Military history professor Christopher Gabel discusses the importance of railroads and Steam Powered locomotives to the union and confederate armies and explains how railroads made the scale of the civil war possible and describes how and why the confederacys powerful Railroad System broke down as the war progressed. The Kansas City Public Library hosted this hourlong event. Thank you very much for the kind introduction and for being here. Folks, you know when we look back at the onset of the american civil war, we view it through the lens of the war, itself. That shapes what were looking at. If you view the onset of the civil war a little more objectively instead of being all seeing all of the differences between north and south, youll tend to spot all the similarities. Think about it. The two sides in this conflict. It was a war of brother against brother and in some cases literally so. The two sides shared a common language. They had similar cultures and religions. They shared a ver
Advantage for the north, maybe that statistic is not really important either. Its whether or not the railroads actually were that significant in the conduct and outcome of the civil war. And if the answer to that question is no, we can save a lot of time here tonight. Ok. Well, this is the game changer right here. Water turns to steam and expands 1600 well so what . People have known this for thousands of years. Ok . Well, in the 1820s somebody figured out how to take that expansion and turn it into forward motion. You collect excuse me you collect the steam. You send it down to a piston. The piston drives the rod back and forth. The wheels go around and around and it goes forward. All right. So what . Well, here is the so what. With a Steam Powered locomotive pulling a train, you can carry more cargo farther on the same amount of fuel than you can by muscle power. A sixmule wagon carrying 1 1 2 tons of cargo can go roughly 333 miles on one ton of mule fuel. So you multiply 1. 5 tons t
War it self. That shapes what we are looking at. If you view the onset of civil instead oftively, seeing all of the differences between north and south, you tend to spot the similarities. Think about it. , a two sides in the conflict war of rather against brother in some cases, literally so. The two sides shared a common language. They had similar cultures and religion. They shared a similar political philosophy. The north and south employed virtually the same weapons, used the same tactics, their top commanders graduated from the same military academy. Union put an army in this war, the confederacy put an army as well. Large, bute been as an army is there nonetheless. In other words, this is a surprisingly symmetrical war. In fact, it is hard to think of a more symmetrical war. Data such as these, which you have all seen . You have seen figures like this showing the resources of the north and the south in everything except cotton. Well, folks, i put it to you. If these statistics were
This hour. Cecily tynan has an update from accuweather and eva pilgram with tips with coping with the weather, lets begin with Sharrie Williams at the big board, with a look at the staggering snowfall in buffalo, new york. We are talking six feet of snow in parts of buffalo, and they are giving you the scope of the storm we are talking about. This is an aerial photo showing how a lakeeffect snow storm blanketed the city that normally shrugs its snow. Forecasters say that buffalo will receive a years worth of snowfall in three days, it has paralyzed the buffalo area, the normally busy interstate 90 was buried under 5 feet of snow and its blamed for seven deaths, three of those victims died from a heart attack while shoveling snow and officials in new york are preparing for the possibility of even more snow and they have one message for residents, stay at home. Please do not be fooled by the beautiful sunshine, there is still tremendous amounts of snow on the ground in south buffalo. A t
Love with eniac. He knew what it could do. Then it was this very wonderful thing where he taught clarie how to program it. There was a debate of who so what first, but somebody saw that they were designing the institute machine and writing code for it. But the machine was not ready. Someone said, we can rewire eniac and run programs on the eniac. They spent six weeks rewiring it and getting it to run. That was the origin of modern software. And that was such a fruitful time. So it was a mixture of their marriage, the coding. And she had no training whatsoever . She did have training. During the war, when johnny went off to england to do what, we do not know . She was left behind in princeton. Women could apply and get a wartime job. Hers was at the center for Population Research at princeton university. Her job was modeling populations of people. What would happen if you created a new state in the middle east or something . They model growth of population. That is what you needed to so