Does anyone know anything about the “Coral Castle” in FL? See: http://www.coralcastle.com
I think it truly is a feat of engineering but don’t buy all the hokey folklore surrounding its construction. That said, I still cannot imagine how this guy was able to do what he did. Anyone?
gives this thread a mighty whack to bump it up from the depths
I just found out about Coral Castle this past week, online. It’s got me curious too, but I thought I’d search before I started a new thread on it.
Anyway, I’m wondering the same things as Duffy. How did Edward Leedskalnin build it? Does anyone even have some plausible theories?
I was reading some of Leedskalnin’s writings, and he comes across as seriously wacked out - according to him, for example, electrons were made up. Everything is magnets. …So if I was just going by his literary output, I’d file him away with hollow-earthers, Whitley Streiber et al.. But in this case, a bunch of really heavy blocks have clearly been stacked up, somehow. So it’s a bit more interesting, even though I fear that the explanation may turn out to be disappointingly unesoteric (the old guy probably had a forklift hidden in his garage or something). But does anyone know for sure?
Oh, and has anyone been there, just out of interest? What’s it like? Those blocks aren’t styrofoam or something?
No, it’s real coral.
http://folkart.about.com/library/weekly/aa122800a.htm
I went looking for this remarkable statement from the Coral Castle home page:
The lyrics.
http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/6464/lyrics/sweet_sixteen.html
You tell me. Is this relevant?
The factoid “Billy Idol wrote this song for Ed” is repeated widely on the Web. I have no idea whether it’s actually true or not.
As for “how he built it”, there were 784 Google hits for “Leedskalnin”, and nearly all of them paid gasping homage to the man’s mastery of the ancient secrets of the pyramids. :rolleyes: Even the “page 2” of the above “Folk Art” link says, “Some people have said he must have used magic”.
My input, Erroneous, would be to say that I’ve watched plenty of those NOVA programs where they recreate the Easter Island statue-raisings, and build a trebuchet, and construct a (small) pyramid, and build a Roman bath, and I have a healthy respect for what human effort can accomplish with only hand tools and a block and tackle. How did he buid it? I refer you to the guy who moved an entire ship with only block and tackle. What was his name? Oh, yeah–Archimedes. 
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/discovery/bypeople/archimedes_01.shtml
How a block and tackle works.
From the Coral Castle home page:
So this wimpy little 90 lb. man knew how to use a block and tackle, and made darn sure that his neighbors never saw him using it. No mystery here, except that I’d sure like to know what it is about the Pyramids that gets everybody’s crank turning.
Just popping into this thread again to say thanks, DDG, and it looks like you were right on the money. http://www.coralcastle.com has just updated in the last week, with a batch of new pictures that haven’t been released before.
Evidently he did just use one big-ass block and tackle. Weirdly, the page still has all the “no one ever saw him at work” and “woooo it’s all such a big MYSTERY!” stuff on it. I think they might have to rewrite some of that now, although I wonder why they put up the pictures clearly showing how it’s built if they also want to emphasise the whole mystery angle.
I’ve been there a couple of times, I think it is fairly impressive, but not to the point where it’s a complete mystery as to how he did it; it was hard work, I’m sure, but not impossible, and not requiring any “lost knowledge” of the “secrets of the pyramids”.
I flipped through some of Leedskalnin’s essays on electricity and magnetism, and, as Erroneous mentioned, his ideas on that were pretty out there. My overall impression of the guy after visiting the place was that he probably wasn’t a well educated man, but did have a good intuitive understanding of the mechanics necessary to build a place like Coral Castle, while also having invented his own wacked-out theories on how things actually work, like electricity and magnetism.
About whether people saw him work, I think it’s true that he was quite secretive about it; I believe he had a tall wall surrounding the site so no one could watch him work. I have seen the pictures of some of the tools he used, but I imagine there aren’t many, and I doubt he ever had any pictures taken while he was seriously working on the place.
Some of the blocks of coral are huge, the largest being close to 30 tons, I believe. There’s also the famous 9 ton piece of coral set in place as a rotating door, which is quite nice.
And about Billy Idol’s Sweet Sixteen, I do believe the song was, in fact, inspired by the story. The video was filmed there, and there were pictures of Billy hanging out at the Coral Castle.
Finally:
That’s the way I feel about these things, too. I think a lot of it comes from the average Joe thinking, “Hell, that was 3000 years ago, people was stupid back then, not smart like we are now; I don’t see how they could have done it without help from them space aliens (or whatever)”. Basically, I think it’s just an insult to the ancient Egyptians (or whatever group of people you’re ridiculing at the time). Which is not to say the pyramids (and other things) aren’t impressive, they’re damned impressive. But how did they do it? They were damned smart, and knew what the hell they were doing, simple as that.