Hello, friends. Today we are slightly abstracting from Eurasia and transported to the South American continent.
The largest and most developed country on the continent is Brazil. And what do we know about it, besides the abundance of wild monkeys in it? Very little at all. Wikipedia does not say that it got its name from the fabulous island, which was present in the legends of Europeans and was located somewhere in the Atlantic. The sailors, seeing these lands, thought for a very long time that they had discovered the very island, and they named these lands accordingly. Brazil was also Ostap Bender's dream, the country of football and instant coffee. Well, this is where our knowledge of this country ends in general. Due to the remoteness and high cost, Russian tourist routes to Brazil are not widespread. Although, according to conversations, there is something to see. But we will not look at what is there now, but what was like a hundred years ago. Specifically, we will look at the strange architectural and technical devices that have been preserved in numerous archive photos. The remoteness of the continent, most likely, contributed to the fact that many of these devices safely survived (at least in appearance) until the second half of the last century, while in Europe they were totally demolished in the period 1920-1930. In addition, these devices differ, for example, from European ones, which can also be judged only by the photo. So let's get started.these devices differ, for example, from European ones, which can also be judged only by photos. So let's get started.these devices differ, for example, from European ones, which can also be judged only by photos. So let's get started.
As you can see, on the streets of Sao Paulo, on the left, there are ordinary poles with wires, and on the right, higher pillars stand as if without wires. But a photo from 1920, when the wire telegraph was in full swing. Maybe this is it?
The same picture, only next to it there is another post with a kind of bracket from the lantern. Perhaps they made a major overhaul of the lighting line, but forgot to remove the old pole.
The same thing, only if you look closely, the number of horizontal slats on the traverses of the pillars on the right of the pillars starting from the third decreases from five to two. And what to do with the wires, if they were there? Have they taken them somewhere? On the left, electrical wires simply enter the house with ordinary snot without side traverses and clamps, apparently, the invention of PUE did not complicate their lives there.
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Here is the same, only our pillars are now on the left. The number of horizontal strips on the traverses decreases, and the wires do not branch off anywhere. Or maybe they are not at all, and should not be? If they are needed only in order to bring a certain field closer to the vases standing on the building to the left, everything once again falls into place. There is another example of the functioning of the system for the transmission of atmospheric electricity through the air. But real wires have already been brought into this house from the pillar on the right. As you can see, globalization is in full swing. Either at that time in the houses they used two power supply systems at once, or the etheric one by that time was no longer working (it is easy to break it, it is enough to demolish the dome at the installation at the other end of the line). This is all good, of course, and a lot of articles have already been written, only some more interesting photos have appeared.
Why did you need to lift these traverses so high (spoiler - so that their height was on the same level with the installation on the right)? In those days, there was no need to provide such a size only for the passage of cars or horse-drawn vehicles, and it is many times more difficult to maintain such poles.
Judging on an eye scale, according to the average height of a person, the height of this pillar is about 18 meters (pay attention to the lamp on the right and to what it is attached, there will be material on this topic below in the text). With a thickness of one floor of a khrushchev 2.5 m, this is (for a minute) 7 floors of a standard five-story building. Why are such difficulties? There can be only one answer - the field from these pillars was used only in high-rise buildings, which were usually owned by wealthy people.
As you can see, the pillars have the same height with an interesting installation on the roof, which is the very installation to which the end of the line of pillars comes. It is possible that the houses on this street were owned by one owner, and he created an engineering network throughout the street. In general, this is a very interesting photo. There are rails for the tram, but there are no wires for it. An electric lamp hangs on the building on the left, and the wires do not fit. And from all the houses at an angle of 60 degrees to the ground some sticks stick out. But we will return to them later.
Look closely at the circled area. These are not insulators at all, and with such a shape, it is quite difficult to fix wires on them (the shape is not designed for loads and effects from wires). Then what is it? Obviously, this is the very case described here, and objects that resemble insulators are mini-domes. Confused by the box hanging just below. What is it? There are no wires at the top. Is this some kind of transition from wire to air? It sounds too defiant, but nothing else comes to mind.
The situation is similar here. Several wires come to insulators located above the horizontal bars. Nothing out of the ordinary, except for items under the slats. What is it? No one ever uses such traverse designs on walk-through supports, even in power supply, even in communications. And again the box hangs. If the support were biased towards the photographer, one would think that it was a dead end, but no brace or wires are observed. Hmmm. But let's move on.
Pay attention to the lanterns suspended from the dome structure. They are clearly electric. Judging by the difficulty of accessing them, they are turned on remotely. However, no wires are suitable for them. This can only be explained by the fact that the lanterns work with a single-wire connection scheme, using metal connections extending from the dome. Why it was necessary to illuminate the domes is difficult to say, most likely decorative lighting was used here.
The same can be seen in this photo. The lanterns are attached to the metal ties coming out of the building. There is no human access to them and gas pipes or wires are not suitable for them. A distinctive feature of gas lanterns is that they have a metal mesh stretched over the shades to prevent them from falling. This grid is not visible here. Thus, we have not quite ordinary electric lights.
In general, Brazil in all the photos of cities and towns looks advanced in terms of the use of atmospheric electricity.
I must admit that it was here for the first time that I recognized a number of varieties of installations for generating electricity from a photo. Has it all been carried away by globalization?
It is generally seen here that in the second half of the 20th century in Rio de Janeiro, all dome installations are in good health, even the spiers remained the same ones that, for example, were cut in the USSR literally before 1930. Very strange. But that's not all.
The famous shopping kiosks, which are described in the article: "Unusual domed pavilions", also thrive in Brazil throughout the first half of the 20th century. The dome of these kiosks was itself an installation for generating electricity, which was used there at least for indoor lighting. For reference, in the USSR they were liquidated together with the NEP, and they were replaced by the stalls "Soyuzpechat" and "Uralochki", and then after several decades.
Please note that the electric wires pass by the lighting lamp and do not even enter the house. But in general, it is not interesting, but the abundance of metal sticks sticking out from the walls of the building at an angle. What is it? Something similar happened at the Berdyansk lighthouse in the first years of its operation. And here it is used en masse. If you look closely, then these are the very mini-domes that stand, incl. and on traverses of wireless poles. These mini-domes are introduced through a stick into the field of action of the field from the poles, and then transfer this field to the metal connections of the building, to which they are attached. Apparently, to improve the characteristics of the terminal devices, the length of these sticks, the angle of inclination and the attachment point were selected experimentally according to the principle of three Ps, otherwise it is difficult to explain why everything is different. Without wireless poles outside, these sticks are generally unnecessary and useless.
Here, in fact, the same thing. The lower end of the stick is electrically connected to the metal connection of the buildings, and in the most convenient places. Perhaps these sticks complement the existing power plant of the building directly on the roof.
Another interesting object drew attention.
The pipe is worth something, but there is no boiler room. Some nonsense. I checked it from different angles, this is definitely a free-standing pipe. And there are no staples on it, and traces of smoke too. Something like this seems to have already met. Well, exactly, this is the Murom water supply system. Only here is the opposite end of the globe. This is how small our world is. As we remember, the water in that device was drawn from the wells by pumps, which were powered by a voltage amplified by a standing column. And into the column itself, the signal was sent by a domed structure separately standing on the mountain. By the way, the water there was free for the city during the entire existence of the water supply system, from 1865 to 192? years, after which it was closed, such as because of unsanitary conditions, and no less dirty water was let through the same pipes, but for money.
Let's look, maybe we can find this domed structure on the mountain here too. You don't really need to look for it.
If we exclude the error of perspective and parallax, then apart from this church there is nothing similar for us. And what is this church?
It was not without difficulty that this place was reconstructed. The coastline has since moved strongly towards the sea. Either the water level dropped, or the bank was artificially washed. But not the point is important. This church is now called the Catholic Church of Our Lady of the Hill of Gloria and it is located where it was. And in place of a pipe or column (as you would expect) - nothing. The church is only slightly weird.
The feeling is that it was an ordinary unitary building like a warehouse, which performed quite mundane technological functions, and which, after a slight cosmetic internal repair, without much investment, was turned into a prayer house. The interior decoration of this temple is painfully simple. And the structure of the building is more reminiscent of the same Berdyansk lighthouse.
However, if you now look at modern photos of Brazilian cities, you will not find anything from the above, except perhaps the domes of old buildings, but without spiers. And what happened all over the world - a certain force gradually destroyed all the technical heritage of the past, introducing equipment of a different type and replacing an intensive method of generating energy with an extensive one for profit. And this happened on the scale of the entire globe, with small lags in some of its places. There is nothing to be done, globalization is globalization. Let's assume that this is just a tax on technical illiteracy.
And as a dessert, I would like to suggest looking at the interior of one of the simple Brazilian houses of the early 20th century. Look at the lighting fixtures and compare them to those in the article: "A little light".