1923 · Ammonia Synthesis Reactor · Work 1289 of 1,871
A tall high-pressure hall of a chemical works on the Rhine on a grey November morning, pale light through sooty skylights, upright in the hall a slender reactor column of dark forged steel thirteen metres tall, at its foot a flanged base with a ring of bolts and a side nozzle, halfway up a bolted flange ring, at the top a thickened head crowned by large nuts and small fittings, pipes and handwheels at the head, around it a railed steel catwalk, a worker in a dark jacket and cap seen from directly behind, face turned fully away, setting a long spanner to a nut, every surface plain and unmarked.