The Panama Canal was a complicated thing to build. The Panama Canal is an artificial, man-made, water path. The canal separates North America and South America. It permits shippers of commercial goods.
The Panama Canal was built for many reasons. The main reason was to promote trading. The canal achieved this by lowering the distance it took to take cargo from one place to another. The canal also provided lower cost in travel of these goods. This made it easier and less inconvenient to ship goods. The last major achievement, and reason of building, of the canal was it lowered the time it took to take cargo from one place, to another. The Panama Canal caused a huge boost in trading.
The original owner of the Panama Canal was Société international de Canal. Three main engineers, listed at the end, worked on making the canal and figuring out how it would work; however, John Findley Wallace is the most credited. There are now two owners of the Panama Canal. Isthmian Canal Commission and Government of Panamá are the current owners of the Canal.
The Panama Canal took two building attempts, only the second attempt was successful. The first was made by the French in 1889. Not only did the Canal fail to be built, but in the process of the building the French lost an estimate of 20,000 people. The Panama Canal was eventually taken in 1904 by the United States of America. After the United States got Panama Canal, they began working on building it immediately.
Now we have discussed who built and who owns the Panama Canal, lets discuss how the actual Canal was made.
To build the Panama Canal, it took much time and work. They had to use heavy equipment to dig the canal and place the pieces. They had to built locks to lower the boats into the canal. After that was done, they had to dig the Culebra Cut. This was an area dug out of the mountains of Panama. When they made the Panama Canal they had to built dams to keep the water out of their way. One of these dams, Gatun Dam, was left to create an artificial lake near the Panama Canal. Many lakes were created by the making of the Panama, but that would be to many to name here.
The Panama Canal took ten years of work to build. The French had tried but failed, due to disease and other factors, then the United States took it over. They began work on it in 1904 and finished the building process 1914. The following are some of the main and most appreciated engineers of the Panama Canal: John Findley Wallace, John Stevens, and George Washington Goethals.
The Panama Canal is still in use to this day. It is mostly used for military transportation, rather then commercial use. The Panama Canal was expanded in 2016, which posed the problem of needing more water.
The Panama Canal still holds the largest and most difficult engineering project in the world.
