The World’s Tallest Water Sphere

Whoops, I nearly forgot to mention that the latest issue of Weird N.J. (#32) has a nice article on the World’s Tallest Water Sphere.

Not only do they have wonderful color photos of the WTWS that you can carry conveniently on your next safari in Bostwana, you also get a colorful shot of the WTWS web master in full WTWS professor costume. It even has a glimpse of some of the fine models you can view when you visit the WTWS Museum in Austin, Texas.

On sale at newsstands everywhere from now until October, 2009. Please patronize this fine magazine and the many wonderful New Jersey topics they cover.

Many readers ask the World’s Tallest Water Sphere site, what exactly is a water sphere? What distinguishes a water sphere from a water spheroid? What is a water ellipsoid? What is the difference between a water tower and a water tank? Is the Union water tower, the world’s tallest water tower? To help answer these questions, the WTWS staff has journeyed to photograph some water towers in Manor, Texas.

A water tank is a container or vessel that stores water for later use. Water tanks come in many shapes and sizes, but most water systems have cylindrical or spheroidal shaped tanks. Typically they are filled by electric pumps that move the water to the highest part of the tank, and they are drained by the force of gravity moving water through outlets at the bottom of the tank. Most tanks are filled with treated water that comes from a well, river, or natural reservoir.

A water tower is a particular water tank that is taller than it is wide. Many water towers store water high above ground. This is done so that gravity pressure can move the water to any site that is lower than the tower, since water likes to flow downhill and seek a lower elevation. Many water towers have a bigger top than bottom by using legs or a large center post. This puts the stored water at a greater height than an equal-sized volume at ground level.

A water sphere is a type of water tower that has a large sphere at the top of its post. The sphere looks like a golf ball sitting on a tee, or a round lollipop. A cross section of a sphere is a perfect circle. A water spheroid looks like a water sphere, but the top is wider than it is tall. A spheroid looks like a round pillow that is somewhat flattened. A cross section of a sphere is an ellipse. Both spheres and spheroids are special-case ellipsoids: spheres have symmetry in 3 directions, spheroids have symmetry in 2 directions (east-west, north-south, but not top-bottom)4, and scalene ellipsoids have 3 unequal length axes.

Below are photos of three water towers. Click on the thumbnail photos for a larger view. The one to the left with the emblem of the Manor Mustangs is a water sphere. Notice the top of the tower is a sphere. It has a conical reinforcing collar below the sphere, but the roundness of the tower is clearly visible. The tower in the middle is a newer water sphere located at the Manor Technology High School. Although the middle tower also has a conical neck, the shape of the spheroid is visible. It looks like a flattened pillow. It is most clear when you look at the top of the tower, the outline is not a circle. The last picture on the right is a water spheroid at the Shadow Glen Golf Club in Manor. Once again the top is clearly not spherical. It looks flattened.

Most water towers made in the last 50 years are water spheroids and not water spheres. For engineering stability reasons, mostly due to a more aerodynamic shape in cross winds, new towers are almost exclusively the water spheroid type. And none are as tall as the Union water tower.
So for the particular type of water tank known as a water sphere, the Union water tower is the World’s Tallest Water Sphere.

Here is a colored pencil art work by David Wuethrich entitled “The Runner.”

In the background we see a “blue era” Union water tower prominently displayed with clear “Union” markings and the “dual halo” neck pieces. In the foreground, a runner follows an arduous path to the summit. The runner is dressed for summer, glasses and shorts, sweating and struggling to reach the top. A deckled edge surrounds the scene. The bright orange path, though clearly depicted and unhindered by obstacles, winds its way up a tall hill to the World’s Tallest Water Sphere.

There are many interpretations, but this is clearly a piece about striving to perfection. The WTWS is at the summit and the object of the struggle. The author reveres the World’s Tallest Water Sphere by placing it on the holy upper left of the piece, venerating the clean fresh drinking water and steady pressure provided by the tower. The hill is centrally depicted, and echoed in the mountainous deckled edge, but the path is long and ascending. The sylvan hill is in contrast to the actual setting of the WTWS. The runner is well prepared, but there is a long way to go. The skies are blue, but the runner has come a long way. Will he succeed? Or will there be a dehydrated body left at the foot of the mighty tower?

I found these photos at the World’s Tallest Water Sphere Museum offices. Unfortunately I have no notes on who submitted them, when they were submitted, or the people who are in the photos.

The first photo appears to be from the 1950s. A happy family gazes contemplatively upon a model of the World’s Tallest Water Sphere. The family is dressed up and appears to be ready for dinner. Behind them a lovely set of boats sits in the docks. It appears to be evening.

The second photo also appears to be from the 1950s. The setting is a school room. A teacher sits with two students at a desk. The teacher has palms upon the schoolboy’s head and the World’s Tallest Water Sphere. The teacher appears to be meditating.

If you know the origin of these photos, please email and let us know.

For people who want to flash secret signs for the camera, here is how you finger spell “WTWS” using American Sign Language finger spelling. I think it would be great if some of the photo submissions for the site showed you and your friends flashing the “WTWS” for your viewers and friends.

For those of us who are memory impaired and do not know ASL: the W is the three fingered salute, commonly used by sports teams to signal a “3-peat” or third goal or three pointer, the T is a fist with a captured thumb, commonly used with little kids and the “I caught your nose” game, and the S is the power fist, commonly used to signal “power to the people,” or “fight, fight, fight.”

Of course I think there should also be a plain sign language symbol for the World’s Tallest Water Sphere. I propose a hand signing symbol for the WTWS as follows. Present a fist and forearm, upright, in the shape of the World’s Tallest Water Sphere. Look upon the fist symbol in awe, in inspired gaze, recognizing the human accomplishment of tallness, sphereness, and fresh clean drinking water. Adorn the fist and arm with any jewelery in the appearance of the cell phone antennae, circular neck halos, or flashing warning beacons.
Awesome!

Photography and hand images are courtesy of the ASL University site.

I looked out across the river today
I saw a city in the fog and an old church tower
Where the seagulls play.
And all this time,
the river flowed endlessly to the sea.

Come with me on an epic journey from the World’s Tallest Water Sphere to the sea. For millenia, the site of the World’s Tallest Water Sphere has been connected to the sea. Our ancestors walked along the banks of what is now the Elizabeth River. Early New Jersey settlers dipped their canoe paddles in its waters. In 1964 we honored the site by building the World’s Tallest Water Sphere. What hath man wrought?

Today we drill and pump the waters of this site, process and store this life giving medium in the World’s Tallest Water Sphere, drink and quench our thirst from this tower, and hold and flush this effluvia from our body, for our rivers to carry it back to sea. And so the water connects you to me and we to the World’s Tallest Water Sphere.

So let us make like our ancestors and follow the course of the water from the World’s Tallest Water Sphere to the sea. Click on the map image above to view a navigable, annotated map. Follow the waypoints from the WTWS site to the sea. See the nearby roads and works of this journey. Read the history at each waypoint and get insight to our connection with our past and each other.

Sphere of Sauron

She writes, “One sphere to rule them all, one sphere to find them…” and to that we respond, “one sphere to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them.”

Yes, the evil plan of the WTWS is working. Yet another viewer has been ensnared. The image of the sphere, forever burned on her brain.

In a related story, riders on Route 22 have reported strange cloud formations, wind, lightning, a searchlight beam, and a sulfurous smell around the site of the World’s Tallest Water Sphere.

These colorful World’s Tallest Water Sphere proposals are sent to us from Gina Signorella-Arlen, formerly of Roselle Park and self-professed WTWS groupie. Not only the photo-editing, but the titles of her works include the ironic humor that many Jerseyans share.

I especially like the Zeppelin one, I am sure many Zeppelin album covers (e.g. Presence) would make for a good mash up image with the WTWS.

Reader Graham Gudgin shares his tuppence worth about the World’s Tallest Water Sphere in his blog An Englishman in New Jersey. He artfully compares and contrast the WTWS to another famous tower, The Monument of London. His insight is keen, and his writing is quite engaging. Throughout his blog are interesting anecdotes comparing life in New Jersey to that back in England.

Perhaps you have a favorite local attraction? Is it world class? Is it tall and unloved? Why not compare your favorite spot to the World’s Tallest Water Sphere, and I will post it here.

A few weeks ago we posted the Star Ledger Live story about the World’s Tallest Water Sphere and this site. In case you did not watch the video, there were 3 very creative proposals for a new paint scheme for the WTWS. I believe writer Brian Donahue mentioned that they are the creative works of Bumper DeJesus, Multimedia Editor for Ledger Live. In order to recognize the creative artwork of the Ledger Live team, I have made screen captures of the the three designs: Paisley, Stripes, and Smiley.

The Union water tower has not been painted in about 10 years. The readers of this site should consider what colors and paint schemes would be most appropriate. If you have an idea, please take one of the photos from this site and use your best photo editing skills to present your proposal. We will publish the best submissions here.

As many readers of this site are aware, the World’s Tallest Water Sphere connects us through time and space.

We are all connected to its past, evidenced in our relationships to the histories of the WTWS shared earlier on this site. We are also connected to its future, envisioning what will be, and molding and shaping what is to come under the influence of this mighty tower.

Similarly in place we are all connected. Those of us lucky enough to see the WTWS in person, have stood on its site, and become connected with each other and our ancestors through its presence. Those of us who have not yet visited the WTWS may do so one day, and become connected with those who have gone before.

Those of us browsing this site through the internet too are connected in a seemingly boring existence, rescued through the excitement and hopeful potential of the life under the World’s Tallest Water Sphere.

We have covered Life Before the Water Sphere - 1951, and now it is time to go way back to life in Union Township, circa 1880, before the Union Flagship, before Springfield’s Playland Park, before the World’s Tallest Water Sphere.

From the map, circa 1880, courtesy of the New Jersey Division of Public Records, you can see many of the same streets and features that exist in Union Township today.

The east-west line of Morris Avenue bisects the town. Stuyvesant Avenue and Vauxhall Road stretch out from the center and to the north. Chestnut Street and Salem Road cross at Five Points in the south.

Hard to believe, but Route 22 does not exist in 1880. How did they ever purchase their cell phones and flat panel digital TVs back then? Rather, Chestnut Avenue curves westward and merges with what eventually becomes Route 22. A D.W. Sayer lives near the Best Buy near Springfield Avenue. And K.F. Hantes sold his Route 22/Michigan Avenue spread to make way for the McDonald’s.

Serendipitously, some of the Union landmarks that exist today link us to the past. The Connecticut Farms Church is clearly marked, as is the Connecticut Farms Elementary School labeled “School No. 27.” The loop of Spruce Street junctions with Liberty Avenue and heads towards Springfield and the Rahway River. Caldwell Avenue shows the old Parsonage. Elmwood Avenue appears to be the home of J. Burnett, a relative of David G. Burnet (first governor of Texas)?

In the center of the map is the Union Branch of the Elizabeth River. This is the current home of the World’s Tallest Water Sphere. Curiously, the stream is labeled in pencil “Hammock Brook.” Nearby the current site of the WTWS is a Cider Mill, and downstream lies an Ice House. Follow the Hammock Brook upstream, and you see the it snakes through Kenilworth, under Chestnut Street and back toward Rahway and Morris Avenue, to its source under the current Jaeger Lumber store.

Reader Nina Dennis submits this beautiful view of Union’s wonder of the world from her neighborhood.

Nina says, “I thought I would send you photos of the World’s Tallest Watersphere as seen from my house. I can see it clearly from my sunporch in the winter when the leaves are off the trees.”

It’s a gorgeous view, lovely houses, and a comforting thought to live on a street over watched by the World’s Tallest Water Sphere.

The Star Ledger has another fine newspaper article on the World’s Tallest Water Sphere by Kelly Heyboer in her Jersey Blogs column. She interviews site owner and museum curator Dan Becker on the philosophical meaning of the WTWS, it’s role in society, and the incredible tallness of being. Click on the blog header to read the article.

There is also a wonderful photo by Jennifer Brown of The Star Ledger of the WTWS circa 2003. It has a great view of the now-defunct “World’s Tallest Watersphere” billboard from now-defunct Elizabethtown Water Company.

Where were you before the World’s Tallest Water Sphere existed? Since Union’s water tower was built in 1964, you would have to be at least 45 years old in the year 2009 to qualify.

The map circa 1951 shown above (courtesy the New Jersey Division of Public Records) reveals all sorts of interesting facts about Union township. (Click on the image for more details.)

First of all, the World’s Tallest Water Sphere did not exist. In fact the land that hosts the WTWS today, shows up on the map as “Sayre Park.” If you visually cross Morris Avenue, there is also park land. Today it hosts a Lowe’s home improvement store. Older readers might remember this as the site of “Two Guys” department store.

Route 22 with its islands and multiple U-turns is quite visible crossing the middle of the map. A dotted line through Kenilworth, Union, and northward through Irvington suggests the future site of the Garden State Parkway. Interstate Route 78 does not exist.

The familiar arteries of Chestnut Street, Stuyvesant Avenue, Morris Avenue, Vauxhall Road, and Salem Road are present. Five Points down south looks to be the ever present mess it is today. Notice Burnett spelled with two Ts. Vaux Hall spelled as two words.

The western most part of Union is filled with interesting historical bits. The Rahway River and the familiar bend of Liberty Avenue/Springfield Avenue lead to Route 22, but there is no Battle Hill School, no Rahway Avenue, no Hickory Road, no Pinewood Road. The many houses are preceded by the Battle Hill Golf Club. Imagine that, golf in west Union!

If you lived in Union before 1964, why not write this web site and tell us what life in old Union was like.

Today the Star Ledger Live reporter Brian Donohue covers the World’s Tallest Water Sphere, this web site, and the WTWS Museum:

If the embedded video does not show, here is a link to the Ledger Live story and a link to a Blip TV version.

The attached photo of the World’s Tallest Water Sphere was submitted by Gina (Signorella) Arlen, self-described WTWS groupie, formerly of Roselle Park. This is a very recent photo because the World’s Tallest Water Sphere now sports a flashing red beacon which makes it taller than last year’s World’s Tallest Water Sphere.

I like the angle of the WTWS in this photo. Obviously the tower has had a bit too much to drink there. The sunglasses must hide some other secrets. The new beacon is very becoming of the inebriated tower. Also I like the sun halo effect. It is the halo effect you see when you have a near death experience, and you wake up, and this is the first thing you see.

If you have photos or other artistic journeys involving the World’s Tallest Water Sphere, please send them in, and we will publish them as soon as possible. Also please let us know a little bit about the author and any experiences or connecting experiences you have to the WTWS. Thanks Gina!

Happy New Year for 2009! Featured at right is another wiggles animation of the World’s Tallest Water Sphere. (To see animation, your browser must support GIF file format and allow images to animate. For some browsers this is a configuration option.) The photo was taken on 2008-12-25 from the park near Kawahmee Lane. You can see it was a bright sunny day with clear blue skies.

You can also see the new construction on the top of the WTWS - a bright red beacon light. Not only does the new beacon signal and warn off airplanes and other air craft, but it broadcast subliminal signals for all to obey.

Look up during winter’s short days, and you might be lucky enough to see the World’s Tallest Water Sphere. Of course you must be somewhere near Union, New Jersey, and you must be looking sometime during the shortened daylight hours. The current “ghost gray” paint scheme of the tower goes particularly well with the gray skies and foggy winter mists.

Look again at this unusual photo. It is not the actual WTWS, but an incredible simulation. This is the latest model of the WTWS to enter the World’s Tallest Water Sphere Museum. The model is an HO scale (1/87th) plastic styrene model and stands over two feet tall. Notice the ghost gray paint scheme circa 2008. Note the array of five rings of cell phone antennas. Note the halo collars up near the sphere. The array of support hardware and antennas were particularly unique and required many feet of brass wire, styrene strip plastic, and epoxy to complete. Enjoy.

This exciting video is frightening to watch. Here automobile driver Paulo Ordoveza traveling through Union has videoed the World’s Tallest Water Sphere chasing a car. It is tough to see, but through the rain and the trees you see the WTWS moving along the road side and matching the speed of the traveling automobile. Several other automobiles with headlights on are seen fleeing the water sphere tower and exceeding the speed limit in order to escape. Beads of rain streak across the automobile glass as the driver evades under several overpasses, but the WTWS tower still keeps up with the car.

This video is being analyzed by the WTWS forensic team to try to detect signs of forgery. However, the forensic team has established that there is no evidence of photoshop or video tampering, and there is also no evidence that the WTWS is portrayed by an actor in a suit or other motion picture trickery.