Roman engineering

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Origins of Roman Engineering

Although the ancient Romans are generally famous for their advanced engineering accomplishments, most of their own inventions were improvements on older ideas, concepts and inventions. Cement was originally invented in Egypt, although the Romans improved the formula. Technology for bringing running water into cities was also invented in the east. The architecture used in Rome was strongly influenced by Greek and Etruscan sources. Roads were common at that time, but the Romans improved their design and perfected the construction methodologies to the extent that many of their roads are still in use today.

Use of Water

Three hundred million gallons of water were brought into Rome by 11 different aqueducts each day. Per capita water usage in Rome matched that of modern-day cities like New York City or modern Rome. Most water was for public uses, such as baths and sewers. The aqueducts could stretch from ten to sixty miles long, and decreased from an elevation of one thousand feet above sea level at the source, to two hundred feet when they reached the reservoirs around the city. Roman engineers used siphons to force water uphill when they judged it impractical to build a raised aqueduct across a particular depression.

The Romans were among the first civilizations to harness the power of water. They built some of the first watermills outside of Greece for grinding flour and spread the technology for constructing watermills throughout the Mediterranean. A famous example occurs at Barbegal in southern France, where no less than 16 overshot mills built into the side of a hill were worked by a single aqueduct, the outlet from one feeding the mill below in a cascade. They were also skilled in conducting mining operations such as building the many aqueducts needed for prospecting for metal veins, in methods like hydraulic mining, and the building of reservoirs to hold the water at the minehead. It is likely that they were also capable of building and operating mine equipment such as crushing mills and dewatering machines. They were closely involved in exploiting gold resources such as those at Dolaucothi in south west Wales and in north-west Spain, a country where gold mining developed on a very large scale in the early part of the first century AD, such as at Las Medulas.

Architecture

The buildings and architecture of Ancient Rome were impressive even by modern standards. The Circus Maximus, for example, was large enough to be used as a stadium. The Coliseum also provides an example of Roman architecture at its finest. One of many stadiums built by the Romans, the Coliseum exhibits the arches and curves commonly associated with Roman buildings. The Pantheon still stands a a monument and tomb, and the Baths of Diocletian are remarkable for their state of preservation, both possessing intact domes.

Materials

The most common materials used were brick, cement and marble. Brick came in many different shapes. Curved bricks were used to build columns, and triangular bricks were used to build walls.

Marble was mainly a decorative material. Caesar Augustus once boasted that he had turned Rome from a city of stone to a city of marble. The Romans had originally brought marble over from Greece, but later found their own quarries in northern Italy.

Cement, also known as mortar, was originally invented in Asia. It was made of hydrated lime (calcium oxide) mixed with sand and water. The Romans discovered that substituting or supplementing the sand with a pozzolanic additive, such as volcanic ash, would produce a very hard cement, known as hydraulic mortar or hydraulic cement. They used it for more repetitive tasks, especially their roads.

Roman Roads

Roman roads were constructed to be immune to floods and other environmental hazards. Many roads built by the Romans are still in use today.

There was no standard design to a Roman road. However, most roads were composed of five layers. The bottom layer, called pavimentum, was one inch thick and made of mortar. Above this were four strata of masonry. The layer directly above the pavimentum was called the statumen. It was one foot thick, and was made of stones bound together by cement or clay. Above that, there were the rudens, which were made of ten inches of rammed concrete. The next layer, the nucleus, was made of twelve to eighteen inches of successively laid and rolled layers of concrete. Ass Crustaof silex or lava polygonal slabs, one to three feet in diameter and eight to twelve inches thick, were laid on top of the rudens. The final upper surface was made of concerete or well smoothed and fitted flint.

Generally, when a road encountered an obstacle, the Romans preferred to engineer a solution to the obstacle rather than redirecting the road around it. Bridges were constructed over all sizes of waterway, marshy ground called for the construction of raised causeways with firm foundations, and hills and outcroppings were frequently cut or tunneled through rather than avoided.

Roman Mining

The Romans were the first to exploit mineral deposits using advanced technology, especially the use of aqueducts to bring water from great distances to help operations at the pithead. Their technology is most visible at sites in Britain such as Dolaucothi where they exploited gold deposits with at least 5 long aqueducts tapping adjacent rivers and streams. They used the water to prospect for ore by unleashing a wave of water from a tank to scour away the soil and so reveal the bedrock with any veins exposed to sight. They used the same method (known as "hushing") to remove waste rock, and then to produce a controlled supply to wash the crushed ore. It is highly likely that they also developed stamp mills to crush hard ore, which could be washed to collect the heavy gold dust. At alluvial mines, they applied the method on a vast scale, such as Las Medulas in north-west Spain. Traces of tanks and aqueducts can be found at many other early Roman mines. The method is described in great detail by Pliny the Elder in his Naturalis Historia. The same author also describes deep mining underground, and mentions the need to dewater the workings using reverse overshot water wheels, and actual examples have been found in many Roman mines exposed during reworking attempts. They also used Archimedean screws to remove water in a similar way.

Roman military engineering

Engineering was also institutionally ingrained in the Roman military, who constructed forts, camps, bridges, roads, ramps, pallisades, and siege equipment amongst others. One of the most notable examples of military bridge-building in the Roman Empire was Julius Caesar's bridge over the Rhine River. This bridge was completed in only ten days, only by dedicated soldiers.

External links

Traianus - Technical investigation of Roman public works

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Last updated on Thursday March 13, 2008 at 13:46:03 PDT (GMT -0700)
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