Word: steamingly
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Like the swimming test Mrs. Widener demanded and the Polaroid camera shape of the Science Center, the steam tunnels are a part of Harvard legend. A cloudy mixture of fiction and fact, their dimensions expand with each prankster's tale and their history grows more fantastic. One story tells of a sly undergraduate who, dressed as a workman, avoided the winter snows by travelling to classes through the tunnels. During the 1969 occupation of University Hall, another rumor has it, Harvard administrators escaped invading protesters by fleeing through the underground passages. Once upon a time, the wrestling team jogged through...
...truth is stranger than tunnel stories. Two-and-one-quarter miles of tunnels house the steam pipes that heat Harvard. They stretch from the Cambridge Electric Co. plant on Western Ave., Soldiers Field, to the Law School and the science labs. Buried in the depths of each House, and numerous Yard, Business School, laboratory, athletic and Law School buildings, is anentrance to this bizarre network. But the doors that guard these entrances are so well hidden that few undergraduates have ever seen the mysterious passageways...
Except the workers. Thirteen men serve under Daniel L. Campell, superintendent of Maintainence Operators, repairing leaks, opening and closing valves, and maintaining the steam pipes that run through the tunnels. None of the men works in the tunnels full-time, although occassional maintainance projects require some to stay underground for up to eight hours...
...easy work. The thermometers in the tunnels usually hover at about 100F, but temperatures as high as 120 have been reached. Supervisors must walk a tightrope between overheating the tunnels, which would make maintainance work difficult, and cooling them to the point where steam pipes lose their heat...
...tunnel's nerve center is a Honeywell Delta 2500 computer housed in the basement of the Science Center. The computer monitors temperature, steam flow and other tunnel functions. Supervisors work around the clock here, watching the computer and receiving calls that come from maintainance men throughout the tunnels by means of the intercoms and a separate telephone system located at intervals in the passageways...