Category Archives: History

The Flying Buttress

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Everyone's seen flying buttresses. They're those huge pillars on the sides of European cathedrals. Notre Dame (the one in France completed in 1345, not the one with the football team) is among the most famous.

The Flying Buttress

The Flying Buttress

Though they look like they wouldn't be good for much other than making sure that a wall doesn't fall over (sometimes used that way) and making grade school kids laugh, they're the only reason that buildings of that size were even possible in those days.

Flying buttresses actually help support the weight of the ceiling. Before flying buttresses, the walls had to be immensely thick in order to prevent the ceiling's weight from pushing the walls outward.

Flying buttresses form a natural arch with the roof, thereby taking much of the outward force generated by the roof's weight off the walls. This allows the walls to be built much thinner. And it also allows the inclusion of the immense windows in the walls that cathedrals are so famous for.

The construction of the buttresses was a difficult enough task in itself, of course. It first involved the construction of temporary wooden frames, or centering to be hoisted up between the wall and the column. The centering was what kept the arch of stones in the air while the mortar was drying, serving as the arch in the meantime.

Frequently, early cathedrals with flying buttresses were built with much thicker, closer, and more immense buttresses; the backers funding the construction weren't entirely convinced that they would actually work. Some of the buttresses were actually so huge that they blocked out much of the light coming in.

Even cathedrals with much, much thinner buttresses have lasted until today. And a building that lasts for 800 years does tend to speak for itself pretty well.

A Thrill on Potbelly Hill

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One of the most interesting construction riddles out there is the archaeological site of Göbekli Tepe (Potbelly Hill) in southeast Turkey. Göbekli Tepe is one of the oldest dig sites on earth: dating back some 14 thousand years, it’s one of the oldest human constructions ever discovered.

It predates almost every single construction technique we know, not to mention the writing, metal tools, the wheel, agriculture, and even animal husbandry. This is a site built when we were still hunter-gatherers.

Göbekli Tepe

Göbekli Tepe

The site is largely buried. Only 5% of it is exposed, while the majority is still covered, and only known through geophysical surveys (essentially, underground sonar, though it’s more complicated than that). The site is covered with a tell, which is essentially a flat topped hill composed of disintegrated mud bricks and other building materials; the building site steadily gained in height as new constructions were built over old ones.

The site contains circles of enormous, T-shaped stone pillars fitted into sockets that are carved into bedrock. Most archaeologists believe the site to be a religious one, a burial site, or both.

One of the major conundrums regarding Göbekli Tepe is one of construction. How did a small, scattered population build a site this enormous and complicated? They didn’t have animals to haul the weights, or wheels. It seems likely that primitive versions of the techniques used to construct the Egyptian pyramids and Sumerian ziggurats were used, but it’s extremely difficult to say, since both were constructed closer to the present day than to the construction of Göbekli Tepe. It’s that old.

This has, of course, resulted in the usual ancient-aliens conspiracists coming out of the woodwork to plant their flag on more “evidence.” In actuality, it probably has more to do with the vastly different climate there at that time: it was a lush garden paradise, filled to the brim with game, fruit, nuts, and wild grains, allowing the population to concentrate their population more than other hunter gatherer sites and maintain a larger workforce.

But their specific construction techniques are still a subject of major interest to me, since this is very possibly the oldest archaeological site in existence.

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Photo by Teomancimit (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Marvels of Technology…In Your Kitchen

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The history of technology we usually teach kids is a flashy one. They hear about atomic bombs, rocket ships, computers. If it’s big, shiny, explodes, is immensely expensive and difficult to create, we teach them about it. Occasionally, we might mention a really important, yet more boring one, like nitrogen fertilizers. But generally? It’s shiny objects all the way down.

Modern nitrogen fertilizers, are, in my book, the most important invention of the 20th century. Forget computers, forget atom bombs: nitrogen fertilizers are what allow us to maintain our global population levels—and they might get a few sentences in your average grade school history book.

When you look at even less-flashy inventions, they get less and less in the way of attention paid to them. In fact, I can almost guarantee that you never think about one of the categories of devices you use most often. Kitchenware.

The Modern Kitchen

The Modern Kitchen

Seriously. Go in your kitchen right now, and pick up…let’s say, a rubber spatula. We’ve had rubber for much, much longer than we’ve had rubber spatulas, so why did we invent them? Well, you probably have a non-stick pan, right? Try scraping it out with a metal spatula, and you’re going to scrape off the non-stick coating. (Which, apparently, is really bad for your health.)

Or take a look at cast iron pans. They’ve got a bit of a reputation for being a little on the tough side to clean, right? Well, they used to be considerably easier to clean, but as they drifted a bit more out of popular use (though never went completely absent), a final step of the production process was dropped. They used to be sand casted, then given a strong polish, but this polishing step was dropped to save on costs, so antique cast iron is actually considerably more non-stick.

Every single pot, pan, knife, item of silverware, or bizarre back-of-the-drawer gizmo in your kitchen has an extensive history all its own. And even a cultural context: five centuries ago, a muffin pan would have been pretty much useless scrap, thanks to the lack of common closed range stoves. These are tools that you use constantly and are personally relevant every day. Atom bombs? They can, really, only be personally relevant once.

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Photo by Todd Ehlers from McGregor, Iowa, a Mississippi River town, U.S. of A. (1937 Kitchen–Not Bad!) [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons.

History’s Arc of Innovation

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I always hear people going on and on about how we’re in the greatest age of innovation and technology, with more amazing things being invented now than ever before. I’ll have to beg to differ there, and I can back up my argument, too:

The Library at Alexandria

The Library at Alexandria

  • The oldest folding chairs date back to the 14th century B.C. from Ancient Egypt.
  • The first fishing reel dates all the way to at least 4th century China.
  • Beer predates recorded history, and has even been linked to the rise of civilization.
  • Wine predates recorded history and is possibly almost as old as beer.
  • Reclining armchairs date back to the Napoleonic War.
  • Organized sporting events predate recorded history.
  • The oldest dice ever found are more than 5,000 years old—coincidentally, they were found in the oldest ever backgammon set.
  • Humans bred dogs before recorded history, or even the invention of agriculture.
  • The earliest form of chess originated in the 6th century in India.
  • The Arawak Native Americans invented the barbeque grill long before any Europeans showed up in the Americas.
  • Playing cards were invented in China during the 9th century.
  • The written word is between six and nine thousand years old; the first proto-books popped up not too long after.
  • The housecat was domesticated in Ancient Egypt, though some experts believe that the process started long before that.
  • The oldest known direct ancestors of the guitar are well over 3,000 years old.
  • Baseball caps are more than a century and a half old.
  • People began drinking coffee—in Yemen—in the 1400s.
  • Native Americans, probably the Arawak, invented the hammock in the Caribbean more than a thousand years ago.

So, the next time someone dismisses ancient peoples as primitive: just smile and nod, then kick back in a hammock with a beer and a good book.

Learning from The Tacoma Narrows

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The Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapse is one of the best known architectural failures in modern history, and it is used as a lesson by everyone, from architects and civil engineers to insurance agents.

Built in 1940 across the Tacoma Narrows in Washington State, the suspension bridge lasted less than a year before collapsing. The only casualty was a dog stuck in a car.

Due to a very tight budget, the bridge was constructed with lightweight girders, as per the lowest bid design. (In my work, that Tacoma Narrows lesson is one of the many reasons I don’t just go for the lowest bid). During construction, the bridge’s thin design, low weight, and less-than-durable construction resulted in frequent vibrations and shaking whenever the wind picked up. It got so bad that the workers nicknamed it Galloping Gertie. Not exactly a trust-inspiring name.

The Bridge Collapses

The Bridge Collapses

The bridge began undergoing severe oscillations (or, to be a bit less technical about things: the bridge shook itself to bits) under heavy winds on November 7th, 1940.

I won’t go in depth on the science behind the collapse; you can find that easy enough. I’m more interested in what lessons it gives us about ignoring nature. For all the amazing things mankind has done, we still need to respect nature or it will come back to bite us. All of our technology and inventiveness allows us to stand up to nature, but push it around? Not a chance. We need to foster a design philosophy that promotes working with nature, not against it.

This sounds like hippy talk, I know, but it’s nothing new. Heck, the idea goes back millennia. Look at any number of cultures that lived in hot climates—high ceilings, big windows, light colored paint. Cultures that live with heavy rain? You build your foundations strong, angle your roof, and pick your building site really carefully.

Why’d I decide to blog about Tacoma Narrows, when so many people already use it as a lesson? Well, I think some people missed that one—like my son-in-law, who decided to have his shed built by the cheapest contractor: at the edge of a hill, with no real foundation to speak of. He’s going to be picking his tools out of the stream for weeks.