The Empire State Building

On my trip to New York last week, I visited the Empire State Building. The constuction of this was an amazing accomplishment.

The entire project was done in 1 year, 45 days. At the time, it was the tallest building ever constructed. The project involved 7 million man hours and up to 4000 people a day. It came in under the $50 million budget by $9 million. The construction began in 1930, during the Great Depression in the US.

The amazing thing to me is that this was designed and constructed before the days of computers. Everything had to be done by hand. I keep a slide rule around that had belonged to my father and the other day I was trying to explain to my daughter what it was used for. No scheduling tools or CAD programs to help build this monument, and yet it was a very successful project.