This article was taken from the April 2014 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
These massive gates, soon to be installed in new locks in the Panama Canal, currently stand guard near the Atlantic entrance to the 100-year-old waterway. Built by Italian steel manufacturer Cimolai, each gate is nearly ten storeys tall, weighs 3,100 tonnes, and costs £21 million to fabricate, transport and install. Construction crews will wheel 16 of these monsters into the locks -- eight on each end of the canal -- where robotic transporters will fit them into their housings. It's all part of a projected eight-year, £3.2 billion plan to add a third lane to the canal to accommodate colossal "post-Panamax" container ships up to 49m in width and 366m long. When finished in 2015, the project will double the capacity of the only man-made interoceanic waterway in the world.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
