Reach for the Sky

Reach for the Sky

The industrial world

Skycrapers are a product of the Industrial Revolution, which began in England in the eighteenth century. New inventions revolutionized the way people lived. Steam engines, and later electricity, made enough energy available to do many more times the work that people and animals had done before. A new method of smelting iron produced huge quantities at low prices. Other inventions gave builders steel, a material even stronger than iron. Cities grew an skyscrapers provided a solution to the problems of overcrowding because they take up little space on the ground. Skyscraper frames were first built with iron, then with steel. New engines powered elevators to hoist people to the top. The weight of a tall building can easily cause it to sink or lean, so the early skyscrapers were usually built on solid rock. This is why so many were built on Manhattan, a rocky island in New Your City.

Coalbrookdale Bridge

The world gained a new construction material when inexpensive iron was developed. In 1779, the English built Coalbrookdale bridge in Shrpshire, which was the first iron bridge to be constructed.

The first skyscraper was built in 1884 in the city of Chicago, Illinois. It was only ten-stories high.

Eiffel Tower

This iron and steel tower was built for the Paris Exposition of 1889. When radio was invented, the tower began its long career as an antenna. It carried the first transatlantic radio-telephone call.

Manhattan two towers skyscrapers. Photo by Elena.

The Tallest of Them All

For more than 4,500 years, the Great Pyramid of Khufu in Egypt was the tallest building in the world. Then the Eiffel Tower was built in France in 1889. In may parts of the world today, skyscrapers and towers continue to grow taller and taller. Some of the tallest building in history: St. Peter's Basilica, Italy 1612, 453 ft. Great Pyramid of Khufu, Egypt, 2700 BC, 479 ft. Eiffel Tower, France, 1889, 984 ft. Empire State Building, USA, 1931, 1,250 ft. Sears Tower, USA, 194, 1,453 fr. CN Tower, Canada, 1976, 1,804 ft.

Crown

The Art Deco style, a novelty of the 1930s, inspired the triangle-shaped windows. These are set within tiers of arches on the crown of many buildings.

Going Up

Steam engines powered the first elevators, which were used only for freight. The first passenger elevators were installed in 1857 after a way was found to stop them from falling if a cable broke. By 1889, they were powered by electric motors. The elevator doors of the Chrysler Building are decorated in the Art Deco style.

Life at the Top

Native Americans were some of the earliest construction workers on skyscrapers. They worked at great heights while standing only on 8-in wide steel beams.

Core

A strong frame is built inside the building for the elevators. This frame also helps the buidling resist the pushing and twisting forces of the winds.

Chrysler Building

Walter Chrysler built this 77-story skyscraper in New York City during the worldwide Depression of the 1930s. It provided much-needed employment for many construction workers. The building was the headquarters for his automobile empire and a monument to his success.

Early Civilizations

Early Civilizations

More than 5,000 years ago, a great civilization developed in Mesopotamia, the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, then spread eastward along the north coast of the Indian Ocean. The Egyptian civilization developed beside the River Nile soon after. People traveled between the two areas and brought new ideas and inventions with them. Egypt had many workers and plenty of stone, and the Egyptians built huge pyramids and temples using simple tools and techniques. Because they did not have the wheel, 20 men pulled each stone to the pyramid on a wooden sled. Both stone and wood were scarce in Mesopotamia. The people there invented new materials such as bricks molded from clay and baked in an oven or dried by the sun. They then built wheeled carts to transport the bricks.

The Pyramids of Giza

These three pyramids were built more than 4,500 years ago as tombs for Egyptian pharaohs. The largest of the three, the Great Pyramid of Pharaoh Khufu, contains nearly two-and-a-half million stone blocks.

Temple for a God

The huge columns of Egyptian temples still stand like stone forests in the desert above the banks of the Nile. This complex at Karnak was built over a period of 1,200 years. A statue of a pharaoh and his daughter stands outside the temple.

Early Civilizations. Photo by Elena.

Did You Know?

Some Egyptian architects today are also building vaulted structures out of sun-dried bricks. The buildings stay cool and the materials do not damage the environment.

Steers and dragons

The symbols of the babylonian weather god Adad and of the city's protector, the god Marduk, decorate the Ishtar Gate.

Ishtar Gate

In the sixth century BC., king Neubuchadnezzar built a road called the Processional Way. This road led from his palace in the city of Babylon, the main city of Mesopotamia, to a ceremonial hail for New Year's celebrations. The Processional Way passed through the city's double wallsat the Ishtar Gate.

Parade of Lions

Every animal lining the walls of the Processional Way was brick, cast from special molds so that the bodies curved out from the wall. Each of the lions was made up of 46 specially molded and glazed bricks.

Glazed Bricks

The bricks on the walls were painted with a glasslike mixture then baked to produce glowing colors.

 Arched Vault

The passage through the gate was 13 ft wide, which was only possible because it was covered by an arch.

Inventing the Arch

A stone laid across an open space like a doorway is brittle and will break it a heavy weight is placed on it. To avoid this, the supports of ancient stone buildings were set close together. Mesopotamians invented the arch so they could build wide, open rooms. Bricks or small stones set in a curve from an arch, the weight of each stone puses it against the next until one pushes agains a thick wall, called a buttress. The buttress presses the stones together and holds the arch in place. A vault is a celling built with arches.

Early American Empires

Early American Empires

The oldest architectural monuments in the Americas are found in present-day Mexico and along the west coast of South America. Early civilizations there had neither iron tools not animals that could be trained to pull carts, yet the people constructed enormous stone buildings. The Omecs and later civilizations in Mexico such as the Toltecs and Aztecs lived in scattered farm villages. These peoples had one religion and their religious centers were cities of stone such as Teotihuacan, where temples stood on top of tall pyramids.

The peace-loving Mayan people lived in the rainforests of the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico and they also built their religious centers of stone. In the fifteenth century, the Incas ruled an empire 2,480 miles (4,000 km) long in the Andes mountains of Peru. Their many towns were united by paved roads and a fast mail system. Incan stonemasons cut, polished and fitted stones together so tightly that a knife blade will not slide between them even today.

Stairway of goods

Two sides of the pyramid have steep stairs. A row of carved masks of Chac, the god of rain, line both sides of the staircase.

Pyramid of the Sun

This pyramid, built in the third century in Teothuacan, Mexico, stands on a high platform and is surrounded by volcanoes. Stone covers a core of dirt and lava carried to the site by thousands of workers over a period of 30 years. Aztecs lived there centuries after its Teotihuacan builders had disappeared. They believed this pyramid had been built by the gods themselves.

Palace of the governors in Uxmal, Mexico, is decorated with carved serpents and the Mayan rain god Chac. Religious leaders lived in its cool corbel-vaulted rooms.

A Mexican God. Photo by Elena.

Pyramid of the Magician

The Mayans built their pyramids in Uxmal, Mexico, in the ninth century. It has an unusual oval shape and two temples at the top. The peoples of Mexico built high platforms, or pyramids, for their temples so they would be closer to the gods in the heavens.

At the top

The temples on the pyramid are stone replicas of Mayan Thatched huts. Gifts were offered before statues of gods inside the corbel-vaulted rooms.

The Citadel

Offerings were placed on this Chac Mool, a god sculpted as a man tying on his back, which sits near an eleventh-century Toltec pyramid in Chichen Itza, Mexico. The pyramid has a steep staircase on each side and a temple at the top.

Corbeled Roofs

A building constructed of stone posts and horizontal beams will collapse if the beams have to support heavy walls or if the posts are not set close enough together. Stone doorways and stone roofs or vaults can be built with small stones called corbels. Each stone lies on top of the last stone and has one end sticking out over the opening. Once the stones or corbels from both sides of the opening meet at the top, stones placed on top of the roof will hold it in place.

Did You Know?

The Pyramid of the Magician encloses three older temples. In Mexico, a new pyramid and temple often encased an earlier one. A completely furnished temple ready for use was discovered within the Pyramid of the Sun.

Incan Ruines

Important religious ceremonies took place in Machu Piccu, an Incan town high in the Andes mountains of Peru. The plain stone walls of important Incan buildings were covered with plates of pure gold.

Place to Live

A Place to Live

People must have shelter to survive. They will die without protection from the sun, rain, wind and cold. Today, people can live in almost every part of the world because they have learned to build walls and to put a roof over their heads. For centuries, people had no tools to cut or move trees and large stones, so the first houses were built from materials that were hard rocks with sharp edges could cut trees and other rocks, and these became the first building tools. Many centuries later, people melted metals from rocks to make stronger, sharper tools. In places with little stone or wood, people made sun-dried bricks out of mud to build their houses. Some of the earliest cultures in history were the first to discover and use many of the basic building materials still used today.

Did you know?

The basic methods used to support the roofs of many great buildings were first developed in ancient villages to hold up the roofs of huts.

The Roof

A waterproof roof is made from grass by thatching. Bundles of swamp grass are tied to a wooden frame so that each bundle overlaps the ones next yo it and below it.

Stone Hut

Walls of stone shaped with tools surround clusters of houses in many ancient villages. Each house has several rooms and each room has its own dome. Some even have a second story. Smoke from fires used for cooking escapes through holes in the roof.

A perfect place to live. Photo by Elena.

Making Bricks

Sun-dried mud bricks were perhaps the first synthetic building material ever made. A mixture of mud and straw is pressed into molds then laid out in the sun to dry. The straw holds the bricks together so they do not crumble. As rain will dissolve sun-dried bricks, a coating of lime is added or a wide roof is built to protect the walls.

Beehive Hut

A hut on Dingle Peninsula in Ireland looks like a beehive. It was built centuries ago. It was built centuries ago by a monk who piled up small flat stones cleared from his fields. He stacked each circle of stones on top of the circle below and made each stone slope downwards slightly towards the outside, so rain could not get in (as well in the village of Haaran on the Turkish-Syrian border).

The Walls

A man in weaving mats from palm fronds or leaves, which will become the walls of his hut. Weaving stiffens the fronds.

South Pacific Woven Huts

On the Trobriand Island of Papua New Guinea, houses are still built from small trees cut with stone tools. The pieces of wood are tied together with vines to form the frame of each house. The island people use plant material to complete the house. Grass and leaves vend easily and people thought they seemed too weak to use for building until they discovered how hard it was to pull them apart.

War and Peace

Today and Tomorrow

War and Peace

Technological progress is faster in times of war. Each side tries to make weapons and machines that are bigger and better than those of the enemy. At the beginning of the First World War, for example, the typical flying speed of an airplane was 70 miles per hour. By the end of the war this speed had doubled. In the Second World War, the Germans introduced two inventions that later transformed flight – the turbojet, which became the basis of modern aircraft, and the ballistic missile, which took aviation from the skies into space.

Some wartime inventions, such as the tank, are only suited to war, but many have other uses. The antibiotic penicillin, which saves many lives, was invented in 1941 to cure the infected wounds of soldiers. It is impossible to say whether more good has come from wartime inventions than bad. But one thing is certain, many things were invented because of war.

Radio Detection and Ranging

In 1935, the scientist Robert Watson-Watt was asked by the British army to invent a radio death ray for warfare. Instead, he invented radio which detects enemy aircraft using radio waves.

Guided Missiles 

All modern strategic missiles and space rockets were developed from the work of a team of Second World War German scientists, who created more than 20 types of missiles. Air-to-air guided missiles, such as this one, are used for aerial combat. 

Red Floppy. Photo by Elena.

Armored Tank

The tank lurched onto First World War battlefields in 1916, thanks to the combined efforts of a number of inventors and British army officers. This modern United Nations tank has a swiveling gun turret and lookout post.

Modern Armor

Heavy steel armor plating was first used in America in 1862 to strengthen warships. Today's tanks are encased in lightweight but strong metal alloys, plastics and even ceramics.

Stealth Fighters

Difficult to detect because of their shape and a radar absorbent coating, F-117 fighter bombers are designed for precision attack. They were used by the United States in the Gulf War in 1991.

Lethal Weapons

Grenades have been around for more than 500 years. In the 1600s, French soldiers, called greanadiers, were trained specially as throwers. Plastic explosives, once unwrapped from their sausagelike skins, can be molded into position. They were used in military operations to shatter parts of bridges and buildings.

Caterpillar Tracks

In 1904, Benjamin Holt built a tractor that laid down its own track under the rear wheels to travel over mud. A continuous track enables it to break through fences and go over deepgullies.

Night Vision

Since the 1950s, scientists have been working on devices to make it possible for soldiers to fight in the dark. The night-vision goggles shown below are sensitive to low levels of light, such as reflected straight or moonlight. The goggle intensify this light and allow soldiers to see, move and shoot at night as well as they can during the day. In theory, 24-hour war is now possible.

Time-line

• 1861 : Sea Mine – USA
• 1862 : Machine Gun – Richard Gatling, USA.
• 1883: Automatic Machine Gun – Hiram Maxim, USA.
• 1902: Exploding Bullet – John Pomeroy, New Zealand.
• 1915: Sonar – Paul Langevin, France.
• 1944: V2 Rocket Bomb – Wernher von Braun and Walter Dornberger, Germany.
• 1945: Atomic Fission Bomb – Project Manhattan scientists, USA.
• 1952: Hydrogen Bomb, USA.
• 1984: Stun Gun, USA.
• 1985: Flashball Gun – François Richet, France.

War and Peace. Illustration by Elena.