Leaders Survey 2020: Problems illuminated by pandemic, yet resilience still evident
COVID, child care, talent and racial equity identified as key issues
BY BUSINESS RECORD STAFF Friday, December 11, 2020 6:00 AM
Editor’s note: This is a continuation of our 2020 Leaders Survey coverage, which we began publishing in the Nov. 27 issue. Our annual survey asks business leaders to share what they feel are some of the top issues affecting business in Central Iowa, and in particular the Greater Des Moines region. As you read, you’ll see the responses and also select remarks from differing viewpoints from those who opted to leave comments as they took the survey.
i was lucky enough to be able to find, this is an original drawing that ericsson submitted to the french government for his original monitor in 1854. indeed, you can tell the basic elements of the monitor that we know and love is there. but already in the 1850s ericsson has this idea floating around about how to create this ultimate warship. as i said, the fear that is that you find in northern cities, especially the seaboard cities after the events of march the 8th is tremendous. that the fear is the merrimac is going to be showing up the next day in new york harbor or baltimore or philadelphia and that these cities will be either raised or laid under contribution. one of the easiest ways that some people at least first write in on is saying that we need to lock the merrimac in the elizabeth river, either lock her in or lock her out. and to use submerged hulks, stone boats, whatever, barges, to achieve this. prevent the ship from actually leaving its harbor and rev
federal government with these different suggestions that they have. as another correspondent put it, the whole yankee world is studying and contriving some method of destroying the merrimac. and certainly the panic that was felt in washington and especially in the eastern seaboard cities after the events of march 8th, 1862, was almost palpable. gideon wells, although he s certainly no fan of stanton, wells says in his diary and elsewhere, he describes how stanton is panicked, that he s afraid that the merrimac is going to sail up the potomac and shell the white house, that it s basically a game changer, that the entire war is going to be changed because of this invention. and indeed, the northern public were very fearful of this exact thing happening. another correspondent writes to lincoln saying that if the rebels by cunning or superior skill achieve in getting her to sea, the navy department will never be acquitted or forgiven and that the whole current of the war will
time. and you know, there s a myth that people say oh, there were 15 there were 50 patentable inventions on the ship. nobody actually went through and counted them. but isaac newton once came on board and said, wow, there must be 50 patentable inventions here. and that number has always kind of come down as the classic number. but there were a lot of very interesting modern pieces. some of them worked better than others. and again, it s possible that the rudder sorry, the anchor compartment, the hass hole in the rudder may have been one of the things that contributed to the flooding and the sinking. and we just heard also there was a new pump installed in the yard period. so there were a lot of new con triechbss, contrivances as they called it at the time. although the question of the speaking tube came earlier. every crew member s account said there was a speaking tube between the pilot house and turret but it was out of commission during the battle. nobody s really clea
thrust out of the prow of the vessel into the enemy. and my personal favorite among the ramming options was sent in by an individual who said that, well, what we need is a ram that has an attachment that once you make contact with the enemy the ram squirts out a flammable liquid. sort of like a venomous spider. you would ram the enemy and then set them aflame from within. the shells. the question also is why can t we just break through the merrimac s iron skin? now, of course, no one in the public knew that the navy had decided not to use the full powder charges for the monitor s guns. ericsson was furious about that when he found out and later was proven correct that had the navy used the full amount of powder that he recommended the shells would have gone through the merrimac s skin. but you have all sorts of northerners proposing different styles of shell, that bolts, steel-tipped shells. you have jay byers write in saying the way to break the hull or the plating is