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White elephant
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For other uses, see White elephant (disambiguation).
Not to be confused with Elephant in the room.
A w hi t e el ephant is a valuable possession of which its owner
cannot dispose and whose cost (particularly cost of upkeep) is out of
proportion to its usefulness.
Cont ent s [hide] [hide]
1 Background
2 Examples of notable alleged white elephants
3 See also
4 References
Background
The term derives from the sacred white elephants kept by Southeast Asian monarchs in Burma,
Thailand, Laos and Cambodia. To possess a white elephant was regarded (and is still regarded in
Thailand and Burma) as a sign that the monarch was ruling with justice and power, and that the
kingdom was blessed with peace and prosperity.
[1]
The tradition derives from tales in the scriptures
which associate a white elephant with the birth of Buddha, as his mother was reputed to have dreamed
of a white elephant presenting her with a lotus flower, a symbol of wisdom and purity, on the eve of
giving birth.
[2]
Because the animals were considered sacred and laws protected them from labor,
receiving a gift of a white elephant from a monarch was both a blessing and a curse: a blessing
because the animal was sacred and a sign of the monarch's favour, and a curse because the animal
had to be kept and could not be put to practical use to offset the cost of maintaining it.
The Order of the White Elephant consists of eight grades of medals issued by the government of
Thailand. A humorous story concerns a servant at Buckingham Palace on whom a Thai king once
announced he was bestowing a "white elephant". The man checked with the London Zoo to see
whether they would take it, and was relieved to discover that it was only a decoration.
[citation needed]
Examples of notable alleged white elephants
The U.S. Navy's Alaska-class cruisers were described as "white elephants" because the "tactical
and strategic concepts that inspired them were completely outmoded" by the time they were
commissioned the J apanese heavy cruisers that they were designed to hunt down had already
been destroyed.
[3]
Bristol Brabazon, an airliner built by the Bristol Aeroplane Company in 1949 to fly a large number of
passengers on transatlantic routes from England to the United States.
[4]
Concorde, a supersonic transport built by Arospatiale and British Aircraft Corporation, intended for
high-speed intercontinental passenger travel. Only fourteen production aircraft were built, though it
was planned that development costs were to be amortized over hundreds of units:
[5]
the British
and French governments incurred large losses as no aircraft could be sold on commercial terms.
[6]
Concorde flew the transatlantic route for over two decades, and it did at least make a big operating
profit for British Airways.
[7]
A white elephant in 19th century
Thai art.
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White elephant - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
file:///Z|/Documenti/Documenti/wiki/White_elephant.htm[25/02/2010 19.07.20]
SS Great Eastern, a ship designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel. She was the largest ship ever
built at the time of her launch in 1858, and had the capacity to carry 4,000 passengers around the
world without refuelling, but was not a commercial success. Her hold was later gutted and
converted to lay the successful 1865 transatlantic telegraph cable, an impossible task for a smaller
vessel.
[8]
HTMS Chakri Naruebet, a Thai aircraft carrier that has been criticized as having been built for
nationalist reasons rather than applicable military uses.
Hughes H-4 Hercules (or "Spruce Goose"), often called Howard Hughes' white elephant before and
during the Senate War Investigating Committee. Hughes' associate Noah Dietrich called it a
"plywood white elephant".
[9]
Lambert-St. Louis International Airport runway 11/29 was conceived on the basis of traffic
projections made in the 1980s and 1990s that warned of impending strains on the airport and the
national air traffic system as a result of predicted growth in traffic at the airport.
[10]
The $1 billion
runway expansion was designed in part to allow for simultaneous operations on parallel runways in
bad weather. Construction began in 1998, and continued even after traffic at the airport declined
following the 9/11 attacks, the purchase of Trans World Airlines by American Airlines in April 2001,
and subsequent cuts in flights to the airport by American Airlines in 2003.
[11][12]
The project
required the relocation of seven major roads and the destruction of approximately 2,000 homes in
Bridgeton, Missouri.
[13][14]
In addition to providing superfluous extra capacity for flight operations at
the airport, use of the runway is shunned by fuel-conscious pilots and airlines due to its distance
from the terminals.
[15]
Even one of the airport commissioners, J ohn Krekeler, deemed the project a
"white elephant".
[16]
The Millennium Dome in London, built at a cost of hundreds of millions of pounds in Greenwich in
London to celebrate the millennium, was commonly termed a white elephant.
[17][18]
The exhibition it
initially housed was less successful than hoped and the widely criticised building struggled to find a
role after the event. It is now The O
2
, an arena and entertainment centre.
Montral-Mirabel International Airport is North America's largest airport, but has been abandoned as
a passenger airport.
[19]
New York Giants manager J ohn McGraw referred to the Philadelphia Athletics as a "white elephant"
prior to their meeting in the 1905 World Series. Although the Athletics lost that series, in defiance
they adopted an elephant as an alternate team logo and eventually as a full-fledged mascot.
Olympic Stadium in Montreal cost about C$1.61 billion. Since the departure of the Montreal Expos
baseball team in 2004, it has had no main tenant. The debt from the stadium wasn't paid in full until
December 2006.
[20]
Because of the financial disaster in which it left Montreal, it was nicknamed
"The Big Owe", "Uh-O", and "The Big Mistake".
[citation needed]
Osborne House, East Cowes, Isle of Wight, England, was one of Queen Victoria's favourite royal
residences. She died there on J anuary 22, 1901. In her will, she asked that it be kept in the Royal
Family, but none of her family wanted it, so Edward VII gave Osborne to the nation. With the
exception of Princess Louise and Princess Beatrice, who each retained houses on the estate, the
rest of the royal family saw Osborne as something of an inaccessible white elephant.
The Ryugyong Hotel in Pyongyang, North Korea, designed as the world's tallest hotel, began
construction in 1987. Due to financial difficulties, construction ceased prematurely in 1992. Since
then, the structure has remained as a massive concrete hulk, unfit for habitation.
[21]
Construction
resumed in April 2008.
Ada programming language, commissioned by the United States Department of Defense (DoD). It
was designed to be a single, standard language, particularly suitable for embedded and real-time
systems. The DoD mandated the use of Ada for many software projects in 1987, but removed the
White elephant - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
file:///Z|/Documenti/Documenti/wiki/White_elephant.htm[25/02/2010 19.07.20]
[edit]
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Wikimedia Commons has media
related to: White elephants
requirement in 1997. It is still used in many countries, especially for safety-critical systems such as
air traffic control and subways. It came to be known as the "Green Elephant" for the color code
used to keep contract selection unbiased. It became irrelevant for commercial applications, barely
surviving the wave of new free and successful tools such as C++and J ava.
[22]
Several incomplete or badly functioning dams, such as the Bujagali dam (Uganda)
[23]
and Epupa
dam (Angola).
[24]
Most were constructed by foreign companies in the interest of foreign aid.
[25]
Although the buildings do not meet expectations, if construction is completed or restarted, they could
still provide a contribution to the local population.
[26]
In 1907, author Henry J ames described the mansions in Newport, Rhode Island as being "white
elephants" and "witless dreams" because they were summer homes for the wealthy and were
unoccupied for most of the year. Thorstein Veblen invented the term conspicuous consumption to
describe the mansions.
[27]
In "Hills Like White Elephants", a short story by Ernest Hemingway, an unborn child is viewed as a
white elephant.
See also
Boondoggle (project)
Benefit shortfall
Cost overrun
Megaproject
Megastructure
Airavata
References
1. ^ Elephants in Thailand: Elephant-National Symbol of Thailand
2. ^ The Birth of Buddha | The New Kadampa Tradition (NKT)
3. ^ *Morison, Samuel Loring; Morison, Samuel Eliot; Polmar, Norman (2005). Illustrated Directory of Warships of the
World: From 1860 to the Present. ABC-CLIO. pp. 85. ISBN 1851-0-9857-7.
4. ^ An Aviation Heritage story
5. ^ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2003/04/13/do1307.xml
6. ^ CNN.com - The rise and fall of Concorde - Apr. 10, 2003
7. ^ BBC NEWS | Business | Why economists don't fly Concorde
8. ^ Victorian Technology, BBC
9. ^ Howard Hughes: Hell's Angel By Darwin Porter. Blood Moon Productions, Ltd., 2005 ISBN0974811815 p. 715
10. ^ "The Expansion Story ". Retrieved 2007-07-25.
11. ^ "Historical Operation Statistics by Class for the Years: 1985-2006 ". Retrieved 2007-07-25.
12. ^ "New $1 billion runway opens this week, but it's not needed anymore ". USAToday.com. 2006-04-11. Retrieved
2007-07-25.
13. ^ "Airport/Mass Transit November 2005 - Feature Story ". Retrieved 2007-07-25.
14. ^ "Airports and cities: Can they coexist? ". Retrieved 2007-07-25.
15. ^ "St. Louis' airports aren't too loud: They're too quiet ". USAToday.com. 2007-01-09. Retrieved 2007-07-25.
16. ^ St. Louis' airports aren't too loud: They're too quiet - USATODAY.com
17. ^ When is a white elephant not a white elephant? from Guardian Unlimited: News blog
18. ^ From Crystal Palace to White Elephant in 150 ... [Mackinac Center for Public Policy]
19. ^ The New York Times >International >Americas >End of Era Near in Montreal for White-Elephant Airport
20. ^ CBC News (2006-12-19). "Quebec's Big Owe stadium debt is over " (HTML). Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation. Retrieved 2008-06-25.
21. ^ "First Signs of Change in Dour Capital"; Christian Science Monitor, Boston, Mass.: Aug 26, 1992
22. ^ HLA and the MDA