The monument to Peter the Great in St. Petersburg remains
a celebrated landmark of that city. The enormous rock that serves as a
pedestal for the equestrian statue was moved from an island in the Gulf of
Finland under the direction of Marinos Charboures. This celebrated book in
the history of engineering describes the process, which others said would
be impossible.
One of the innovations in the machinery used to move the
rock was the replacement of cylindrical rolls, which were typically used
for this kind of project, with spheres. The illustrations are the first of
ball bearings. The project invited comparison to the moving of the Vatican
obelisk by Fontana in the sixteenth century, which Charboures thought,
must have been easier because it was a shorter distance.
