Notre Dame

[eclark1894]

Actually, inflammable means "easily set on fire". It was a point of confusion to me when I was young, but this is the correct use of the word, and the correct word to use.

Dana

I had to go look that up when you pointed it out. I found this:

However, every once in a while we come across a pair of words that it really would be better to not confuse. A fine example of this is flammable and inflammable.

Looking at similar words, it is clear that such matters could be very simple; after all, combustible means “capable of catching on fire and burning you to death” and incombustible means “this thing is safe to play with matches around” (more or less). Yet flammable and inflammable both mean “able to be set on fire.” Why in the world is this? Do the language gods have a cruel streak?

There is a fairly clear reason for why both these words carry the same meaning: the prefix in– does not always function as a negative prefix. Sometimes (and this is one of those times) it serves as an intensifier. It’s fairly obvious how this could lead to problems.

Surprisingly, both flammable and inflammable coexisted peacefully in English for hundreds of years before anyone decided to do something about it. Inflammable is the older of the two, with recorded use as far back as 1574. Flammable begins to appear in 1655, when Margaret Cavendish described oil as being “hot burning and flamable” in her Philosophical and Physical Opinions. One of the reasons there was little confusion about these words is that flammable was used much less often than inflammable.

But in the 1920s the eagle-eyed language guardians of the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) realized that many people were viewing the in– in inflammable as a negative prefix, and were at risk of consequently incinerating themselves at a much higher rate than was desirable. The NFPA advocated to have flammable used exclusively for warning labels (such as are found on mattresses, oil cans, and other things that will catch on fire if you put a match to them), and managed to slightly nudge our language toward a more sensible path. Though in the recent past flammable is used more often than inflammable, this pair still incites controversy—and laughter.


At any rate, my apologies to esha.

 

[Janet]

Actually, inflammable means "easily set on fire". It was a point of confusion to me when I was young, but this is the correct use of the word, and the correct word to use.

Dana

Never knew this but I just looked it up and you are right.

 

[Satira Capriccio]

The trees cut down for the original Notre Dame roof were likely between 300 to 400 years old and came from primary (old growth) forests. Each beam required one tree. Some articles state the beams are 850 years old or so ... which in a sense is true if you consider how long the trees have been beams, other articles include the likely age of the trees used for the beams and state the beams are 1,300+ years old.

According to CNN, Fortune, and other sources,

The entire wooden interior of Notre Dame Cathedral has been lost

To kick off the project, workers cleared 21 hectares of oak. Each beam of the intricate wooden cross-work was drawn from a different tree: estimated at 13,000 trees in total. To reach the heights the carpenters needed to build the structure, those trees would likely have been 300 or 400 years old, meaning they would have sprouted out of the ground in the eighth or ninth centuries.
​

A Challenge of Rebuilding Notre Dame: The Forests That Supplied Its Wood Are All But Gone

The wood for the soaring cathedral was first felled around 1160 to 1170, with some of it coming from trees thought to be 300 to 400 years old at the time they were chopped. That puts the oldest timber in the cathedral at nearly 1,300 years old.

Replacing those beams with comparable oak is simply not an option, said Bertrand de Feydeau, vice president of the preservation group Fondation du Patrimoine. Trees that supplied the roof’s frame came from primary forests—forests that are largely untouched by human activity, he said, according to the AP. He surmised that the huge trees associated with primary forests are gone too.

Notre Dame’s official website notes that even in the 12th century, when the cathedral was being built, human activity was already a concern for French forests, with urbanization and land clearing making it difficult to source wood large enough for the design of the cathedral.

Since then, the impact of human activity on primary forests has only become more pronounced.

Only 4% of Europe’s remaining woodland is primary forest, according to a study published last May, with none larger than 500 square kilometers outside of Russia or Northern Europe.

While forest covers nearly a third of mainland France, just 0.01% of it is untouched, containing trees around 200 to 400 years old, said Dr. Francesco Maria Sabatini, a lead author on the study and a researcher at the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research.

“Primary forests are small, fragile and precious for biodiversity,” he said. “They represent ‘pearls’ or ‘islands’ that survived intensive logging thanks to their remoteness or historical accidents.”​

 

[esha]

I found an interesting photo collection here: 25 Beautiful Pictures of Notre-Dame Cathedral
Towards the end it says that the glass windows have survived!

 

[DanaTA]

That's amazing! Usually windows blow out during such intense fires.

Dana

 

[Janet]

I'm so glad the windows survived! Does anyone know the fate of the gargoyles?

 

[xmasrose]

I don't know about the gargoyles. Can't find anything about them.
The bees (200 000 in a few hives) seem to have survived.

If you have photos of Notre Dame you want to share or if you want just to take a look

Here is a new campaign at Wikimedia (Notre-Dame de Paris fire On 15 April, a massive fire gutted the Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris, France. Today, we’re asking you to share your pictures of the cathedral—past and present—so future generations can bear witness to the building's extensive history.) :Notre-Dame de Paris fire - Wikimedia Commons

 

[Janet]

Bees? This is the first I've heard about them. How cool is that?

 

[Miss B]

I found an interesting photo collection here: 25 Beautiful Pictures of Notre-Dame Cathedral

Fabulous photos, especially that night photo at Christmas time. Stunning!

 

[mdbruffy]

Just came across this fon my MSN page:
Notre Dame fire started at the center of the cathedral's roof, police source says

 

[Leana]

Bees? This is the first I've heard about them. How cool is that?

There are a good number of hives in Paris, including on the roof of buildings like Grand Palais or the Opera. Notre Dame has a few on the roof of the sacristy. They sell the honey from some of those and it's quite tasty

As for the gargoyles, I've read that some statues have been damaged by the fire but I think most are still there.