The Fifty

There was a story in the March 2012 issue of The Atlantic called "Iron Giant: One of America's Great Machines Comes Back to Life."  It tells the tale of Alcoa's 50,000-ton forging press, affectionately referred to as "the Fifty."  The article is short but fascinating history; I recommend you read it.

[Library of Congress]

In summary: The Fifty was built as part of the U.S. government's Heavy Press Program (1950-1957), which used taxpayer dollars to build six extruders and four heavy presses.  The 10 forges were needed to keep up with the Soviets, who carried off Germany's most powerful WWII forge at the end of the fighting.  The Fifty has chugged away all this time, building turbines, helicopters, and spacecraft, but it's been out of commission for the last three years.  It's going to pick up service in reconditioned form this year, pressing out bulkheads for the Joint Strike Fighter.

You're probably asking, "Yeah, so?"

Honestly, I don't have a great answer to that question.  For some reason this story just seemed super cool.  Maybe because everything now is all tiny electronics and better technologies, it's really neat to think about this giant 16,000,000-pound waffle iron squishing hunks of metal into shapes that are precise to thousandths of an inch.  It's anchored to the ground in Cleveland, Ohio, with bolts that are 40 inches thick and 78 feet long.  There's just something so tangible, so industrial, so American, about that.