Author Archives: John Julius

We spent most of our between-seasons break in Australia, so naturally the subject of our first episode of the season should be too! This engineering monument is the world’s widest and heaviest arch bridge and the world’s 7th longest spanning, it’s on the Australian National Heritage List and the New South Wales Heritage Register: the […]

Everyone loves a good mystery. This is probably why Stonehenge has captivated people’s imaginations for so long. Built and altered by pre-historic civilizations over hundreds of years, the myths and theories surrounding Stonehenge have grown far larger than the stones themselves. However, as Vivian will explain, anything is possible when people set their minds to […]

In engineering, every bit of progress is important — especially when it’s fraught with difficulties. The Kansai International Airport in Kyoto, Japan is the first airport to be built on reclaimed land and the people involved discovered that building on clay is not always as easy as you hope. However, thanks to some clever considerations, […]

Here’s one that turned out to be more interesting than John expected. Building a road seems like a pretty easy task, right? But imagine having to do it without proper equipment! Can you think of how to make it work? John sure couldn’t. But long ago in Ancient Rome, a clever proto-engineer figured it out […]

Get ready for a gross one. Believe it or not, the concept of safely transporting and disposing of waste is relatively recent; prior to the innovations discussed in this episode, people would just sort of get it as far away as they could and hope for the best. Needless to say that large cities like […]

In this, the very FIRST EPISODE of Measured in Metric, we explore the Panama Canal. Many still regard this project as one of the most impressive feats of engineering in the modern world, but its complicated legacy covers issues of worker’s rights, colonialism, economic ethics, national sovereignty, and environmentalism. We also get to talk about […]