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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Dear of troy: I'm not an engineer, but one of the most important properties of all ceramics and similar substances is that they resist compression very well, but are very vulnerable to elongation. I still remember a humiliation I suffered in seventh grade. The teacher asked me about the
shape of a dam. I said the concavity was directed upstream - exactly wrong!
Stresses to a serpentine wall are more likely to be
applied to convexity, causing compression, which it can
tolerate well.
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Joined: Sep 2001
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Too bad you hadn't lived here in farmland, wwh. There are dams to observe in abundance.  I, too, remember my seventh grade teacher in English who congratulated Jimmy Utley on having an 'ironic sense of humor,' and I wondered at the time what in Sam's hill she'd meant by it and what was it Jimmy had said that had won her commendation. Interesting information, of troy, as usual. I've done a bit more sleuthing on the topic and came across this fascinating entry because of its fascinating term that comes to us from those who would have made us colonists, and did : "Serpentine walls line the ten gardens between the pavilions of the inner lawn and the outer ranges of the academic village of the University of Virginia. The serpentine walls were designed by Jefferson after English "crinkle-crankle walls," which provide strength, efficiency of materials, and beauty." http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/jefferson/jeffrep.html
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Joined: Sep 2001
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Mav:
A question about your entry. The date does have me puzzled because there are two numbers that could be dates. Here's what you pasted:
1745 Franklin Drinker's Dict. Wks. 1887 II. 26 He makes a Virginia Fence.
"He makes a Virginia Fence," is preceded by 1887, and that, if a date, would be well beyond Jefferson's time, but what, then, of the 1745? I take the 1887 to be some particular kind of entry information. How should we read the '1887 II 26' information, all three parts: 1887, II, and 26?
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addict
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I was just wondering if the wind only comes from the one direction so the straight section of the wall is unaffected.
I'm not certain about this (perhaps DubDub can back me up), but I think the straight sections are much shorter than the serpentine ones, and they may even be standard double-thickness (but it doesn't look like it in the photo). I've never been to the campus, I just remembered those walls from Architectural History classes.
1745 is a few years too early for those serpentine walls
I know, I didn't mean to suggest that they might be responsible for the phrase, they just sprung to my mind more readily than the older style. Although TJ was pretty precocious, perhaps he was designing structurally interesting fencing as a toddler?
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Ah, they are pretty walls. The picture Jackie posted shows a serpentine wall much lower than the ones (the duplicates) Flatlander and wwh posted. I don't trust my visual memory for obvious reasons, but it does seem that the ones in C'ville were quite high and the brick was smoother somehow than in Jackie's photo link.
Back to 1745: It's obvious that Jefferson wouldn't have designed serpentine walls, and I would think that because he is so heavily credited with the ones in Charlottesville that we wouldn't expect to find those walls used throughout Virginia prior to his having had them built at UVA, as we seem to agree here.
So, that takes us back to the Virginia fence and what it may have been. Has anyone thought to google the fence itself? I haven't, but will soon.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Well, dubdub (or CC!), I think the date is clearly 1745, and I assume the later numerals are the quote's exact positioning within the volume identified.
In checking back in the OED, I also came across this:
Virginia fence, a rail fence made in a zig-zag manner...
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Ah! I know exactly that zigzag fence! It's a splitrail fence that does zigzag. Can't imainge why it needs to zigzag, but I does look like a drunk fence--or a fence drunkard! You do seem them over the countryside--and I'm thinking in the mountains...
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Dear WW: I'm pretty sure the first zig-zag fences were just logs piled at almost 90 degrees with a good bit of overlap, in a way that just the weight held them in place, and vertical posts weren't even essential, or if used didn't have to be driven very deep. If knocked down, they were
easy to fix. And they could serve as emergency firewood.
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Plus (WAG) if stock broke through, I reckon not too much of a length would require repair, whereas with a straight line construction a whole long section could get flattened in one hit. Definitely a thoroughly fensible solution in the homelands!
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