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TheCloudFestival t1_ixvv8xh wrote

The photographs of the works are crazy. Because they had to rotate the building they had to dig out a circular trench around the whole ground floor so none of the corners caught as it turned. As a consequence, the building's workers had to enter through a covered bridge that spanned between the pavement and whatever direction the building was facing at the time. For a while those workers had their own moat and drawbridge 😮

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OsmiumBalloon t1_ixxtwhz wrote

The thing that really impresses me is that they kept the telephone service providied from the building up. Thousands upon thousands of pairs of tiny wires -- one per customer telephone line -- all run into a building like that.

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FoodAccount420 t1_ixyg3e0 wrote

Water and gas too, apparently?

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TheCloudFestival t1_ixyiac7 wrote

Well it's more impressive when you realise this building was a working telephone exchange, and this was before automatic relays, so every single telephone wire running in and out of the building had to be turned 90° and lengthened a few hundred feet without loss of service.

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