Florida’s Big Dig

The invention and development of the Fiberglas boat would forever change the market for small recreational boats.  A boat manufactured out of wood was labor intensive and heavy by Fiberglas standards. It required exacting machinery and processes to produce a watertight vessel. So-called glass wool was developed in the 1930’s for insulation and other purposes by DuPont, Corning Glass, and American Cyanamide.  Research and development efforts to bring World War II to a close would result in the second material needed to make fiberglass or Fiberglas by the end of the 1940’s.

Along with the United States, Great Britain and France worked on the resin necessary to turn the lightweight glass  wool into a solid as strong as some metals.  Molding the product would eliminate the need for precision manufacturing of a leak-free solid.

This two-minute 1958 video by the British Pathe Company ironically shows British leadership in the first useful product made of fiberglass–the small recreational boat the middle-class could afford and wanted now that the war was over  Today, sales of small recreational boats dominate the marketing of all boats in the United States. Dedicated

Tap on this link for a two-minute film here displayed for educational purposes only.    http://www.britishpathe.com/video/fibreglass-boats

https://floridasbigdig.wordpress.com/2016/04/12/part-ii-water-water-everywhere-three-quarters-of-the-earths-surface/.

So far, I have published 450 posts beginning with several posts on my award-winning book, Florida’s Big Dig, the story of the Intracoastal Waterway, how four St. Augustine investors in 1881 agreed with the State of Florida to construct an inland waterway from Saint Augustine to Miami in exchange for public land.  By 1912, the Florida canal company built an inland waterway five-feet deep and fifty-feet wide from Jacksonville, Fla., to Miami, Fla. in exchange for the State conveying to the private company over one million acres of Florida public land from St.  Augustine to Miami and the right to collect tolls at six different toll chains stretched across the narrowest sections of the private waterway. By 1929, the federal government had taken over the perpetual maintenance of the waterway, agreed to widen and deepen it, and abolished the collection of tolls.  The State of Florida agreed to furnish and maintain the right-of-way land for widening the waterway and land for the deposit of spoil collected by the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers in enlarging the waterway.

From the Intracoastal Waterway, I published posts on historical and international canals like  the Panama and Suez canals, water management plans in The Netherlands, Florida rivers, lakes, lagoons, sounds, the Everglades and its restoration, Lake Okeechobee and its dike beginning in the 1930s, the ecology of our land and water, fauna and flora, Florida’s five water management districts under the Secretary of the Department of Environmental Protection.and the scores of drainage districts incorporated as political subdivisions beginning in 1915. One of the largest is the Lake worth Drainage District, which incorporates southeast Palm Beach County, a massive tract of land calledthe Palm Beach Farms Company, presided over by Percy Hagerman of Colorado.

I close this part with several posts on the private spacecraft program at Cape Canaveral and its effects on the Intracoastal Waterway when launches are scheduled.

https://vimeo.com/123164239  [Touch link to the left, which brings you to the movie, 6 minutes long. Start movie by touching triangle rotated ninety degrees to the right].  The video is beautiful, with background music but no narration. The video moves rapidly at ground level through the Everglades to the Ghost Orchid. The variety of flora and fauna touches upon nearly all one might encounter in a trek through the Big Cypress Swamp. The video’s factoid of a blooming once every two years is longer than most authorities dictate, generally one bloom during June and July every year.

In partnership with NASA, private SpaceX launched its second-stage payload to re-stock the Space Station while also landing its re-usable First Stage on a barge at sea off the coast of Cape Canaveral on Friday, April 8, 2016.

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Florida deer are unusually small as compared to the average American deer.

Undoubtedly, the Florida deer is protected from hunting because of their rarity.

Salt in their diet also causes dwarfism.