“The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery.”
―
Back in the heady days of the Leaning Tower of Dallas (now, sadly Long Gone) I had to stop by to see the thing up close, commune with a group of people (also, sadly, now long gone) and get my traditional leaning tower of Dallas photo.
While I was at the fence you see in the photo above, as close to the tower as was allowed, I noticed four objects hanging from cables on the side of the tower. “What the hell are those things?” I asked the people around me.
At first I thought they might be vending machines left behind and hanging by their electrical cords out over the void. That is sort of what they looked like. It looked like glassed in rectangular objects with stuff at the bottom. I imagined a vaporized break area on an upper floor with the vending machines left behind clinging for life against the concrete core. I imagined bags of chips and candy bars hanging out there for the birds and brave squirrels to plunder. I put the telephoto lens on my camera and took a shot.
A small group gathered around my camera to look at the mystery on the tiny screen on the back. That gave enough magnification to be sure they weren’t vending machines. At any rate three of them looked exactly the same. I was disappointed.
It’s obvious that they were some sort of electrical things that probably supplied power to the elevator shafts in some way. Relays and capacitors and transformers and such. They are hanging by the stout high-voltage cables that electrical things have attached to them. Still a mystery, but less of a cool one.
Hmmmm…. relays and capacitors? Sounds like their meaning still is in flux.
Oh yeah, that’s it… they are giant flux capacitors.