible
military fortification,

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move people safely inland

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and the newly dammed rivers would provide
huge amounts of drinking water.

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Reber was not a professional engineer.

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He was a theatrical producer who had done
a lot of research,

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but because he worked in showbiz, he knew
how to promote something.

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And by most accounts he was a friendly, sincere,
convincing man.

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So unlike other ideas for giant engineering
projects, the Reber Plan actually caught on.

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Debate went back and forth for years but eventually

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Reber's plan seemed realistic enough, at least
to politicians,

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that the US Army Corps of Engineers were tasked
to see if it was practical

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and they were given $2.5m, that's about $25m
today, to find out.

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And with it, they built this.

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This model when it was built was the next
level, the next generation.

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It was extremely accurate as an instrument.

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At the time there really wasn't anything better.

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There's 250,000 strategically placed little
copper tabs in the bottom of the model

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to keep the saltwater and the freshwater from
going in and out too quickly,

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but also to duplicate any little protrusions
sticking up out of the bottom of the bay.

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The model is 1:1000 scale horizontally,

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1:100 scale vertically and 1:100 scale in
time.

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That means about two hundred times a day,

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the tide comes in and the tide goes out,

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because San Francisco Bay has tides and therefore,
so does the model.

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Everything was hand operated for the first
thirty years.

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It took probably anywhere between twelve and
fifteen people to operate it,

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sometimes it was as many as sixty people here
at one time

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working on various different experiments

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and everybody had to be totally in sync.

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It was like an orchestra.

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And the interns were out there in chairs,
in lab coats, in the water

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measuring the various different ebb and flow
of the tide.

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It took three years for Reber's plan to be
tested here

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and in that time Reber passed away.

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And for his supporters, the results from the
model were devastating.

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It looked great on paper, convinced a lot
of people,

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but when it was tested they found that it
was only good on paper.

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The end result was it failed on ninety-nine
different accounts.

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Wild and unpredictable catastrophic flooding
was just one of them.

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The dams wouldn't create lakes, they'd create
evaporation ponds.

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The tide would create dangerous currents and
waves.

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In short, not only would the Reber Plan have
been a disaster,

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it would have been a billion dollar disaster.

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The ecosystem would have been devastated too,

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but it was the 50s, so no-one was really thinking
about that.

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The Corps of Engineers, their job done,

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figured the model would come in useful again
someday.

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And it did,

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helping to test smaller and more practical
schemes across the bay for decades.

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These days, of course, computers can do all
of that

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for a fraction of the time and the money,

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but it's still a good educational resource.

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Last time I talked about a grand civil engineering
scheme like this,

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about Herman Sörgel's Atlantropa,

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I said it was a testament to how big we can
dream,

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but this model is a testament to something
else.

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To science.

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To having a hypothesis.

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To testing it.

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And then, when it fails, admitting that it's
wrong.

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There shouldn't be any shame in that.

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Sometimes we follow bad ideas,

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and changing your mind based on new evidence

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and allowing others to do the same

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is something our world should be built on,

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and it's exactly what this model made happen.