During my visit to the Panama Canal, I noticed several chambers that connected to higher levels of the canal. It occurred to me that engineers needed to devise a solution when making the canal to cross the mountains in between. Rather than creating a large tunnel, which would be very expensive and hard to maintain, engineers created a design that allowed ships to scale the mountains with ease.

The locks of the Panama Canal are chambers designed to let ships scale the upward sloping terrain of Panama. The ships stop in chambers, which then are closed and filled with water, allowing it to rise up to each “step” of the canal. Ships can pass through the key waterway without needing to sail around the entire continent of South America, revolutionizing ship trade across the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean. Engineers later improved on this design by adding overflow chambers on the side of the canal, allowing overflowing water to be caught and recycled back into the Canal. Newer locks built much later after the original canal locks used features like rolling gates and water saving basins. The Panama Canal’s lock system revolutionized travel for ships and paved the way for more lock system canals to be built. It relies on gravity to move water throughout the canal rather than traditional pumps. The canal cycles water from the high-altitude man-made Gatun Lake using only gravity, lifting and lowering massive ship vessels.

The architecture of the Panama Canal is an outstanding example of how structural engineering, hydraulic design, and architecture can come together to make revolutionary structures. Its innovative lock system has helped millions of ships cross safely from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. The canal is a marvel of engineering that is used as a model by many engineers today.