I’m thinking especially of the Romans. With such a computationally challenged number system as they had, how did they manage to build things like aquaducts, that still stand today? How did they figure out how thick the walls of the Pantheon had to be to be able to support the dome? Did they just do it by intuition, estimating that this wall was sufficiently thick to hold up that roof, or that a particular number of columns should be adequate to hold up a ceiling?
I think most of those things were built using rough rules of thum developed empirically and were vastly overbuilt which is why they are still there today.
thum, of course, is a lating word meaning “approximate” and derived from the name of a finger used for counting.
Agree. I would also speculate that they built some crappy aqueducts and buildings that are long gone.
Yeah, and how did fountains work before they had electricity? like in Rome and Versailles?
Gravity. You make sure the water source is above the fountain, then you just pipe it down.
Ancient Engineers did it with Slide Rules.
You’ll burn in hell for that one Ludovic.
You may wish to read Brunelleschi’s Dome, Ross King, 2000, ISBN 0-8027-1366-1, an account of the building of the Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence and of the guy who was able to figure out how to put the dome on top. Very interesting and entertaining. Mind you, this is 15th Century.
The hired the services of a computer. Seriously.
There used to be an entire class of businesses that specialized in commercial calculation services. People who needed to know the results of a mathematical operation would hire them.
I recommend the following books:
Ten Books on Architecture by Vitruvius, a Roman architect of some reknown.
Engineering in History by Richard Shelton Kirby, a nice general overview of the various engineering works of history.
The Pinball Effect by James Burke, subtitled How Renaissance Water Gardens Made the Carburetor Possible and Other Journeys through Knowledge
The Knowledge Web also by James Burke, more on how they did it, and how it made other things possible.
The Day the Universe Changed, Vol. 1 again, by James Burke (don’t ask me about Vol. 2 never heard of it, maybe the guys at B&N are on crack again)
Circles: Fifty Round-Trips through History, Technology, Science, Culture by Burke (guess what Burke does for a living? Yep. He writes books on things the ancients did.) Haven’t read this one, so I don’t know what it’s about.
The Axemaker’s Gift Burke again.
One last one by Burke is Connections, apparently its out of print, but I still see copies in bookstores, so who knows?
There’s also Ancient Engineers L. Sprague de Camp, which is supposed to be a seminal work in the field.
If those are a little more than what you’d like, there’s always The New Way Things Work by David Macaulay a nifty kids book that’s actually quite informative.
Whoops! Sorry for that screwed up coding! If a passing mod would be so kind? Thanks.
Having just finished the fourth in a long series of Roman works I am reading, I can tell you that Roman history,as recorded by the contemporary authors, is filled with engineering disasters - bridges collapsing, acqueducts leaking or crumbling, baths that don’t work, dams that broke, colliseums and amphitheatres that fell - Suetonius, in the chapter I read last night (Tiberius, I think) reported on a huge disaster of an amphitheatre that collapsed in the East, killing, as he alleges “more than 20,000 people”. He also reported on an obelisk falling, and on a ceiling of a palace falling and killing several at a feast, temples collapsing, and a restaurant in a cave (“The Caverns”, it was actually called) collapsing and nearly killing the Emperor himself.
So the Romans had their share of disasters too. And if you think about the building materials they used (marble, granite, and other hard stones) there really isn’t a lot that is appreciably affected over 2000 years. as opposed to steel reinforced concrete, which can often have the steel rust completely through in a few decades, and thus lose most of its strength.
I’ll second L. Sprague de Camp’s The Ancient Engineers. de Camp was a knowledgable engineer and writer of science fact, historical fiction, fantasy, and science fiction. You might also want to read his historical fictional The Bronze God of Rhodes about the building of the Colossus of Rhodes (it reminds me a lot of Ken Follet’s “Pillars of the Earth”), and An Elephant for Aristotle (about the difficulties of walking an elephant from India to Greece in the time of Alexander the Great).
I remeber reading that the largest stone blocks ever used were those forming the base of the Temple of Jupiter, at Palmyra (now in Lebanon). They weigh 22 tons! Most modern cranes cannot lift such a mass-they were put into position by human muscle. I am still amazed by this.
Another book to read: Stonehenge, written by sf author Harry Harrison and some guy whose name I forget. Historical fiction describing how Stonehenge came to be designed and built, and showing how it could have been done.
De Camp’s Ancient Engineers holds a loved & honored place on my bookshelf.
Every time I open it I find something new, & then I start off on a brand new “reading bender” on a previously unexplored part of history.
And believe me—this guy can write!
I’m on my second copy, 'cause I wore out the first.
Thanks for the recommendation, Tuckerfan! I have just ordered two sets (vols. 1-5 & 6-10); available in hardcover from www.amazon.com (search on Vitruvius).
A lot of engineering up to the Scientific Revolution was done based on series of proportions that were described as diagrams drawn with straightedge and compass, rather than with abstract mathematics. For example, you would start with the size of a dome you wanted to build and by drawing a series of circles, arcs and squares you would arrive at the thickness of the walls and the size of the piers. The problem is that as you increase the diameter of the dome, the weight of the dome increases by the cube, while the area of the piers increases by the square. Most of the larger structures supposedly laid out this way have either had their proportions fudged by the architect (St. Peter’s comes to mind), have had the weight of the structure reduced in some way (the Pantheon), or have undergone nearly constant repairs as they tetered on the edge of collapse (Hagia Sophia - those butresses aren’t original).
Some reading I would suggest: Anything by Robert Mark, but especially, Light, Wind and Structure; and Architectural Technology up to the Scientific Revolution. Palladio’s Four Books on Architecture. The various writings of Sebastiano Serlio.
And if you’re buying Vitruvius, avoid the 1755 Leoni translation unless you like being frustrated, and bear in mind that Vitruvius is pretty much seen as the Stanley Tigerman of Roman architects. Talked a lot, kind of a crank, didn’t get much built. His book either downplays or fails to mention technology being employed by his contemporaries.