Word: shafting
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...Punched Shaft. The building, designed by Edward Durell Stone, is a shaft of polished Vermont marble punched by 1,472 portholes, its Venetian façade bent to the arc of Columbus Circle. Inside, is a giant staircase that spirals around the intrusive service core and fire stairs required by city ordinances, and makes landings at the galleries...
...builders go far beyond price. As a building rises, the tower crane hoists itself from floor to floor by means of built-in hydraulic jacks. It supports itself on the building's side or on a tower that runs up inside what will later become an elevator shaft. Its counterbalanced boom can deftly pinpoint a load anywhere on the construction floor, whereas crawlers, operating from street level, can only inch a load to the edge of the floor. And the tower's heights are unlimited, while the crawler can rise no higher than 35 stories without danger...
Puddle of Lava. The "Needle Reactor," as Adams calls it, will be placed in a shallow shaft before its nuclear reactor is allowed to go critical. Quickly the temperature will rise to about 1,100° C. (2,012° F.), which is hot enough to melt most rock. Because of the insulation around the midsection, most of the heat will flow downward; soon the lower point will be surrounded by a puddle of lava. The needle reactor will gradually drop into this plastic stuff, and the lava will close over it and solidify...
...eventually and luckily pierced the only spot in the gallery's roof that was solid rock. Just 103 hours after the eleven were heard from, the first of the miners emerged from the "rescue bomb," a sort of torpedo-shaped elevator that had been lowered into the new shaft with two volunteer rescue workers. Fifty-seven minutes later, all eleven were miraculously out, weak but unharmed after 13 days underground...
...inviolable innocence and unearthly faith in her father. In a scene of demonic intensity, Cust destroys and degrades her image of her father. He tells her, in effect, that to live in this world is to be hopelessly corrrupted. Elena commits suicide by throwing herself down the elevator shaft. "I've not touched her," mutters Cust, wiping imaginary blood from his hands. But she has touched his anesthetized conscience. Ironically, Cust is appointed to Vanan's post, but the final scene finds him climbing wearily, agonizingly up the stage-rear steps to confess his guilt to the supreme...