Page 54 - Curriculum Visions Dynamic Book

The result of the widening of the scope of metals has meant that people have increasingly found uses
for many previously unavailable metals, whether it
be titanium for the cases of portable computers and artificial hip joints or the rare earth metals that are used in photoelectric cells.
Metals in buildings
Metals were not the first materials that people chose for making buildings. After all, metals have to be obtained by a long and complicated process of heating and then separating them from their rocks. Most people made buildings from mud, brick, stone, and timber. So it was not until the Industrial Revolution, beginning at the start of the 18th century, that metals began to play a major role in changing the way we build.
Using iron as a structural material took much development. At first, cast iron was used. Much ironwork from the Victorian Age (late 19th century) is cast iron, serving both to support buildings such as railway stations and to add decoration.
Iron quickly became the fashionable as well
as practical material for building. Solid columns
of iron supported the upper roofs of warehouses and railway stations where stone would previously have appeared.
As though to symbolise the achievements with iron and steel, in 1889 the crowning glory of the Paris Exposition was the 300-metre Eiffel Tower, built entirely of steel girders in the form of trusses. In the same exposition
a glass and steel gallery to house an
exhibition of machines
covered nearly 49,000
square metres of space. It
was so big that no other
use could be found for
it, and a gallery so big
has never since been
constructed.
(Below) The Eiffel Tower, Paris, France.
See Vol. 4: Ceramics for more on building materials.
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