Miss Nicaragua: "O Sam, you fickle thing! They tell awful stories about her!" (text of audio follows photo)
Columbus Dispatch, circa 1902

Narrator

Backers of the Nicaraguan dry canal proposal remain optimistic about their project. Paul Gilbert, vice president of U.S. engineering firm Parsons Brinckerhoff, is directing the dry canal feasibility study:

Paul Gilbert

The developer, development group for this project assessed that the projected growth in world container trade movement, combined with the growth in container ship size, will demand that there be specialized deep ports and and deep port handling equipment, large ship handling equipment.

The market in this containerized freight appears to be driven by two variables: one of course is cost, and the other is reliability. Cost is directly related to time. The plan that we are dealing with here would offer very high level of reliability for the container unit once embarked from a port in the Far East to move through this facility and arrive at the port either in the United States or anywhere in the Atlantic, and do it sooner than it could get there by other means. So, you know, it's the usual parameters of one business opportunity over another. Why does Federal Express make money?

Narration and interviews by Peter Costantini