Word: meccano
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After ten years of work, Arcosanti is only 2% finished. With reason. A visitor stopping by at sunset wonders whether the dungareed construction crew, numbering fewer than 100 and now lounging around the grounds sipping beer, could get themselves organized enough to erect a Meccano set version of the Eiffel Tower. But Arcosanti's supporters are unconcerned that the city could take anywhere from 20 to 200 years to complete, depending on finances. "Look how many hundreds of years it took to build Chartres," says Riney Bennett, 26, a Stanford-educated civil engineer. "Arcosanti will be built, but without...
...outside, along with a formidable array of ducts, gantries, movable mezzanines and color-coded pipes for heating, electricity, air conditioning and fire control. Attached to one external facade is a huge escalator with transparent walls, illustrating Rogers' description of the center as a "really easy to understand Meccano machine." Inside is a series of vast lofts, each the size of two football fields, divided by movable partitions...
Courtial takes on Ferdinand as a "secretary" in a business that becomes the mecca for every meccano-minded nut in France. It is the world of popular mechanics fictionalized. Courtial himself is an idealist and charlatan, infatuated with the possibilities of lighter-than-air travel. For modest fees, he demonstrates balloon ascents to mobs of gawping yokels...
...Uncle Wells arrived always a little out of breath, with his arms full of parcels, sometimes rather carelessly tied, but always bursting with all manner of attractive gifts that ranged from the little pot of sweet jelly that is Mr. Polly to the complete Meccano set for the mind that is in The First Men on the Moon. . . . One had, in actual fact, the luck to be young just as the most bubbling creative mind . . . since the days of Leonardo da Vinci was showing its form...
...adored as a symbol of Paris. It has been visited by 18 millions. It has traveled worldwide by post card, is clearly imprinted on the mind's eye of a large part of the world's population. It has inspired countless little boys playing with sets of Meccano...