Any contractor visiting the New York World's A Fair this spring may well wonder how the Unisphere – a glistening globe of stainless steel rising 140 feet-was put together. The men of U.S. Steel's American Bridge Division will be the first to admit that it wasn't easy. From an erection standpoint, the 120-foot diameter open globe, with meridians, latitudes, and continents, posed many problems. For men accustomed to working on the horizontal and vertical steel of buildings, the curving members of the sphere proved to be difficult to erect and hard to scaffold. Layout and erection were further complicated by the 23½-degree tilt of the globe's axis. And special short arc-welding methods had to be used to prevent distortion and discoloration of the steel.
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