The Genius Design of Mount Rushmore

Sculptor Gutzon Borglum designed the 60-foot-tall heads of four presidents on the side of Mount Rushmore and supervised their construction from 1927 to 1941. Everyone who sees it asks "How'd they do that?" Let's take a look at the process of pulling those president's faces out of the sheer rock cliff face. It was far from easy. There was the problem of access, meaning they had to build roads to the site, and even harder, get power to the hydraulic tools used to carve the faces. And imagine the guys who had to spend eight hours a day hanging over the side of a cliff using jackhammers. An ingenious system had to be designed to tell the workers where and how deep to carve. The sculpture on Rushmore was never completely finished, but what was accomplished was a marvel of old-fashioned know-how. There's a 60-second skippable ad at 4:00, and the last half-minute is promotional. (via Laughing Squid)