cap_ironman | Happy Green Beer Day Everyone! / Engineer's Iron Ring

Current Music: Metric - "Collect Call"

Happy Green Beer Day Everyone! / Engineer's Iron Ring

Okay, it's canon that Steve's parents were Irish, but how much did that affect Steve? Like, as in, shown in the comic. Was his Irish Heritage ever shown or was it just Informed?

...and on the subject of heritage...has it ever been canonly referenced that Tony is Italian descent? Though in my head canon, he so is.

...and since we are only semi-on topic right now, I might as well ask...who among us here is actually an engineer or took engineering? Recently I started reading an interesting book, "Introduction to professional engineering in Canada" by G.C. Andrews, and in the beginning, there was a story about the tradition of the Iron Ring, which started in Canada but spread to the US. At least 100 years ago, mid construction of the Quebec Bridge, it collapsed and killed over 70 workers because the head engineer Cooper had went ahead with a bad plan - starting construction when he realised that irl the weight would be much heavier than what he thought it would be on paper.

...and according to that book, in response, engineers got organized and established a code of ethics, and just as doctors have the hippocratic oath, engineers have the Iron Ring Ceremony (or, The Ritual of the Calling of an Engineer). The book even says that the early rings were made from scrap metals of the Quebec Bridge.

...but the Internets say it's actually a myth.

Anyone here actually wearing the ring or know someone who does? Heard the story?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only | Expand All

Well I'm studying engineering and I had to sign something that said I wouldn't do anything unethical or allow anyone to do anything unethical with our engineering abilities. So we do have a code of ethics but I've never heard of the Iron ring ceremony before.

Really? Are you in Canada? I know it's a big deal in my university - most of the fellow students of Engineering I've talked to have been entirely 'WANT'. Although I've heard that in recent years the president of the students association for atheists and agnostics apparently refused it, since the oath involves swearing by God.

I'm going through a bit of a mid-degree crisis, and I'm still 'WANT'. My father has one, though since he practices as a geophysicist and not as an electrical engineer (which is his degree) he doesn't wear it.

I was recently up in the Dean's office, where they were holding 'Iron Ring fittings' (since the ceremony was coming up) and read the oath on the wall that someone swore in the 1930s - which, yes, is called The Ritual of the Calling of an Engineer. It's also a bit cult-ish, and involves swearing 'by Cold Iron' (with Capital Letters). So it's kinda awesome, in a weird way that Engineers are not exactly mystics...

(My father wouldn't tell me of the ceremony, so it may be more cultish than that, but I suspect he was just pulling my leg...though usually it's easier to tell than with that.)

As far as I have always known, the Iron Ring ceremony is entirely a Canadian tradition, although wikipedia informs me that the US founded something similar in the 70s. However, it seems to be less coherent/widespread. This may be due to the fact that in the US, 'college' and 'university' mean about the same thing, whereas in Canada, they're quite different. Also, we have the Canadian...er, Acceditation Board for Engineering, I think it's called, which governs what defines an engineering degree across the entire country and calls who can get an Iron Ring (although it is the provinces that control the associations for professional engineers - the main difference being that you have to practice for several years after graduating before being considered a 'professional', which is why my father is a professional geophysicist even though his degree is in engineering, due to...well, long story), whereas I'm not certain that the US has a similar nation-wide board.

As for the story of the original rings being made out of bits of the bridge, I have heard it, and as much as I wish to believe in it I suspect it is, in fact, false. However, the story of the bridge, at least, is widely told and known. And I know that in most first-year courses (or second year, depending on how that particular university handles its engineering first-years) examples of Engineering Done Wrong are brought up as examples of What Not To Do.

Okay, so that got a bit long, especially for a lurker, but like I said: WANT.

/delurk

I'm in America and my university isn't exactly a big engineering university so just my university might not have it. I'm also only in the second year of the program so if we have it I might just not know about it.

Apparently more people died during Phase two, about a dozen.

It sounds, dude, when I was reading it from the book, like A Crown of Thorns, want some nails to go with that cross? Like, dude, I know it's srs biz, but I rad this description that said the ring was suppose to be hard and uncomfortable so you don't forget it!*

On cultishness, well, there is ""The Rule of Governance provides that there shall be no publicity in connection with the Ritual."!

All in all though, dude, I think it's so cool that Canadian Engineers have this Tradition of Their Own. Take that, skull and bones!

*So hey, if Tony has one, I can see him leaving it at the bottom of a box, but stumbling across it post Vietghanistan, puts it on.

Oh, it is srs biz. You walk into a lab the week after the Ceremony and all the graduating students for that year are talking loudly about how odd it feels to be wearing a ring full-time (and everyone else is thinking WANT very loudly at them and turning green with envy).

(Sadly, I can't actually see Tony having one. Though it'd be cool...

...maybe I'm just Canadian-ly possessive of it, and he's American...)

I hadn't heard about the Rule of Governance thing! Damnit, now I really wonder whether or not my father was joking about the details of the ceremony, because he so absolutely refused to tell. And the more I think on it, I wonder if he wasn't sounding like he was joking because he was actually half-embarrassed to be part of a semi-cult organization that he had to humour because ethics and Not Collapsing Bridges is Srs Biz.

Although our big example in first-year engineering was the Tacoma Narrows bridge collapse, due to its sheer...impressiveness. If you haven't seen a video of that collapse, you really, really should (although if you're reading a book on the history of engineering, then you probably have?).

I'm Canadian. I went to a university with a big engineering program, and they had a ceremony. (However, I was in the liberal arts program, and the details aren't for the uninitiated. ^_^)

I have two uncles that are engineers, and they both have rings.

By "myth" I think they mean something like "legendary teaching-story" rather then "made-up lie". The rings, as I have been told, are supposed to remind you of your power and responsibility as an engineer. The bridge did fall down. The engineers made a mistake. People did die. Just because it's a "myth" doesn't mean it's not true*

The bit about early rings being made from scrap metals from the bridge? That's probably made up, though.

So the short answer? If you want Tony to stare at his Ring and angst about his failings? Go right ahead!
________
*I warned you I was in the liberal arts program...

Oh yessss.

I actually wondered if the MIT ring was made of iron too or whatever before I looked up what the iron ring looks like and it's plain, so whatever MIT has it's probably not a spin off of the Canadian one?

Hmmmmn, does MIT have this too? Or is this still a strictly Canadian thing?

...also wondering, I wonder what Tony thinks of the Metric system versus the ones the Americans are using now ~~that caused the lost of the NASA orbiter in 1999~~

Hmm. I don't remember anything about iron rings or ceremonies from when I was at MIT ( I was doing computer science, which back then was a subset of the electrical engineering department). Then again, MIT has a general tendency to decide that they're too superior for outside customs. No need for some silly iron ring when you already have the Brass Rat!

~~sorry, that was English measurements versus Metric, but srsly, everyone, METRIC now!~~

Hey, I work for the coast guard in Canada and we use a charming mix of kilometres, statute miles and nautical miles. Fun times.

Re: correction

hohaiyee.livejournal.com - 2011-03-18 06:29 (UTC) - Expand

Re: correction

muccamukk - 2011-03-18 08:17 (UTC) - Expand

I don't know what it's suppose to be, but dude, it looks like someone's naked bottom half,someone whose got a blue star tattooed right over their taint!!!

That's Franky, from the anime/manga "One Piece", and those are his enormous Popeye forearms.

Here's a better picture of that pose:

He's the shipwright on a pirate crew (which is a bit like being an engineer), and he has a bit of "I made weapons and they killed people!" angst to his back-story. So he's relevant to this discussion. ^_^

Re: your optical nsfw icon

fictivore.livejournal.com - 2011-03-19 04:21 (UTC) - Expand

There's actually mixed canon on Steve's parents. Some says they were both Irish from the old country, some say they were Irish Americans. I couldn't cite you issue numbers on either of those

At one point (Captain America and the Falcon Vol 1 #194), we get this:

Tony's heritage is discussed on the comm here (Picture NSFW). There Italian thing seems to be fanon.

About Steve- not sure about the Revolution, but Ancestry.com gives an interesting bit of info about the Rogerses in the Civil War (hah!) About 3.6k in the Conferedates and 5.1k in the Union BUT that's 3600 out of total one million Confederate soldiers and 5100 out of TWO million Union soldiers.
So *both* men might have been right...

(Love the trying-to-*sleep*-here!Sam in the last panel! ;)

I'm not sure where the civil war comes into it. At the time of the War of Independence, slavery was legal in the north as well as the south. If Steve's family has been in the US since the 18th century, there's a reasonably good chance that his family did, at one point, own slaves, or supported the owning of slaves.

It was so long ago, I think it wouldn't be strange at all for lots of ppl to have ancestors across different sides of wars.

But-but-but, Steve having ancestors here as early as the American Civil War, that contrast with his parents being Irish immigrants new to Canada? Or is this a case of ppl moving back and forth?

My boyfriend did Civil Engineering at McGill and he still wears his iron ring from graduation fifteen years later. He told me the story about the original rings being made from the collapsed bridge as a reminder and a promise to do better, and certainly believed it to be true.

Freeze framing in Iron Man: Armored Adventures gives Tony's mom the maiden name Zanotto. That would be a confirmation of fan theory if his mom wasn't dead and he didn't have a SHUT UP NOW GODDAMNIT reaction to mentioning her.

Pepper: You've been homeschooled since your mom-
Tony's eyes narrow and his fist clench suddenly.
Pepper: Uh, nevermind.

But that's off-canon, I think. In any case IMAA has Maria dead long before Howard and lovingly placed the accident within a month of Tony's sixteenth birthday (you know, because his life wasn't sucky enough) so how much of IMAA canon holds true anywhere else is up for debate.

...right. Steve. I meant to post something about Steve. And then I got lost in the void of off-canon. Anyway someone over on the IMAA forums jokingly did a thing where Tony was, in contrast to the 'is Zanotto Spanish or Italian' debate, actually Serbian. Complete with him butchering the language in an attempt to attract women because Slavic Is Sexy. It's out of left field, but I like that theory if only because Take A Third Option is one of my favorite tropes.

Nope, there's still no Steve in this post. XD

Dude, link plz?

Ooh! I didn't know about the Zanotto thing! Which episode is this in again? And Maria in IMAA died way back when he was a kid, right? So Tony had basically never been to school before the events of the show? (I've mostly speed-watched the whole thing, so I'm a bit blurred on the details... -_-;)

It is, similarly to Tony's armor designs being freeze-framed and revealed to be schematics for armors that appeared later in the show, a very quick cameo of a name. It's in his personal file in one episode, but I can't remember which one off the top of my head. In any case Google says Zanotto IS Italian, which is confirmation for that universe's Tony.

IMAA Maria died when Tony was young, but details are scarce because he's got a 'don't go there' attitude when it pops up. Not that he reacts well to people talking about Howard - if anything he goes too far in the opposite direction. But yes, Tony had never been to school, hence his total Genius Ditz appearance on that show.

Then again, IMAA Howard is the first Howard who wasn't an asshole, so it's entirely possible he kept Tony out of school to protect him. (I have a rant stored up somewhere about how Howard Stark is consistantly an asshole and I hate him, but that's off topic.)

no subject

no subject

no subject

Srsly I would not cross that bridge at night

Re: Srsly I would not cross that bridge at night

no subject

re: tony

Re: tony

re: correction

Re: correction

re: your optical nsfw icon

Re: your optical nsfw icon

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

I'm going to go with both right

no subject

no subject

Well I've always thought that Nikola Tesla was hawt

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject