Historic Engineering Wonders: Photos That Reveal How They Pulled It Off

https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/engineering-methods-from-the-past/

by dxs • 8 months ago

137 28 8 months ago

Fascinating! I would buy this in a "coffee table" style book.

Cool to see how much engineering relied on intuition and improvisation before modern tools existed. These methods look primitive now, but they worked because people understood materials so well. Makes me wonder how much of that hands-on knowledge we’re losing today.

Arainach2• 8 months ago

It was often neither intuition nor improvisation, but rules. Bill Hammack's "The Things We Make" goes into a number of examples.

For a slightly more modern example, take European Gothic Cathedrals. People weren't guessing, they weren't improvising, and they weren't relying on intuition - if they did most of them would have collapsed long ago.

These structures were made without blueprints, and often many of the head masons may have been illiterate, but a knowledge of forms and rules such as "the thickness of the wall of an arch should be a bit more than a fifth the span of the arch" allowed for reliably producing stable structures.

These rules were less precise than modern engineering math and mean that many of the structures are overengineered / have higher margins of error than are considered necessary in modern construction, but they are not based on intuition or guessing.

hamdingers• 8 months ago

Where did the rules come from?

dtgriscom• 8 months ago

The article lists a "Snake Bridge on the Macclesfield Canal". Here's a spiral bridge on that canal, but not the same one:

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Spiral+Bridge/@53.2849203,...

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Spiral+Bridge/@53.2850202,...

froddd• 8 months ago

There are 2 in quick succession in Marple ([1] and [2]), very near the Marple Lock Flight ([3]). This happens to be at the very start of Macclesfield Canal.

[1] https://maps.app.goo.gl/tYBvtfJwSSo6nBm29

[2] https://maps.app.goo.gl/nYoCxPmDRpM9ADfFA

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marple_Lock_Flight

vjust• 8 months ago

This article seems to focus mainly on Western civilization. Not saying they aren't wonders. There were many engineering feats in the South/East Asian subcontinents that are not covered.

greenpizza13• 8 months ago

Syria, China, and Iran are 3 of the examples.

FlyingSnake• 8 months ago

It also features many examples from pre-Colombian South American cultures

unsignedchar• 8 months ago

Interesting collection but mostly focused on western world and mixing different eras so feels incoherent, like a low-effort ‘content creation’

sanjayjc• 8 months ago

When visiting Bath[1] in UK (mentioned in the article), I learned the Romans used a clever contraption, the "three legged lewis", to lift heavy stones[2].

Referring to the diagram[3] on Wikipedia, a concave hole is first cut into the stone. Parts 1 and 2 of the lewis are inserted, one at a time. Inserting part 3 between 1 and 2 results in all three locking into place. A pin and ring at the top keeps the 3 parts from separating.

[1] https://www.romanbaths.co.uk

[2] https://bathgeolsoc.org.uk/journal/articles/2021/2021_Moving...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_(lifting_appliance)#/med...

pugworthy• 8 months ago

Though really amazing engineering, I'd say not all of them show "how they pulled it off". I'd like to know how the Byzantine geared mechanical calendar was "pulled off", especially those gears.

jcoby• 8 months ago

Clickspring on YouTube has a whole series into construction methods likely used with the Antikythera mechanism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRXI9KLImC4&list=PLZioPDnFPN...

And another on building a working reproduction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGHq4O-ib2U&list=PLZioPDnFPN...

https://www.youtube.com/@Clickspring

estimator7292• 8 months ago

Clickspring also did the Byzantine calendar in specific. Though not in nearly as much detail as the Antikythera series.

humanpotato• 8 months ago

The gear teeth are cut with a file. For the angularity, draw a circle with a compass and subdivide it by measuring linearly with a measuring tool. This can be done larger than the part, and the teeth locations marked with a straightedge. By cutting the teeth where marked, you avoid a stack-up of error.

IAmBroom2• 8 months ago

Quibble: I hate, despise, loathe the dilution of the word "rare" to mean, well, in this case "somewhat interesting and not commonly known".

Photos cannot be rare. Physical copies of a photograph might be. Photos are by their nature singular instances of artistic or technical action, so all of them are equally rare.

bigstrat2003• 8 months ago

Photos cannot be rare. Physical copies of a photograph might be.

"Photo" means both the image itself and a physical copy of said image. So if you agree that physical copies can be rare, then either you agree that photos can be rare or you are idiosyncratically using a different definition of "photo" than everyone else.

buellerbueller• 8 months ago

unique is pretty rare, i'd say

cfraenkel• 8 months ago

Photos cannot be rare

BS. Only if you pedantically define 'photo' as collecting an image at xyz location at a particular instant. I'm quite certain that photos of the Eiffel Tower are NOT rare.

agumonkey• 8 months ago

the iranian windmills were not expected, neither the absorbing layers of south american cultures brilliant

ProllyInfamous• 8 months ago

If you liked the Snake Bridge, check out US 441 as it passes (around itself) through Great Smokey National Park (Newfound Gap). The road literally underpasses itself in a very tight loop.

[•] https://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/hhh.tn0278.photos.3658...

Historic Engineering Wonders: Photos That Reveal How They Pulled It Off

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