IsisCB Explore

Article ID: CBB970551513

‘A Tract That Is Wholly Sand:’ Engineering Military Environments in Libya (2016)

Heefner, Gretchen (Author)

Endeavour: Review of the Progress of Science
Volume: 40
Issue: 1
Pages: 38-47

URI: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016093271530017X

DOI: 10.1016/j.endeavour.2015.12.002

Outside Links

WorldCat

Google Scholar

JSTOR

Academia.edu

Technology and war; technology and the military Environment Engineering Libya United States. Army. Corps of Engineers

In the late 1940s and early 1950s engineers from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers constructed military facilities across newly independent Libya. This article examines how the local environment – namely the Sahara – shaped how these engineers planned for and carried out their assigned tasks. Though engineers initially hoped to apply experiences from the U.S. to things such as runway construction, they quickly learned that blowing sand, high temperatures and locust invasions could stymie their efforts. Engineers had to rethink what they thought they knew about things as mundane as concrete mixtures and wind-bearing loads. In doing so they created new networks of knowledge about building in hostile environments. Indeed, though long ignored in the scholarly literature on engineering, aviation and U.S. strategic deployments, the environment is everywhere in the documentary record about postwar military construction programs. This article, like the people it considers, takes the sand seriously. In doing so it also illuminates the surprisingly intimate ways that national security meets the everyday.

...More

Citation URI

https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB970551513/

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Article Daniel Macfarlane; (January 2020)
Nature Empowered: Hydraulic Models and the Engineering of Niagara Falls (/isis/citation/CBB743954854/)

Book Grathwol, Robert P.; Moorhus, Donita M.; (2009)
Bricks, Sand, and Marble: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Construction in the Mediterranean and Middle East, 1947--1991 (/isis/citation/CBB001212763/)

Article Gretchen Heefner; (January 2017)
“A Fighter Pilot’s Heaven”: Finding Cold War Utility in the North African Desert (/isis/citation/CBB630202577/)

Thesis Thomas, Mary Margaret; (2002)
Science, military style: Fortifications, science, and the United States Army Corps of Engineers, 1802--1861 (/isis/citation/CBB001562178/)

Book Traas, Adrian George; (2010)
Engineers at War (/isis/citation/CBB001212745/)

Article Porter, Theodore M.; (2007)
The Rise of Cost-Benefit Rationality as Solution to a Political Problem of Distrust (/isis/citation/CBB001022567/)

Book Edwin A. Martini; (2015)
Proving Grounds: Militarized Landscapes, Weapons Testing, and the Environmental Impact of U.S. Bases (/isis/citation/CBB786476557/)

Article Fairhurst, Charles; Anderson, Mary P.; (Spring 2014)
Emerging Issues in Earth Resources Engineering (/isis/citation/CBB362762943/)

Article Donald C. Jackson; (2016)
The Engineer as Lobbyist: John R. Freeman and the Hetch Hetchy Dam (1910–13) (/isis/citation/CBB185364045/)

Article Luminita Gatejel; (October 2018)
Building a Better Passage to the Sea: Engineering and River Management at the Mouth of the Danube, 1829–61 (/isis/citation/CBB779229466/)

Chapter Michela Chiti; Stefano Pagliara; (2023)
Da Firenze al mare: Leonardo e l'Arno tra ingegneria idraulica e visione territoriale (/isis/citation/CBB067098028/)

Chapter Maria Vittoria Cattaneo; (2023)
Il Naviglio di Ivrea da Leonardo a oggi. Storia, tecnica e territorio (/isis/citation/CBB477436316/)

Chapter Rossano Pazzagli; (2023)
Il tempo di Leonardo fra territorio e modernità (/isis/citation/CBB754005369/)

Article Anduaga, Aitor; (2014)
Earthquake Building Overseas: Military Engineers, Cyclonic-Seismic Affinity and the Spanish Dominion in the Philippines, 1860--1898 (/isis/citation/CBB001450025/)

Article Eike-Christian Heine; (2016)
Jenseits von Kultur und Zivilisation - Vereinzelte moralische Ansprüche an Technik und Techniker im ersten Drittel des 20. Jahrhunderts (/isis/citation/CBB896107104/)

Article Leslie, Stuart W.; (2006)
Engineering the Cold War (/isis/citation/CBB000671295/)

Article Bihr, Simon; (2013)
“Entkrüppelung der Krüppel” (/isis/citation/CBB001420953/)

Book Karl Ludvigsen; (2014)
Professor Porsche's Wars: The Secret Life of Legendary Engineer Ferdinand Porsche Who Armed Two Belligerents Through Four Decades (/isis/citation/CBB817135825/)

Article Carolino, Luís Miguel; Mota, Teresa Salomé; Figueiredo, Dulce; (2013)
The Portuguese Polytechnicians of the “Long Nineteenth Century”: Technical Expertise, Military Aspirations, and Political Disenchantment. a Preliminary Study (/isis/citation/CBB001321193/)

Book Martin, Thierry; Virol, Michèle; (2008)
Vauban, architecte de la modernité? (/isis/citation/CBB000954013/)

Comments

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}