This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars.

There's this photograph tacked on the wall here in the studio.

It was taken in 1899.

The photo shows three men all wearing bow hats two of them in bow ties

They're looking dead on into the camera with this casual look of conquest

knees raised hands on hips, suspended midair on the lifted arm of a giant dredging machine,

a machine used to force the natural environment to bend to the will of humans.

Even if you don't know this image in particular,

you've seen images like it,

scenes of people standing around proudly,

looking good as they shape the earth.

What fascinates me about the pictures from this looking good as they shaped the earth.

What fascinates me about the pictures from this time

is that they speak to this moment

when there was a real sense of awe and reverence

for the marvels of civil engineering.

Now I don't mean to over-romanticize this stuff.

A lot of things we did for the sake of progress were ethically dubious, if not outright horrible.

There were mountains tunneled, hills flattened, swamps drained.

But the environmental impact notwithstanding, these feats of engineering weren't just amazing for their time.

They're amazing for our time.

The photo I'm talking about, the three guys in bowler hats on the dredging machine,

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