• Madison420@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Very true. Another weird fact is that up until ≈1700 huge monumental stone buildings weren’t really engineered they were designed by rules of thumb.

    • bouh@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Greec and romans already knew maths and used them for their buildings. The knowledge still carried in the middle ages. Those trebuchets weren’t made at random. But yes, the knowledge was then made into rules of thumbs, as it is still nowadays.

      • Madison420@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        To some extent yes but masonry specifically was held in secrecy and monuments were indeed built on rules of thumb which are still used today as well just not as heavily.

        Essentially great great great great grandmaster mason Gary Gregg Gregor did the math back in 500ad so I don’t have to do it today I just have to follow the rule of thumb he left. Which would be like every 50ft in height you build you need to add 6" in wall thickness at the base, so on so forth.

        https://www.mhs.ox.ac.uk/compassandrule/medieval-drawing/

        https://www.jstor.org/stable/2856152