Moving a 7600 ton apartment building to create a boulevard in Alba Iulia, Romania, 1987

[carlos]

Yesterday I saw this picture in a Romanian newspaper and have found a source in English too. Please, click in the picture to make it big, it's really impressive:

http://historicaltimes.tumblr.com/image/90278127383

 

More pictures of the whole move here:

http://imgur.com/gallery/MCUsj/new

 

During the Communist Era in Romania huge massive sovietic-style apartment buildings were built everywhere. In the city of Alba Iulia they were planning a majestic boulevard but realized one of those ugly monsters got in their way. The solution? They split it in two and moved one of the halves to the other side of the road. They dug under the building, put railways and wheels and moved it 180 ft. The moving itself took a bit less than 6 hours and it was done with the residents inside the building! This could only happen in Romania!

 

I can't help but notice that in 1987 they still took these pictures in black and white. They were able to move a building but didn't have color cameras, it seems.

[dilip kumar]

Refreshing and enjoyed.thank you dear brother for showing us something admirable.

Sent from my LG-E988

[Adelin]

i didn't know that 

 

so cool    

[crazylee]

I can't help but notice that in 1987 they still took these pictures in black and white. They were able to move a building but didn't have color cameras,

 

Carlos, I think they didn't need color photos. They were destined for a news paper in B/W so they shot in B/W. Besides B/W was a lot cheaper then.

[Greg Dent]

It would never happen today well not like that. Just insane with all those people standing around. They didn't have cranes and pull dozers to move the building on the track?

[Trina]

Wow it's amazing! Makes me think about building the pyramids...Jehovah made us in a wonderful way.

[carlos]

It would never happen today well not like that. Just insane with all those people standing around. They didn't have cranes and pull dozers to move the building on the track?

 

Greg, if they didn't have a color camera to take the pictures (in 1987!) it's very likely that they didn't have much machinery either.

[GStorrs46]

Carlos !,

 

  You've solved the mystery of building the pyramids ! Seriously, having worked in construction, that is quite an impressive

feat. I got tickled at your laconic expression; " Only in Romania ". Since many in other parts of the world have visions of

Romania as being a band of Gypsies. That certainly lays to rest questions about their technical ability.

  Recently I was watching a documentary on Stonehenge. Not only in what was involved in its building, but its overall pur-

pose. The whole place contains remarkable knowledge of both solar and lunar phases. Watching that caused me to wonder

about Solomon's temple, and the one in existence in Jesus' day. The only remnant we now have of that is what is today now

referred to as the Western Wall (or Wailing Wall ). It is amazing the size of the stones in this wall, showing this ability to move

mammoth stones was widely known in antiquity. Something humbling for us today with all of our modern equipment and tech-

nology.

 

                                                                                                                                                           GStorrs46

[carlos]

I can't help but notice that in 1987 they still took these pictures in black and white. They were able to move a building but didn't have color cameras,

 

Carlos, I think they didn't need color photos. They were destined for a news paper in B/W so they shot in B/W. Besides B/W was a lot cheaper then.

 

Hi, Lee. Somehow I overlooked your answer and didn't notice it until now. You are probably right, but I don't think that B/W cameras even existed anymore where I live in 1987. Maybe the picture itself is taken from a newspaper.

 

In any case, Romania had very limited resources in those last years of Communist rule and was very underdeveloped from a technological viewpoint.

[carlos]

I got tickled at your laconic expression; " Only in Romania ". Since many in other parts of the world have visions of

Romania as being a band of Gypsies. That certainly lays to rest questions about their technical ability.

 

During the Communist era there were very good engineers and well prepared people in Romania. Certainly they were not just a band of gypsies. But the Government often embarked in extravagant mammoth projects that finally were impossible to finish.

 

For example, the Communist government projected the construction of a 64km canal between the Danube and the Black Sea, an immensely ambitious undertaking. and the workers didn't have any tool other than picks and shovels. It was abandoned during the fifties, and resumed and finished in the seventies with modern machinery.

 

The dictator Ceausescu also demolished several neighborhoods in central Bucharest to build a huge and ugly monster, the Casa Poporului, that led the whole country into bankruptcy and was never finished. After the revolution put and end to his rule, it was considered to put the building down, but the engineers said that demolition would be so expensive that it was impossible, so they let it there. Today that building is the seat of the Parliament and can be visited, but most of it is empty and some areas are unfinished yet.

 

That's what I meant when I wrote "only in Romania". The country where they like to do things the strange way.

Edited December 14, 2014 by cvillarrubia

[Qapla]

Hi, Lee. Somehow I overlooked your answer and didn't notice it until now. You are probably right, but I don't think that B/W cameras even existed anymore where I live in 1987. Maybe the picture itself is taken from a newspaper.

 

In any case, Romania had very limited resources in those last years of Communist rule and was very underdeveloped from a technological viewpoint.

 

A camera is just that, a camera. The camera, itself, is neither B/W or color .... the media used produces the results. With older "film" cameras, if you used B/W film, you would get a B/W picture. If you used color film, you would get a color picture.

 

That said, you can also get a B/W (or gray scale) picture from a color negative by using B/W paper.

 

The digital camera is much the same. Thought some older digital cameras (and some surveillance cameras) are only B/W circuitry, most modern digital cameras take the image in color and store that information digitally. If that image is displayed on a B/W screen, it will be B/W - if it is displayed on a color screen it will be color. The same with printing.

 

So, the picture in that paper could be either B/W or color ... but, the newspaper is B/W, thus a B/W picture.