[HN Gopher] Bricks and the Industrial Revolution
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       Bricks and the Industrial Revolution
        
       Author : wolfram74
       Score  : 21 points
       Date   : 2021-09-17 19:30 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (constructionphysics.substack.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (constructionphysics.substack.com)
        
       | opwieurposiu wrote:
       | Notice the price of brick really takes off in the early 70's.
       | 
       | Perhaps yet another example graph for
       | https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/
        
       | DoreenMichele wrote:
       | This is a delightful article that isn't at all what I thought it
       | would be about. The section about how Britain's brick tax
       | disincentivized experimenting with new technology is great stuff.
       | 
       | I thought it would talk about how brick got displaced by newer
       | building tech. It mostly talks about how making bricks got moved
       | from a manual process to a mechanized one.
       | 
       | I will also note that the Great Fire of London in 1666 is one of
       | the reasons London and Britain were so very powerful and globally
       | influential. So much of the city was destroyed that when they
       | rebuilt it, they de facto modernized the city. It was the most
       | modern city in the world because of the fire.
       | 
       | Another random factoid that comes to mind: Some guy who was a
       | bricklayer all his life became locally important in, I believe,
       | Washington DC when he was an old man and was the only guy they
       | could find who knew how to authentically recreate the old bricks
       | these historic buildings were made from. (There were many old
       | buildings in need of restoration at that point.)
        
         | wolfram74 wrote:
         | The author has also done other analyses of how
         | industrialization of construction work hasn't really taken off
         | in a way that lowers prices. The case of how something as
         | simple and interchangeable as bricks not succumbing to
         | industrialization is a damning data point in that theme.
        
       | Animats wrote:
       | India still hasn't reached the industrial revolution in brick-
       | making.[1] Bricks are still be made by slaves and children.
       | 
       | [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-25556965
        
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       (page generated 2021-09-17 23:01 UTC)