For 136 years, the city of New York has leaned on the work of a cranky man who was feared by the mediocre. John H. Rhodes inspected pipe for the Brooklyn Water Works in 1858. The records show that he did not tolerate the shoddy or the half-done, and that he hugged himself in excitement when he came upon well-made Pipe. That is how he wrote the word, in the upper case: Pipe. The ones he inspected lasted two lifetimes, laid end to end.

That is not quite long enough for the mediocrities of the 20th Century, as people in Carroll Gardens discovered last Friday when a Rhodes pipe finally gave way and ruined homes.

Rhodes did his part. Starting Dec. 16, 1858, people on Clinton Street in Brooklyn drank from water that ran through a 30-inch main inspected by John Rhodes. They drank from it until Jan. 21, 1994. He inspected nearly 100 miles of pipe. Over the 19th Century and nearly to the end of the 20th, we can guess that 100 million babies were washed in water from Rhodes pipes, a billion loads of laundry were scrubbed, a trillion sips of water wetted the lips of Brooklyn.

We can talk about the 30-inch water main on Clinton Street as another paragraph in the history of things that finally went wrong. But before the death notice, look at the brilliant beginning and life. John Rhodes traveled the northeast in 1857 and tested 10,000 pieces of pipe. They were laid in Brooklyn over the next year and gave that city its first central water.

All we know today about Rhodes is that he tested Pipe and that he was cranky.

"In the course of the discharge of my duties, I found a great proportion of the work so faulty as to lead me to a critical examination of manufacturing and the causes of defects," Rhodes wrote in an 1859 report to the Brooklyn Water Commissioners.

"The proportion of bad Pipes which I have from time to time met with has been so great (sometimes as high as 50 per cent), as to create great doubt as to whether the remainder would be practically safe, although showing no defects to the eye or weakness under the application of the required pressure," he said, with great worry.

What? No defects to the eye. No weakness under pressure. Then why did Rhodes turn down so many?

The formal test was to bring the pipes to West Point and see how they did with known water pressures: to see if they would break or not. The pipes - forged in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and in Glasgow, Scotland - had a tensile strength of about 22,000 pounds per square inch.

"The pipes are always examined by the hammer," wrote Rhodes. He banged them and listened for the flat sound, the dull answer that said No Good.

"On 5th of November 1857, I proceeded to the Warren Foundry and Machine Co," wrote Rhodes. "The proportion of good Pipes was so small as to create no inconsiderable excitement towards myself and very great apprehension among the stockholders of the company."

In short, they wanted to burn him alive. Look at the grades he passed out at the Warren Foundry:

6" Pipe:    Accepted, 62, Rejected, 45.
8" Pipe:    Accepted, 19, Rejected, 34.
12" Pipe:   Accepted,  7, Rejected, 17.

He had failed more pipes than he passed. After he gave these results to the people at the Warren Foundry, they decided to get out of the small-pipe business.

"I now come to the consideration of twenty-inch, thirty-inch and thirty-six-inch Pipes, which were successfully cast at this Foundry by Messrs. John Firt and John Ingham, who were subcontractors to the Warren Foundry," wrote Rhodes.

"To them is essentially owing the great success which has been achieved in casting the Force Mains and large Branches for the works.

"I take great pleasure in having an opportunity to state that they have scarcely lost a Pipe in casting that has not been owing to improper material accidentally furnished them.

"These Pipes have undergone a very severe inspection and proof, in effecting which (although the loss, if rejected, fell upon them), I have always received their hearty cooperation and I have to record that I have not in a single instance known them to make an attempt to conceal imperfections; upon the contrary, they were gentlemanly and communicative upon all matters relevant to my duties, and I have derived from them great practical information."

Rhodes was employed by the Brooklyn Water Works, which were installed by Henry Welles and Company. A pipe cannot be tossed into its bed; if it is not set firmly, it is sure to break. Welles laid 120 miles of pipe and it all sat well. His engineer, James Pugh Kirkwood, wrote around the world for advice on protecting the pipes from corrosion. From Dublin came advice to dip them in coal-tar pitch that was cooking at 400 degrees. These were the first pipes in the United States to be so treated.

The excellent research staff in the library of the Brooklyn Historical Society helped find the water records. No trace of Rhodes or Welles or Kirkwood appears, except in the history of the Water Works. Beneath the streets are 54 miles of water main from before 1870, still working.

Why the Clinton Street main failed is a mystery. Maybe it was age; maybe it was the dynamite excavations the city was doing in the neighborhood. New York was built by invisible men and women, their work hidden beneath the dust of all the years. We have left all the care of our present to these forgotten people: when the crash comes, the dust of our own neglect rises, and we glimpse through the clouds the durable genius of good work.