Vladimir Grigorievich Shukhov was born in 1853 in the town of Graivoron, in Kursk. When he was twenty-five, Shukhov moved to Baku to work on construction and engineering at oil deposits. There he became the producer and chief engineer of the first oil pipeline that was ten kilometers long. In the same year Shukhov developed the first "cylindrical metal reservoir for oil storage". The very next year, 1879, he patented an atomizer for black oil burning. In 1907 he became the chief engineer and author of the Baku-Batumi oil pipeline (883 km), and in 1928 Shukhov did the same for the Groznyi-Tuapse pipeline (618 km). He also invented the thermal cracking method for refining oil, which was patented in 1891. Without this oil refinement technique, which led to others, we could still be working with crude oil.
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| View from the base of Shukhov Tower |
Shukhov also pioneered the idea of using hyperboloid structure for towers, especially water towers. The shape had structural integrity, and thus was able to hold a fair amount of weight without using too much material; the designs happened to be beautiful, too. His tower design was also used in some of the first radio towers. Christian Schadlich says this regarding Shukhov's hyperboloid engineering: "Shukhov's structures finish the efforts of the XIX century engineers to create original metal structures and at the same time they show the way far to the XX century. They express a significant progress: the core lattice of the then traditional spatial trusses, leaning on the basic and auxiliary elements was replaced by a net of equal structural elements". Shukhov worked extensively on getting water to the cities, working on these superb water towers as well as pipelines and reservoirs.
http://journal.plastic-pipes.ru/sites/default/files/digest/2014/journal_digest-2014_68-72.pdf
http://www.shukhov.org/shukhov.html
http://cenews.com/article/9720/shukhovs-world
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