The history of construction and building

When it comes to the history of building and construction there is a lot of things that we can look at. The invention of hammers and nails, the power tool revolution that then made power tools much more valuable than hand tools. These are just a few of the many things that we are going to look at today. Let’s jump right into it.

Firstly, the introduction of the hammer and nail. In about 3000 B. C, the first ever hammer was made and used in the start of the Bronze Age. The machines used to produce nails were created in between the 1790s and the early 1800s. These tools are still widely used today by many construction workers and just normal people like you and me. But lots of workers have power tools such as nail guns that make using tools such as the hammer and nail obsolete. These tools are the much more modern and better widely known as power tools, and there are many variations of many things used in the modern era of construction

The introduction of power tools was very helpful to the construction community. These tools are much easier to use and also make the work and lives of construction workers and normal people easier. The tools we’re going to talk about today are the Nail gun, Compound Miter saw, the power drill, and the hand saw. There have been many types of construction over the last thousand year. Times such as the Copper and Bronze Ages of construction the copper are between 3, 100 B. C and 5, 000 B. C. The tools then were obviously a lot more primitive than now as they did not have the technology back then.

During the Bronze Age things like the corbelled arch came into use for things such as beehive tombs. The wheels came into use during this time but were not found common until a lot later. The heavy loads were packed onto things such as boats, sleds (which were very primitive), and rollers.

Then we hit the iron age, which was roughly from 50 B. C to 1200 B. C. The Iron Age held, well obviously iron, but the iron was not much harder than the bronze that they used before, but by them adding carbon fiber, iron then becomes steel. Steel was produced by about 300 B. C. Steel can be hardened which produces a sharp, highly durable cutting edge.

We finally hit the Middle Ages which are located in Europe from the 5th to 15th AD centuries. Forts, castles, and the catholic cathedrals were the greatest buildings in this construction period. This period was the end of the Roman era and lots of the building techniques had been lost, but some Roman Techniques, including the use of the iron ring beams, seem to have been used the Palatine Chapel at Aachen in 800 A. D. It’s believed that builders from the Langobard Kingdom in Northern Italy contributed to the work.

The seventeenth century saw the birth of modern science which has had heavy effects on building and construction. Lots of breakthroughs were toward the end of the century when architect engineers used science to help build the forms of their buildings. But, it was not until the eighteenth century were engineering developed to allow sizes of members to be calculated. The eighteenth century saw the architects and engineers become much more professionalized. Experimental science and math equations became much more sophisticated and employed in buildings. During this time the industrial revolution saw the increase in the size of the cities and an increase in the pace of them being built. The nineteenth century or the industrial revolution was the introduction of many transportation methods. Some of these are railways, canals, and macadam roads. However, these required mass amounts of investments. New construction devices include the steam engine, machine tools, explosives, and optical surveying. The steam engine combined with two other technologies of this generation, the circular saw and machine cut nails, in which led to the use of balloon framing and the decline of traditional timber framing. Plumbing also happened during this century which gave common access to drinking water and sewage collection.