An Encyclopedia of the History of Technology part 88 pot

Various ways of making earth into a suitable building material have been developed over centuries according to the type of earth available and the climate of the area concerned.. Adobe w

PART FIVE: TECH NOLOGY AND SOCIETY

application to domestic machines until the 1930s and factory machines tended for some years to be driven from overhead shafting

FASTENINGS Fastenings are an essential component for the majority of garments and one in which great advances have been made in recent years Toggles, of wood, bone

or antler, were first used and engaged loops of leather thong The toggle was later refined to form the button, originally made from shell, bone or wood The button, in fact, was originally used more as an ornament than as a fastening, the earliest known being found at Mohenjo-daro in the Indus valley

It is made of a curved shell and about 5000 years old There was a gradual increase in the use of buttons throughout the Middle Ages, particularly for decorative purposes—in fact until the eighteenth century when production became mechanized in the factory with a consequent reduction in price, bringing the product within the popular rather than the luxury range Mother-ofpearl, glass and precious and base metals were added to the range of materials used Cloth buttons, formed on a disc of brass with a shank added, became common in the early twentieth century

The hook-and-eye fastening dates from Roman times when it was used for fastening soldiers’ leather breast armour It came into use again on the continent of Europe in the sixteenth century, the first British hooks and eyes coming from the firm of Newey’s in 1791

The press stud stems from the invention by Louis Hannart in 1863 of an

‘Improved clasp or fastener for gloves and other wearing apparel, for umbrellas, travelling bags…’ From the late nineteenth century manufacture took place in Germany reaching a peak in the early years of the twentieth century In 1885 H.Bauer patented a spring and stud fastener while M.D.Shipman patented a similar design in the USA the following year

Production of existing fasteners, particularly the press stud, was greatly threatened by the invention of the zip fastener, originally patented by Whitcomb L.Judson of Chicago, USA, in 1896 and at first only used on boots and shoes It was not a success, tending to jam or to spring open It was also expensive, being largely made by hand Eventually the Automatic Hook and Eye Company of Hoboken, New Jersey, took on Dr Gideon Sundback who improved the design until, in 1918, a contractor making flying suits for the US Navy placed an order for 10,000 fasteners and in 1923 B.F.Goodrich & Co put zips in the galoshes that they manufactured Success was assured from then on

A recent competitor to the zip fastener is Velcro, the ‘touch-and-close’ fastener Invented by George de Mestral, first patented in 1954, but not made in the UK until the 1960s, UK patents were granted to Selectus Ltd

usually nylon, one incorporating a pile of loops and the other of hooks, are set in tapes Both tapes are finished by heat treatment in the form of an electric current passing through the hooks and loops, which sets and hardens them There are numerous variations of the arrangement but all,

to a greater or lesser extent, resemble the working of the burdock or teazle found in nature

WATERPROOF CLOTHING AND ELASTIC

The Amazonian Indians are said to have used rubber to waterproof clothing as early as the thirteenth century When this material, the rubber sap exported from Brazil, became available in Britain, Charles Macintosh, the Scottish chemist, set up a factory in Manchester where he dissolved the rubber with naphtha, (see p 849)

Linseed oil was also used, painted on the fabric, to make oilskin In the early 1840s Charles Goodyear of New York first vulcanized rubber treating it with sulphur which converted it to an elastic material, less subject to temperature changes Plastic waterproofs date from the 1940s PVC treatment

of the fabric avoids temperature sensitivity

Macintosh’s partner, Thomas Hancock, was involved in the application of rubber to the production of elastic fabrics as were Messrs Rattier & Guibel of

St Denis, Paris, producing elastic webbing cloth in 1830 This quickly took the place of spiral brass wire for shoulder straps and for ladies’ corsets A patent for elastic-sided boots was granted to James Downie in 1837

The umbrella originated in China some 3000 years ago where it was considered a symbol of rank; in the form of feathers or leaves covering a frame

of cane, it was used mainly as a protection against the sun This was its main purpose until the early years of the eighteenth century when the French covered them with oiled cloth to make them waterproof Earlier attempts had been made in Italy where leather was used as early as 1608

Jonas Hanway is credited with being the first Englishman to use an umbrella This was in London in 1756, although ladies had used sunshades earlier in the century and umbrellas were kept at coffee houses to escort patrons to their carriages or sedan chairs For a man to carry an umbrella was considered effeminate and was extremely unpopular with the hackney coachmen Their use grew, however, and by 1790 it was said that

umbrella-PART FIVE: TECH NOLOGY AND SOCIETY

CLEANING Until the mid-nineteenth century washing with soap and water was the only way of cleaning clothes and, with woollen fabrics in particular, it was more common to dye them a darker colour to conceal the dirt In about 1850 Jean-Baptiste Jolly-Bellin, a Paris tailor, spilt some camphene, a kind of turpentine,

on an article of his wife’s and found that the area stained by the spirit was cleaner than the rest He opened up a business for ‘Nettoyage a Sec’, the first dry-cleaning business The garments had to be unstitched before brushing with camphene and then sewn together again

In 1866 the firm of Pullars of Perth set up a business with a postal service throughout Britain, for dry cleaning using benzene or petroleum, both highly inflammable but not requiring the garments to be dismembered Carbon tetrachloride was used in Leipzig by Ludwig Anthelm in 1897, but was found

to corrode the equipment and was dangerous to breathe It was replaced by trichlorethylene in Britain in 1918 and in the USA in 1930 Perchlorethylene, non-inflammable and giving off no noxious fumes, is now used

FOOTWEAR Footwear was the product of individual boot- and shoemakers until Marc Isambard Brunel set up his army boot factory in Battersea after seeing the victors of Corunna return home unshod, their feet bandaged and festering in rags The factory employed 24 ex-servicemen, most of whom were disabled, to operate 16 separate processes including punching, tacking, welting, cutting, trimming and nail-driving, all by machinery The factory could produce 400 pairs of boots a day Others had tried to mechanize the process before with little success, but from then on the machine-made industry was to grow However, with the ending of hostilities, Brunel made little money from the venture A pair of ‘water boots’ was sold for half a guinea, superior shoes for

12 shillings and Wellington boots for 20 shillings a pair Brunel boots shod Wellington’s guards at the Battle of Waterloo

BUILDING AND ARCHITECTURE

DOREEN YARWOOD

PRIMITIVE BUILDING For an undeveloped rural community, the overriding factor in building was the availability of materials Transportation was always difficult; roads were few, vehicles simple and the easiest means was by water Consequently the materials used in building were, apart from very important structures, those obtained locally Most often these comprised earths, wood and brushwood, reeds, turf and thatch and flint Stone, the heaviest of building materials to transport and needing the greatest degree of skill to prepare, was reserved for structures, of supreme importance (see pp 859–61)

Unbaked earths Earth simply dug out of the ground has been widely utilized from earliest times until the later nineteenth century, when its use still survived for simple, rural dwellings Various ways of making earth into a suitable building material have been developed over centuries according to the type of earth available and the climate of the area concerned

Construction using earth is generally of two main types The more common way is to make the substance plastic by the addition of water, then to

PART FIVE: TECH NOLOGY AND SOCIETY

included: pebbles or fragments of slate, stone or brick Buildings constructed of such plastic earth blocks require to be based upon a plinth of more permanent materials—stone, brick, flint or rubble—up to a depth of about 45–60cm (one-and-a-half to two feet) in order to keep the house dry and prevent invasion by vermin Earth walls also need to be plaster-faced and to be colour-washed annually to make them waterproof and to improve insulation

In countries with a hot climate a sun-dried brick was made from such plastic clay mixes It is known now generally as adobe, which is the Spanish

term for this material, a word derived from adobar, to pickle or to stew Adobe

was the earliest building material in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia and has been used until recent times in Spain, south-east Europe, the south-west region

of the USA and in Central America The clay, of a mud-like consistency, was mixed with straw or grass and sand or loam, then moulded into brick form and left to dry in the hot sun for a week or so

The rammed earth method is known in Britain as pisé (from the French

verb piser, to pound) It is a building material traditional to many parts of the

world —Europe, Africa, Asia and America In Europe it was employed by the Romans but chiefly in areas with a dry climate, which is necessary for its successful use The clay earth was contained between shutterboards, then beaten or rammed against a hard surface by a wooden rammer until it cohered into a block Stabilized earth is a modern equivalent but this is mixed with cement and so is stronger and easier to handle

Wood One of the earliest means of walling was by making panels of wattle and daub Vertical wooden stakes or branches were interwoven with reeds or brushwood These wattles were then plastered on one or both sides with mud (the daub) and often reinforced with turf or moss and left to dry in the air

Where there was ample afforestation, timber was used for building in the form of whole or split logs This method has been traditional over the centuries in the coniferous areas of Scandinavia, southern Germany and the Carpathian Mountains In hardwood forest regions such as England, the timber-framed method of construction was developed during the Middle Ages (see pp 862–4)

Flint

In districts lacking easily available stone, flint has been utilized from early times as an extremely durable substitute It is a pure form of silica found in

may be used whole, embedded in mortar, in conjunction with stone or rubble Flints are easy to split and, during the Middle Ages, a craft developed whereby such split flints were used decoratively in patterns with mortar and stone The shiny blue-black faces of the split flints formed an ornamental contrast against the cream-coloured stone The craft of flint splitting is known as knapping The decorative form of using such knapped flints is called flushwork

Roofing materials Walls constructed of earth blocks, timber or wattle and daub were suitable only to support lightweight roofing Again, the materials used for this were those most readily available These included thatch made from reed, straw or heather, or turves or moss For more important structures a tiling made from wood was usual Such wood tiles are known as shingles In England shingles were of oak, each tile measuring about five inches by ten inches (12.5 × 25 cm) and laid with an overlap; they were fashioned to be thicker at the lower edge

TRABEATED CONSTRUCTION

The word ‘trabeated’ derives from the Latin trabs, a beam and denotes a form

of construction in which a horizontal member is supported by vertical ones A more descriptive and so popular term nowadays is post and lintel

This method of building has been in use continuously since earliest times in many parts of the world, but its effective employment depends upon the availability of strong, permanent materials to provide posts which will safely support the lintels Cultures of the ancient world which built in this way included notably the Egyptian, the Minoan and the classical under Greece and Rome In Mesopotamia, where neither stone nor timber was in good supply and the major permanent building material was brick, the constructional form was based upon the arch, since brick is not suited to a horizontal spanning of an opening (see pp 872–4) In modern times the material in use is steel (see pp 896–9)

The ancient Egyptians were important pioneers in building in trabeated form, using stone, marble and granite There were two chief types: the columned hall or courtyard, where rows of columns supported continuous lintels, and the pylon entrance, where massive, sloping masonry blocks were

PART FIVE: TECH NOLOGY AND SOCIETY

manner using columnar supports which characteristically and unusually tapered downwards towards the base, like those which were excavated in the Palace of Minos at Knossos The Cretans also constructed small rectilinear buildings which are also of post and lintel type, the vertical walls supporting the horizontal ceilings; typical of modest building through the ages, both lintels and posts have become continuous surfaces to make slabs

It was the Greeks who transformed the trabeated type of architecture into

an art form of superb beauty and technical perfection Like the Egyptians they preferred this structural method to that based upon the arch which they regarded as being less stable and liable to collapse The Greeks developed a system of orders, a word referring to a grouped number of constituent parts Each order possessed specific relative proportions between its parts and certain distinguishing features in ornamentation and mouldings peculiar to itself The size of a building did not affect these proportions, which remained constant, so the differing scale did not impair the aesthetic or functional aspect

Each order comprised a column (often with a base) and at its head, a capital This capital was a decorative feature but also a functional one in that its upper surface area was greater than that of the column, so that it better supported the lintel above The lintel, known as an entablature, consisted of three horizontal sections The upper one, the cornice, was made up of mouldings which projected forwards, so directing the rain away from the sides of the building The central section was a decoratively sculptured frieze of which the famous and disputed sections of the Parthenon (the Elgin Marbles) are on display in the British Museum, London The lower section was called the architrave

Until the Hellenistic period (300 BC onwards), the Greeks used the post and lintel system of construction for almost all their building needs They built colonnaded temples, civic structures, theatres, town fortifications and, above all, stoas The stoa was a roofed promenade colonnaded at the front and sides and walled at the rear, where doorways led into shops and business premises Long single- or double-storeyed stoas were characteristic architectural features

of ancient Greek cities Situated in the market place (the agora), they provided

a meeting area for social and business purposes sheltered from the sun and rain These sophisticated colonnades had evolved from the early discovery that

a lintel stone supported on two columns could form an opening; the colonnade was an extrapolation of this concept

The beauty of Greek trabeated architecture derives not from diversity of form, for this is limited and very simple, but from its subtle and detailed attention to line and proportion Greek builders developed a series of refinements of line, mass and curve which were meticulously and mathematically calculated to give vitality and plasticity to a building as well as

to make it appear correctly delineated The true vertical and horizontal line of

a white marble feature, especially when silhouetted against a brilliantly blue

buildings, the Greeks made all planes, whether horizontal, vertical or sloping (as in pediments), very slightly convex The convexity was so subtle that, unlike in some eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European versions of such classical architecture, the line appeared to be straight In the Parthenon, the finest of all Greek buildings, entablatures, pediments, capitals, columns and base platforms are all so treated The curves are not arcs of circles but parabolas To give an indication of the subtlety of the correctional refinement, the stylobate—the stepped base upon which the Parthenon stands—is 69.5m (228ft) in length on the long sides of its rectangular form In the centre of such

a side the convex curve rises to only 11 cm (4 1/4 in)

The Romans followed upon the order system established by the Greeks, expanding and developing the theme and incorporating arcuated into trabeated construction After the Renaissance revival of classical architecture in fifteenthcentury Italy such trabeated forms were to be seen in buildings all over the western world through the centuries until after the First World War but in

a more limited scope than in ancient Greece, for the arcuated form of classical structure, developed by the Romans, was found to be more suited to the northern climate Post and lintel construction was also used for simple bridge building in timber, slate or stone as in the clapper bridges of Dartmoor where flat slabs are laid across vertical piers

In modern building the use of steel and reinforced concrete lends itself to post and lintel construction This can be seen in the steel-framed skyscraper where it is employed in grid pattern (see p 897) A similar grid form of trabeated building was also utilized in timber-framed structures of the fifteenth

to seventeenth centuries (see p 862) With modern materials, much greater flexibility of design is possible when using a columnar structure supporting beams or a roof than was possible in the days of ancient Greece Then, using stone or marble for building, it was necessary to erect columns at restricted and specified intervals to act as safe supports to the entablature lintels With the use of alloy steels, reinforced concrete or plastics reinforced with glass fibre, slender vertical supports may be distanced much further apart, so giving better natural illumination and visibility to the interior This is in marked contrast to the afforested columns of the Temple of Karnak at Luxor, for example

MASONRY

PART FIVE: TECH NOLOGY AND SOCIETY

where stone is plentiful; particularly, for example, in the Pennine and Lake District regions of England where sheep need to be securely contained Among the more primitive cultures, the Mycenaeans in the Peloponnese region of Greece were noted for their dry-stone walling in which they incorporated huge blocks of stone These were so heavy that they remained in position, the interstices being filled with smaller stones The citadels of Tiryns and Mycenae (fourteenth century BC) still show extensive evidence of this type of work The builders of classical Greece (fifth century BC) coined the term cyclopean for this masonry They viewed with awe construction using such immense blocks and, believing it to be superhuman, attributed it to the mythical Cyclopes Until about the sixteenth century AD in Europe, most stone walling was of rubble construction, that is, using smallish pieces of irregularly-shaped stone, the interstices filled with mud and/or mortar There were various types of rubble construction and, as time passed, these became more regular in pattern The haphazard arrangement of stones is known as random rubble If the pieces were laid in rows, or courses, it is coursed rubble, if they have been roughly squared, it is squared coursed rubble

The craft of cutting stones into precisely squared pieces and finishing it smoothly is known as ashlar Even in later times this was always costly, so it was only in use for important buildings—cathedrals, abbeys, civic structures etc More commonly ashlar blocks were reserved for dressings round windows and doorways, for gables, lintels, arches, pediments, buttresses and quoins In good quality ashlar the stones have horizontal and vertical faces at true right angles and are laid in horizontal courses with tightly fitting vertical joints A smooth finish was also necessary for carved stonework, for ornament and classical columns A high quality freestone is most suitable for ashlar work as, for example, the oolitic limestones and some sandstones In England, Portland stone, as used by Christopher Wren at St Paul’s Cathedral in London, was most effective

Other important building stones include granite, marble and slate Most forms of granite are igneous rock, formed when molten rock cooled They are extremely hard and durable They are crystallized and will take a high polish but are so hard to cut that decorative carving was rarely attempted before the introduction of power tools In Britain, the city of Aberdeen is an example of this The local material was widely utilized when much of the city was laid out

in granite in the Greek Revival style of the early years of the nineteenth century but, owing to the intractability of the material, the classical mouldings are bare of the usual egg and dart and acanthus decoration of the style For the same reason the moulding edges are as sharp now as when they were cut 150 years ago Much of the building of the ancient Greeks was of marble, particularly in Greece itself where Pentelic and Hymettian white marble from the mountains behind Athens and Parian from the island of Paros were available in quantity From Eleusis came the grey Eleusian marble used by builders for decorative contrast In areas of

be used, the Greeks coated it with a stucco made from powdered marble; the stucco has now worn off and the limestone is exposed, giving a brownish hue quite different from the brilliant white of the Athenian marbles

The Greeks rarely used mortar but fitted the blocks of stone and marble with great accuracy, using metal dowels and cramps to hold them together The drums of the columns were so finely fitted that the joints were barely visible When erecting fluted columns (those carved with narrow vertical channels in them), the Greeks carved the flutes in the top and bottom drums of the column then lined these up to complete the flutes when the column had been erected

Slate is a hard, fine-textured, non-porous rock, formed originally by great heat and/or pressure, from clay, shale or volcanic ash It may be sawn for use

as masonry in the same way as marble or stone Because of its fissile character, which enables it to be split along its natural laminae, it has more commonly been utilized as a roofing material or for paving and shelving It can also be employed for fittings such as chimneypieces

Slate, granite and marble have all been widely used over the centuries as a cladding material, that is, for facing a building which is made from a less attractive substance, In modern times, with the availability of improved equipment for quarrying and sawing, slate has been increasingly used in this way for expensive structures and the material gives an attractive and durable finish In Italy, where stone is only available in limited quantity yet there is a wealth of marbles of infinite variety in colour and markings, the Italians have for centuries built in brick and clad in marble This has been the tradition whether the building was a mediaeval cathedral or modern power station

ADVANCED TIMBER CONSTRUCTION

Apart from the earths, wood is the oldest building material It has been used as much as, possibly more, than any other in large areas of Europe where afforestation was extensive Several types of wooden structure were developed over the centuries These varied from region to region, partly according to the climate and partly to the type of timber available, whether hardwood, as in England where it was chiefly oak, or softwood pines and firs, as in Scandinavia and many mountain areas of Europe such as the Alps or the Carpathian regions of Hungary and Romania