homing devices armed with little explosive charges whose deflagrations were analyzed – noise and propagation of shock waves – in order to understand the reality of the material, its internal morphology, the content of its constitution, its potential. For Diderot, these notes held something terribly moving: it was like reading what reverberates from the little taps of the white cane that the blind person makes against the ground simply in order to walk upon it – but here they had to construct their own white canes, so that they could be trusted – invent them and then manipulate them with care so that they hit the ground correctly, with clean, sharp little taps. This was the perceptible, tender description of a gigantic trial and error and it contained exactly what he loved – this resembled real life.
NIGHT HAD long since fallen and the tower emptied out when he finally took a look at the quantitatives, numbers that lined themselves up or lay themselves out in columns over several pages. Numbers that speak only of themselves, the young ones (formerly moles running through the corridors of graceless high schools) would have said; numbers that have to be coaxed to speak, Diderot would have retorted, rubbing his hands together. These measurements involved other things besides themselves, a certain temporality, an organization of the work. A million cubic yards of concrete. Eighty thousand tons of steel. Eighty thousand miles of cable. Diderot absorbed these figures without letting himself be impressed, whispered them to himself, and quickly translated and prolonged their meaning: planning the construction of an on-site concrete mixing plant and anticipating the delivery of its components – cement, gravel, water, sand – foreseeing the steel supplies, coordinating their transport to Coca, and above all, once they reached the Pontoverde platform, having them brought to the bridge site beside the river. There would be quarrels among the engineers – the partisans of the land route would argue for the construction of pathways – roads or rails – that would avoid lengthy and expensive load changes, since the metal would be loaded at its production sites in the steel factories of Blackoak Inc. in Maryland, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania and unloaded directly at the foot of the bridge piers; while those partisans of the marine route would argue for the smoothness and convenience of floating barges that would migrate along the river, and these latter, Diderot among them, would win out.
DIDEROT GOT up again and went to the window. A bridge man again. Good. He exulted in silence – building a bridge is still a source of elation, even in a stinking hole like Coca, a dump that no one’s ever heard of. The ultimate job for an engineer. He paced in front of the bay window, then pressed his burning forehead to the pane that crackled with lights of the night like paper on fire, and already the thought of disconcerting his entourage amused him, they were so quick to compliment him; the thought of thwarting this childish admiration because, come on, the symbolism of the thing – the link, passage, movement blah blah blah – went straight over his head, he didn’t give a rat’s ass: what really excited him was the technical epic, putting individual competencies to work together within a collective project; what thrilled him was the sum of decisions contained within a construction, the succession of short events leading to the permanence of the work, its inscription in time. What filled him with joy was to operate the life-sized fulfillment of thousands of hours of calculations.
SITE MEETING – SOMETIME AFTER SEVEN O’CLOCK in the morning and Diderot is talking, standing mountainous at the end of the oval table. Bare room, thin partitions, thin carpet hastily placed, smell of glue, smell of new, freeze-dried coffee, classroom chairs dragged in. These accommodate some fifty individuals, among them Sanche Cameron, the crane
NIGHT HAD long since fallen and the tower emptied out when he finally took a look at the quantitatives, numbers that lined themselves up or lay themselves out in columns over several pages. Numbers that speak only of themselves, the young ones (formerly moles running through the corridors of graceless high schools) would have said; numbers that have to be coaxed to speak, Diderot would have retorted, rubbing his hands together. These measurements involved other things besides themselves, a certain temporality, an organization of the work. A million cubic yards of concrete. Eighty thousand tons of steel. Eighty thousand miles of cable. Diderot absorbed these figures without letting himself be impressed, whispered them to himself, and quickly translated and prolonged their meaning: planning the construction of an on-site concrete mixing plant and anticipating the delivery of its components – cement, gravel, water, sand – foreseeing the steel supplies, coordinating their transport to Coca, and above all, once they reached the Pontoverde platform, having them brought to the bridge site beside the river. There would be quarrels among the engineers – the partisans of the land route would argue for the construction of pathways – roads or rails – that would avoid lengthy and expensive load changes, since the metal would be loaded at its production sites in the steel factories of Blackoak Inc. in Maryland, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania and unloaded directly at the foot of the bridge piers; while those partisans of the marine route would argue for the smoothness and convenience of floating barges that would migrate along the river, and these latter, Diderot among them, would win out.
DIDEROT GOT up again and went to the window. A bridge man again. Good. He exulted in silence – building a bridge is still a source of elation, even in a stinking hole like Coca, a dump that no one’s ever heard of. The ultimate job for an engineer. He paced in front of the bay window, then pressed his burning forehead to the pane that crackled with lights of the night like paper on fire, and already the thought of disconcerting his entourage amused him, they were so quick to compliment him; the thought of thwarting this childish admiration because, come on, the symbolism of the thing – the link, passage, movement blah blah blah – went straight over his head, he didn’t give a rat’s ass: what really excited him was the technical epic, putting individual competencies to work together within a collective project; what thrilled him was the sum of decisions contained within a construction, the succession of short events leading to the permanence of the work, its inscription in time. What filled him with joy was to operate the life-sized fulfillment of thousands of hours of calculations.
SITE MEETING – SOMETIME AFTER SEVEN O’CLOCK in the morning and Diderot is talking, standing mountainous at the end of the oval table. Bare room, thin partitions, thin carpet hastily placed, smell of glue, smell of new, freeze-dried coffee, classroom chairs dragged in. These accommodate some fifty individuals, among them Sanche Cameron, the crane
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