Tower

Related Topics:
Tower_of_Terror :: Towers_II :: Towers,_Josh :: Tower,_Joan :: Towers,_Tiffany :: Tower_of_Hanoi :: Tower_Hamlets :: Tower :: Tower_Hill :: Tower_Lakes

A tower is a tall man-made structure, always taller than it is wide. Towers are often built to use their height (for example, to keep watch, or to allow the sound of bells or radio signals to travel further); as landmarks to be impressive or beautiful; for ostentation or religious piety; or (from the 20th century onwards) sometimes to save surface area, as in the case of a skyscraper.

Skyscrapers are often not classified as towers, although most have the same design and structure of towers. In the United Kingdom, tall domestic buildings are referred to as tower blocks. In the United States, the now-destroyed World Trade Center had the nickname the Twin Towers, a name shared with the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur. A tower wagon is a mobile tower for construction work, firefighting, rescue work, window cleaning, filming. A railroad tower allowed railroad employees to view the tracks and switches near the tower; it now refers to any location housing interlocking equipment.

Etymology

Old English torr is from Latin turris via Old French tor. The Latin term together with Greek τύρσις was loaned from a pre-Indo-European Mediterranean language, connected with the Illyrian toponym Βου-δοργίς. With the Lydian toponyms Τύρρα, Τύρσα, it has been connected with the ethnonym Τυρσήνοί as well as with Tusci (from *Turs-ci), the Greek and Latin names for the Etruscans (Kretschmer Glotta 22, 110ff.)

History

The oldest towers in the United States are the Milwaukee City Hall, built in 1895 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and the Woolworth Building, completed in 1913 in New York City.

Design and structure

Most towers hold similar but varied designs, towers are always tall and often include an antenna or spire at the top.

Purposes of towers

Possible purposes of a tower:

being impressive or beautiful
saving surface area
for the view
- for tourism
- for guiding: air traffic control tower, in particular at an airport, harbor control towers at harbors
- for security against coming in or getting out: a watch tower at a prison, concentration camp, fortress/castle, border/defensive wall; in some of these cases also to fire from.
- for watching out for fire, especially in a forest (fire lookout tower)
for spreading light (light tower, lighthouse)
for spreading sound: church tower with church bells, minaret of a mosque, bell tower.
for showing the time (clock tower)
as storage for grain (storage silo)
for increasing communications distances: radio masts and towers
for use of the gravity (water tower, drop tower)
for meteorological measurements in different heights (measurement tower)
as part of a suspension bridge or cable-stayed bridge
for supporting power and signal cables (pylon)
for access to rockets in order to prepare them for launch (service tower, supply tower)
for the guidance of unguided rockets at launch (launch tower)
for physical experiments (drop tower, BREN Tower)
for testing elevators, as the Express Lift Tower
for parachute jump training (parachute tower)
for solar thermal power stations
for astronomical observations, tower telescope
as chimneys
for fixing nuclear bombs at tests (bomb tower)
for drilling in the ground (drilling tower)
in a swimming pool for jumping or diving from a height
for fun of climbing in it, for example on a children's playground
the tower of a high slide, for supporting it and with stairs for reaching the starting point
for gaining wind power
as support structure for aerial tramways ( aerial tramway support pillar)
to gain access for maintenance or cleaning, e.g. scaffold tower
for mounting thyristors in a HVDC (thyristor tower)
as a heat exchanger for an industrial plant, a power plant or large building air conditioning plant, a cooling tower
for attacking a walled city (siege tower)
to reach heaven (legendary Tower of Babel)
In Tarot, the symbol of Paradigms
for the production of bullets, a shot tower (German:Schrotkugel)
for ski jumping and ski flying
formerly, for drying of hoses in a fire station.

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Etymology

History

Design and structure

Purposes of towers

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