e2history

Having provided therefore a large quantity of material of all kinds, he then built an engine called the helepolis, which far surpassed in size those which had been constructed before it...
- Diodorus Siculus 20.91

Upon the death of Alexander the Great in Babylon, his empire almost immediately collapsed into a series of Successor Kingdoms which warred among themselves for several generations. It was a time of zeal, excess, and ingenuity, as each of the successors sought to find some way to overcome the others and reunify Alexander's empire. By 305 BC a series of battlelines were more or less drawn. The power of the Antigonid holdings in Asia Minor and Syria*, formally a kingdom since two years prior, had been damaged by the catastrophic Battle of Gaza in 312 BC, but their fortunes seemed again on the rise. The Antigonid ruler, Antigonus I Monophthalmos, and his son Demetrios I, had largely rebuilt their army. Their fleet remained supreme since Demetrios crushed Ptolemy I's fleet at Salamis** in 306 BC. Late in the year, the people of Rhodes offended Antigonus by rebuffing his offer of alliance, instead tying themselves to the Ptolemaic kingdom. Antigonus ordered his son to teach the Rhodians a lesson. Descending upon the island with four hundred ships, Demetrios initiated the Siege of Rhodes.

The events of the siege itself, as described by Diodorus, make for incredible reading; the sheer scale of the battle awed the Hellenistic world and continues to do so to modern readers. The Siege of Rhodes, however, is best remembered for the Helepolis which Demetrios built. The Helepolis, which means Citytaker, was a tremendous siege tower, the likes of which had never been seen before. Diodorus provided a detailed description of the monster; since it is as complete as anything I would be able to write about the engine, I will simply quote the section:

"Having provided therefore a large quantity of material of all kinds, he built an engine called the helepolis, which far surpassed in size those which had been constructed before it. Each side of the square platform he made almost fifty cubits [22.5 metres] in length, framed together from squared timber and fastened with iron; the space within he divided by bars set about a cubit [45cm] from each other so that there might be standing space for those who were to push the machine forward. The whole structure was movable, mounted on eight great solid wheels; the width of their rims was two cubits [90cm] and these were overlaid with heavy iron plates. To permit motion to the side, pivots had been constructed, by means of which the whole device was easily moved in any direction. From each corner there extended upward beams equal in length and little short of a hundred cubits [45 metres] long, inclining towards each other in such a way that, the whole structure being nine storeys high, the first storey had an area of forty-three hundred square feet and the topmost storey of nine hundred. The three exposed sides of the machine [one would face away from the city walls] he coverd externally with iron plates nailed on so that it would receive no injury from fire carriers. On each storey there were ports on the front, in size and shape fitted to the individual characteristics of the missiles that were to be shot forth. These ports had shutters, which were lifted by a mechanical device and which secured the safety of the men on the platforms who were busy serving the artillery; for the shutters were of hides stitched together and were filled with wool so that they would yield to the blows of the stones from the [enemy] ballistae. Each of the storeys had two wide stairways, one of which they used for bringing up what was needed and the other for descending, in order that all might be taken care of without confusion. Those who were to move the machine were selected from the whole army, three thousand four hundred men excelling in strength; some of them were enclosed within the machine while otherswere stationed in its rear, and they pushed it forward [probably in relays], the skilful design aiding greatly in its motion." (Diodorus, 20.91)

The helepolis was, it is obvious, quite a piece of work, and must have struck friend and foe alike with awe when it began to move forward. The monstrosity was the apogee of Demetrios' career at siegecraft, and it earned him the epithet of Poliorketes (sometimes spelled Poliorcetes), meaning Besieger. What do we see about it? Well, first, it was gargantuan, larger than anything of its type ever before built. Second, it was very well-protected, covered with iron plating on just about any surface that could be struck. This not only made the helepolis a really, really big tank; it also made it surprisingly difficult to set on fire, which was the accepted method of coping with siege engines through history. Vulnerable parts, such as the shutters for the innumerable ballistae, catapults and archers which fired from within it, were padded against the blows of enemy artillery. The system of stairs within made for effecient supply and movement, and on top of it the entire thing could actually turn, which was something of an accomplishment for most siege weapons larger than a trebuchet.

Unfortunately, it was being commanded by Demetrios I Poliorketes, a man who, in Plutarch's words, was "more effective in preparing an army than in handling it." Demetrios thought that his tremendous siege weapon would overawe the Rhodians into surrender, but he underestimated the tenacity of the defenders. When the helepolis approached Rhodes' city walls, Rhodian troops sallied forth or boarded the engine from the walls (the sources are unclear) and managed get at the wooden structure, which was put to the torch. When the dust settled, Demetrios' spectacular siege engine was a twisted wreck, collapsed under the weight of its armor after the main structure had burned away, and the whole tower was abandoned to the defenders.

The Rhodians initially opted to keep the ruins in place, both as a sign of respect to the magnificence of Demetrios' siege operations and as a sign of victory for the defense of Rhodes. In the end, however, they had an even better idea. The helepolis was dismantled, and the scrap was used to build the Colossus of Rhodes.

* - Beyond this level of vagueness, the actual locations of the Successor borders any time before the Battle of Ipsus are so fluid that you'd have to be insane to try and peg them down specifically.
** - Not the Salamis, where the Persian Empire was defeated two centuries before, but a city on the eastern coast of Cyprus with the same name.

The death of Muhammad in 632 AD was but a bump in the Islamic wars of expansion and consolidation which he had begun ten years earlier. Under his immediate successor, Abu Bakr, the Arabs more or less completed the unification of Arabia and much of what is now Jordan. However, there was a problem with the situation: the Islamic territories had no further room to expand. To the west, south and east lay seas or oceans; to the northeast lay the Sassanid Empire, and to the northwest the Byzantine Empire loomed. Either empire could, it was likely, crush their young neighbour in most circumstances. However, Kushrau II and Heraclius had just completed a ruinous war which seriously weakened both kingdoms. With their economies ruined and armies battered, they were ripe for outside invasion precisely as the Arab armies were approaching their borders.

By 636, the Arab armies were skirmishing with the Sassanid frontier garrisons. A terrible defeat at the Battle of the Bridge in 634, probably near Kufa, caused them to seek a weaker frontier to probe at. One was found in Syria. In 634, Khalid bin al-Walid, one of the greatest of the Arab generals, entered Byzantine territory by crossing a desert expanse from Palmyra to Syria with a small force of perhaps eight hundred men. (The crossing itself is one of those things which fascinates scholars of military history, as the desert in question was considered impassable at the time.) In a six-day march, the desert was crossed and Khalid's men struck into Syria, routing the Ghassanids in the area on Easter, defeating local Byzantine garrisons at Ajnadayn and Pella, gathering a larger army through more conventional march routes, and generally making a nuisance of themselves.

With the fall of Damascus, the emperor Heraclius finally decided to react. Gathering a large, polyglot army of Greeks, Armenians and others, the emperor advanced south to confront the Muslim invasion near the river Yarmuk, on what's now the border between Jordan and Syria. They confronted an Arab army under Khalid's command, and the battle began.

The Battle ofYarmuk presents both opportunities and problems for historians. It is one of the only battles - okay, the only battle - of the early Islamic period that is documented well enough to reconstruct in something resembling detail. However, problems abound in the primary sources, due to the tendency of Arab historians at the time to make much use of hyperbole and exaggeration to make their victories - impressive as they are - seem even larger. As an example, one such historian, Al-Baladhuri, claims that some 12,000 Muslims fought 200,000 Byzantines, who were so terrified at their presence that Heraclius had to chain his soldiers together to keep them from fleeing. Obviously this was not the case, and it is far more likely that a Muslim army of some 20,000 men was facing a Byzantine force of 20-25,000, possibly 30,000 at the outside.

The lineup of the two armies was fairly standard. Each had its centre, left, and right wings arrayed over a line perhaps two miles long.* The initial phase of the battle was a Byzantine general advance across the Wadi'l Ruqqad. The Muslim army under Khalid cautiously pulled back at first, possibly due to their overextending their own line of battle. The battle began in earnest with the Byzantine left wing assaulting the Arab right, which used a feigned retreat to draw them further ahead than they should have gone. As a result, some of Khalid's cavalry managed to drive a wedge between the attacking Byzantines and the rest of their army. In the ensuing melee, the Arabs siezed the one bridge across the wadi, cutting off the Byzantine retreat, and proceeded to surround and absorb the Byzantine left wing. With the loss of roughly a quarter of their army in one blow, Byzantine resistance quickly crumbled. The cohesion of Heraclius' army collapsed; with their backs to the steep banks of the wadi (the opposite bank of which was now held by Khalid's forces anyway) and surrounded on all sides, the panicked Byzantine army was largely destroyed.

One of the unusual things about the Battle of Yarmuk was its relative mundanity. Many of history's battles are remembered for some particular characteristic, whether it be a spectacular strategem like at the battles of Cannae or Austerlitz; a stroke of dumb luck as at Marathon or Midway; or instances of particular heroism or daring as at Thermopylae or Balaclava. Aside from the significance of the victory itself, Yarmuk was a fairly ordinary battle. The two armies used fairly typical forces of spearmen, swordsmen, archers and cavalry, lined them up in a standard manner, and fought a conventional battle in which Khalid emphatically came out on top. Khalid's other campaigns show that he is a military genius, but in this case the credit seems to fall as much to his soldiers as to his generalship. The Muslim army, simply put, outfought the Byzantines mano a mano.

The larger significance of the battle is that it essentially annihilated Byzantine power south of Asia Minor. The destruction of Heraclius' army - the emperor himself survived the battle if he was even on the field - allowed the Muslim armies to rampage through Syria, Palestine and Egypt, all of which had fallen by roughly 642. With the Byzantine emperor hiding on the far side of the Taurus Mountains, the road had been opened for Islamic expansion into northern Africa, which would eventually take the caliphates to Spain and beyond. On top of the rout at Yarmuk, another Arab army under command of Sa'd bin Abi Waqqas fought the Sassanids again at Qadisiya - at roughly the same time as the Battle of Yarmuk - and crushingly defeated them as well, leaving the way open for the Battle of Nihavand eight years later.

In the space of a few short months, much of the military power of the two great empires of the Middle East lay in ruins. Medina had broken through a wall separating Arabia from the rest of the world. The stage was set for one of the most astonishing military expansions in history.

* - My use of the terms "left" and "right" are from the point of view of the Arab army. The Arabs' left wing faced the Byzantines' right, and vice versa.

A little known chapter in American History.

In the summer of 1918 an Allied expeditionary force consisting of British, French, Italian, Canadian, Chinese, Japanese, and American troops was deployed to Siberia to intervene in the Russian Civil War. The mission of the Allied forces was ostensibly to secure the safe evacuation of the Czechoslovak Legion, a unit of approximately 10,000 Czechs and Slovaks who had deserted the Austro-Hungarian army to fight for Czarist Russia in hopes of securing independence for Czechoslovakia. Following the Russian withdrawal from World War I in 1917, the Legion found itself without a war to fight and was given permission by the Bolshevik government to leave Russia via Siberia to fight for the Allies on the Western Front. While marching across Russia, the Legion was caught in the middle of the battle between the White and Red armies for control of the Trans-Siberian Railroad, prompting the Allied intervention.

By the time the Allied forces arrived, however, their stated objective had essentially already been achieved by the Czechoslovaks; the legion, in cooperation with the White army, had captured the entire Trans Siberian Railroad themselves, were now fighting with the Whites against the Bolsheviks, and no longer seemed at all inclined to leave Siberia for the Western Front. Nevertheless, the Allies remained in Siberia despite the obviation of their original objective and themselves became embroiled in the fighting against the Bolsheviks, in accordance with their unstated objective of limiting Bolshevik influence in eastern Russia and Asia. The Americans remained in Siberia through 1920, and the Japanese did not withdraw completely until 1922.

The Japanese were by far the dominant partner in the Allied expedition, fielding 70,000 men in Siberia while each of the other participant nations only deployed a few thousand men each. The United States for example, sent only two regiments and some miscellaneous smaller units in a force totaling just under 5,000 men. Moreover, the Japanese commander, General Onaka, was a four star general and thus as the highest ranking Allied officer in Siberia, considered himself empowered to give orders to the other Allied commanders. At least initially, the Japanese directed the intervention; American units found themselves moving according to Japanese orders and in some cases American soldiers fought in the field in mixed units under the direct command of Japanese officers. However, as the intervention progressed and perceived Japanese failures mounted, the American commander, Major General William Sidney Graves, increasingly resisted Japanese authority.

The years between 1918 and 1920 appear to be a somewhat unique period in the history of US-Japan relations, one of the only times the United States and Japan found themselves allies working together for certain common goals. Following Japan’s successful modernization and impressive victory in the Russo-Japanese War, Japan had earned America’s respect but had not yet attracted her enmity. Just twenty years later they would be mortal enemies.

After returning from Siberia, Graves wrote a history of the expedition, America’s Siberian Adventure.

Introduction

Chronologically, the history of the Soviet economy between the Revolutions (that is, the October Revolution and the Stalinisation of the country) is: state capitalism until 1918, an attempt to instigate full-blown Communism that falls down in 1921 (War Communism), then a gradual retreat under the New Economic Policy. The latter was increasingly attacked from 1926, by which time the economy had recovered, because it was believed it would lead to the re-emergence of full-blown capitalism. Stalin's forced collectivisation of Soviet agriculture began in 1929.

The following is a discussion of how the state sector performed vis-a-vis the free market during the 1920s.

Did Soviet economic policy in the period 1917-30 demonstrate the strength of a market economy over one controlled by the state?

Soviet economic policy underwent two large transformations in the period under discussion. The first was the imposition of the measures that were retrospectively known as War Communism in the period after the October Revolution and before 1921. The second was the retreat that characterised the years after 1921, when the market was allowed to function to a greater extent than during the War Communism years. Whether War Communism was embarked upon for ideological or practical reasons, it was hoped that it would raise productivity and reinvigorate the economy. The measures were continued after the Civil War had ended, and by the spring of 1921 they had demonstrably failed to achieve their goals and contributed to the national crisis of 1920 – 21, most notably the famine and the workers’ strikes. By 1920, overall large-scale industrial production was 18% of the 1913 level and the productivity of the average worker was at 26% of the 1913 level. Although the First World War had taken its toll, most of the decline had occurred since 1917.

After the New Economic Policy was adopted the trend was quickly reversed, and industry was returned to its pre-war levels by 1925/26. The NEP demonstrated that a market economy was the only way to stimulate production and marketing of grain as it allowed the peasants to respond directly to demand and hence increase the amount of grain they marketed because they got a better return. The free movement of food into the cities allowed wealth to be created there by industry and standards of living to improve. In many ways the Bolsheviks had been handed a fait accompli, as workers had been mostly staying alive off the market during the War Communism years anyway.

Russia was not the only belligerent country in World War I in which a grain monopoly existed, and production had not been deterred too much by 1917. The Provisional Government had compensated the peasants in rapidly-decreasing rubles for their surplus, and hence production did drop as the peasants saw little point in sowing crops that would not bring them much economic gain. The other related problem was one of marketing – peasants didn’t have an incentive to market the produce they grew, because they would not receive economic compensation, either in increasingly worthless money or consumer goods, of which there were few available. The peasant communities began to turn inwards and resort to cottage industry to obtain their manufactures.

Faced with the intransigent peasant, the Bolsheviks felt they had to dispense with the niceties of state capitalism and resort to violent requisitioning. By declaring all surplus grain to be state property they destroyed the incentive for the peasants to produce any surplus at all. This was an inherent problem in establishing a planned economy in Russia at the time. Deprived of their property rights, the peasants were hardly likely to produce grain for the intrusive state out of goodwill. The opportunity cost of growing grain was too high, and it made more sense for peasants to produce other crops that could be sold on the black market at a higher price.

As the peasants were understandably reluctant to part with their property for a state they felt estranged from, the Bolsheviks found it necessary to employ coercion in extracting the grain from the villages. This was not inherent in the concept of state planning, but it was believed to be unavoidable in light of the circumstances at the time. With the former proletariat rapidly fleeing back to the countryside away from the starving cities, fast action was needed to keep the Bolsheviks' social base intact. Economic growth and capital accumulation was only possible in the cities if workers could be kept fed. But War Communism proved itself inimical to this goal, and the amount of food reaching the cities decreased every year. The regime found itself locked in a cycle of coercion, evasion, then more coercion. It was in an apparently unsolvable situation – without industrial production it had nothing to trade with the peasants, but without grain there could be no industrial production.

By 1921 it was blatant that continued state coercion was not the way to solve the problem – there was simply no more grain to take. State planning need not necessarily have failed, but the Bolsheviks had run into two problems that often confront state planners: inefficiency and incompetence. Incompetence because very few of the officials in charge of the various state planning bureaucracies had experience with economics, and inefficient because of the bloated staff that filled them. These agencies were a huge drain on resources, absorbing 78.5% of the budget by 1921, but achieving little.

Even under War Communism, as the state infrastructure was increasingly failing to deliver the goods, the market proved its strength. It was impossible to live off the official state ration for most of the period, and the majority of food came from the black market. After the Civil War was won and the grain-rich areas of the Caucasus and the Ukraine were captured, it was assumed the food crisis could be solved and the markets in the cities were cracked down upon thoroughly. However, by further decimating the apparatus of the free market, the state contributed to the famine crisis that followed and the massive unrest that swept the country as a result. Even nationalised industry had come to rely on the free market for its goods and raw materials, as state infrastructure was simply incapable of delivering the fuel and goods needed. Piece rates had also been brought back into use in some state concerns. Piece rates make it economically rational for a worker to increase his productivity for his own gain, and are thus a capitalist mode of remuneration. Rationing does not stimulate productivity because a worker will receive the same amount of remuneration whatever his output. Absenteeism soared and productivity declined as workers decided it was more economically rational to produce goods for the black market than for the state sector, again proving the vitality of the market.

However hard the state tried, it could not stamp out the market. The nature of capitalism is that it needs no particular sanction to spring up; it simply needs people to be left to their own devices. Soviet control of the country was not sufficient to stamp out the market, and nor could they really do without it – a planned economy must be exceptionally competent to replace the market. When the NEP declared the imposition of a tax-in-kind to replace the grain seizures and allowed the peasants to dispose of the surplus as they wished, it was really only retrospectively recognising the reality. The hunger in the cities made the legalisation of free trade necessary, too. There was now a real motive for peasants to produce more grain and for people to supply this grain to the cities – they would themselves grow rich by doing so. Rational economic planning is only possible in a relatively stable environment, and the peasants now found themselves in one – they knew their market and could attune themselves to it without risking losing everything through confiscation by the state.

By 1926 grain production was at pre-war levels, and the production of industrial crops had reached pre-war levels in 1925. By this time three quarters of all trading was controlled by the 'Nepmen' – private entrepreneurs. The state remained in control of large-scale industry, which had declined the most during the War Communism years. It was able to turn itself around because small-scale industry and the production of industrial crops were reinvigorated by the return to the free market, and hence able to supply the larger concerns. The state was not able to find a substitute for low-level entrepreneurship, and even when it had declared itself the owner of small-scale industry de jure it was never in effective control.

A stable currency is an important aspect of a market economy, but socialist theorists have speculated that it would be possible to run a planned economy without money at all. Hence at first the Bolsheviks heralded the hyperinflation of the ruble as a victory. Yet by 1924 they had reinstated a money tax on the peasantry and made stabilising the currency as one of the major goals of NEP. Although bartering had become common during the period when the currency was worthless, the advantage of money is that it allows value to be measured in discrete common units and so makes the calculation of revenue and costs much easier. Private trade flourished much better with a stable currency, as it allowed people to weigh up the pros and cons of their economic decisions. In doing so they aimed to maximise profit and hence stimulated the generation of wealth and the growth of the economy. It also allowed the Soviet state to finally balance its budget, which allowed it to engage in rational long-term planning. Once a certain degree of stability was attained it was decided that further capital accumulation would require the collectivisation of agriculture, but it would not have been feasible to contemplate this ‘revolution in the countryside’ without the stability provided by the workings of the market.

In the latter years of the 1920s NEP ran into difficulties, but these can be blamed more on state interference than the market. As the state controlled the railway network and large industry, it was able to squeeze the smaller manufacturers by increasing the prices it charged for essential goods like fuel, or by increasing the surcharges for transporting goods. As a major procurer of grain, the state also paid the peasants prices which bore no relation whatsoever to market forces. Although the peasants knew they were guaranteed a return on grain sales to the state, they preferred to turn elsewhere. They would sell the grain on the free market instead, or turn it into fodder for livestock because meat and dairy products fetched a high price. The state sector was once again been confounded by the market because the latter did not respect market forces nor seek to accommodate them. There was again a procurement crisis, to which Stalin responded with coercion.

Although collectivisation was not announced until 1929, NEP experienced a downward spiral after 1926. The Bolsheviks were faced with two choices. They could either seek to crush the petty-bourgeois spirit of the kulak which they believed caused them procurement difficulties; or they could deregulate further to encourage the market to stimulate grain marketing. The latter option was not compatible with building socialism, and so pressure was increasingly put on the market and private traders were squeezed. Industrialisation and urbanisation would require the peasantry to be squeezed and collectivised into larger blocks than the twenty million individual households they were currently in – clearly, with this goal in mind, the state was not likely to countenance the continuation of the free sector of the economy.

The strength of a market economy was amply demonstrated by the speed with which it returned Russia to pre-war levels of output in both agriculture and industry in the early 1920s. If there were problems of marketing then private traders could go some way to solving this problem, but the state could have played a more constructive role. By having a monopoly over long-distance infrastructure the state was able to charge what it wanted for private traders to transport goods, and by having a control over the 'commanding heights' of industry it was able to decide the fate of small manufacturing concerns by determining prices of important commodities. Had the Bolsheviks not distrusted market forces on principle they might have recognised that a relatively benign state capitalism which dealt in prices responsive to the market was the best way to ensure capital accumulation and economic growth.

When massive growth did finally come from the state sector of the economy it was through the re-application of the methods of War Communism – coercion and forced labour. Unlike in the War Communism period, the state this time proved strong enough to pull it off, but with great human cost.

Bibliography

Richard Pipes, The Russian Revolution: 1899 – 1919 (1990)
Alec Nove, An Economic History of the USSR (1976)
L.H. Siegelbaum, Soviet State and Society Between the Revolutions, 1918 – 1929 (1992)
R.W. Davies, M. Harrison, S.G. Wheatcroft (eds.), The Economic Transformation of the Soviet Union (1994)
S. Fitzpatrick, The Russian Revolution 1917-32 (1994)
R. Suny, The Soviet Experiment (1998)
Orlando Figes, A People's Tragedy (1996)

Near the Exploratorium in San Francisco, California stands a "Roman" ruin. Originally constructed in 1915 for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition held to celebrate the completion of the Panama Canal.

The architect responsible for the structure said that in addition to creating a beautiful focal point for the Exposition, the Palace was created to demonstrate "the mortality of grandeur and the vanity of human wishes." It consisted of an exhibition hall which held the work of many living artists (largely dominated by the Impressionists), a colonnade, and the rotunda. Near the structures a lagoon was created as a reflecting pool to add to the artistic effect of the buildings. It was designed in a loose corinthian style, and like the art it contained, was a free-spirited and romantic interpretation. The rotunda was decorated with paneled reliefs by Bruno L. Zimm, and the colonnade was adorned with weeping figures (thought to symbolize the woe of life without art) created by Ulric Ellerhusen.

The Palace was intended to be a fairly temporary structure. Though it was built on an atypically strong steel structure, the majority of the exterior was created with staff laid on a wooden structure. This created the desired faux-marble appearance, but meant that the palace would not last much longer than the Exposition it was built for.

Almost immediately after the close of the Exposition (December 4, 1915), the Fine Arts League was formed to raise money in order to preserve the Palace. It was used to exhibit art for many years, and the fading murals were replaced during the Great Depression. Unfortunately the League was unable to do any more, and bizarre things like lighted tennis courts started to appear in and around the Palace. Without funding, the palace was reduced to ruin, and was deemed unsafe for public use. It was requisitioned by the Army during World War II for supply storage, and then was used as motorcade parking by the United Nations.

Oddly, a new motion was started in the late 1940's to preserve the Palace in its current ruined state. The original architect did not support the idea, instead wanting the entire structure save the rotunda to be torn down, and redwoods to be planted to enclose the degenerating dome.

Neither of these plans were seen to completion. In 1957 a new plan for full restoration was formed. In 1964 the structure was demolished, and plans for reconstruction started, with projected costs at ten times the original budget used in 1915. The new plan was to use light-weight concrete to recreate the entire structure, sculptures and art included.

In 1966, the new Palace of Fine Arts was completed. Though the colonade and rotunda were reopened with great fanfare, the exhibition hall remained empty for a number of years. In 1968 Frank Oppenheimer came to San Francisco hoping to create a museum of science, and the city's Park and Recreation Commission approved his plan to use the Palace's exhibition hall in August of 1969. In September of the same year, the Exploratorium opened its doors, and since then it has become one of the world's most successful educational science museums, drawing tourists from every corner of the globe. The Palace is now one of San Francisco's most popular tourist attractions, and receives city funding to ensure its preservation.

<sub>If you're interested, pictures of the Palace of Fine Arts are available at the first source cited below.

Sources:
http://www.exploratorium.edu/history/palace/
sanfrancisco.about.com/cs/museums/a/exploratorium.htm</sub>