Not all the towers along a transmission line are identical. Look closely at a tower where the line makes a sharp turn and you will likely find it is wider and beefier than other towers along the route. The added strength and weight are needed to resist the unbalanced pull of the conductors, which might overturn an ordinary tower. These special towers are called deviation or angle towers.
The transmission-line tower everybody knows is an Erector Set latticework of steel girders and diagonal braces. The techniques for designing and building these towers are the same ones used in constructing steel bridge trusses or crane booms. The individual pieces can be made cheaply from rolled steel and then bolted together on the site. This last point is more important than it might seem: transporting a fully assembled tower 100 feet tall is an awkward and expensive business.
Thy Godlike crime was to be kind,
To render with thy precepts less
The sum of human wretchedness,
And strengthen Man with his own mind;
But baffled as thou wert from high,
Still in thy patient energy,
In the endurance, and repulse
Of thine impenetrable Spirit,
Which Earth and Heaven could not convulse,
A mighty lesson we inherit.
Like thee, Man is in part divine,
A troubled stream from a pure source;
And Man in portions can foresee
His own funereal destiny;
His wretchedness, and his resistance,
And his sad unallied existence:
To which his Spirit may oppose
Itself—and equal to all woes,
And a firm will, and a deep sense,
Which even in torture can descry
Its own concenter'd recompense,
Triumphant where it dares defy,
And making Death a Victory.