There used to be a toy museum (long gone) in Cockermouth. One of their display items was a toy train set, designed so that that the user took the 240V ac light bulb out of the lamp-holder, plugged in the railway controller and put the bulb into the top of the controller, as a resistor.
Of course, that meant that as soon as the loco fell off the track and there was an open circuit, the track voltage rose to 240V.
Just the thing for children to play with!
He is in Britain.
Unlikely his parents called him that.
And lady. Very few actually have a tiara.
You can always tell future Democrats.
The density in the city is about 2300 / square mile and has grown by 30% since 2000. apartments and single family dwellings are springing up like mushrooms after a rain.
The Taylor Apartments were a similar high rise design also built in the '50s. They finally started to demolish them last year.
Brick was the favored building material so we were spared the poured concrete style that look like they took the forms down and called it a day.
That's about right.
"Theodore Dalrymple, a British author, physician, and conservative political commentator, has written for City Journal that brutalist structures represent an artefact of European philosophical totalitarianism, a "spiritual, intellectual, and moral deformity." He called the buildings "cold-hearted", "inhuman", "hideous" and "monstrous". He stated that the reinforced concrete "does not age gracefully but instead crumbles, stains, and decays", which makes alternative building styles superior."
Several of my friends in college were aspiring architects who worshiped at the altars of Le Corbu and Mies (van der Rohe). Form follows function! I don't know which was worse, that or the inevitable pomo backlash.
The Hudson Valley was big on brick.
"In the 1900’s, in an attempt to solve the labor shortage, the Haverstraw brickyards sent representatives down to the southern states to recruit workers from African-American communities to work in the Haverstraw brickyards."
Brutalism is the one style that lacks any trace of style. It just has ugliness.
The fun project was a device to electrocute your friends. I'm working from memory but you build a box to hold a couple of D cells, that had a crank with a gear at one end. Then you constructed a set of points with two flat metal pieces and an insulating strip that would make and break as you turned the crank and two girder type pieces for the electrodes. Then you wired it up to the motor and used the inductance of the motor coil.
It was sort of a DIY TENS system.
Socialism and central government always leads to the same sort of brutalist architecture.
Square foot for square foot, the British high rise was the cheapest way to house the wurkahs.
Some attempt to dress up the poured concrete construction with
Dressing costs money. Space is limited.
USA has lots of space and lots of trees, Chalet style ranch houses work, and if they are too hot throw in energy guzzling Aircon.
The spanish/mediterranean style houses built of brick stone and concrete with massively thick rooves, tiled floors and overhanging eaves are the most energy efficient way to live in temperatures over 30°C as the Romans and the Moors discovered.
At night airflow cools the masonry, and by day the masonry cools the airflow
Solar gain at high sun angles is reduced.
There's quite a few older than that in the UK.
However the problem is that the statistics show that eventually nearly all of them catch fire.
And there is nothing left to rebuild.
Indeed, the "Big House" in our village has been found to be based on a timber-framed structure from the 15th C. Timber is still there..
"Dating from 1395, The Crooked House in Lavenham sits at the heart of Britain’s best-preserved medieval village and is the inspiration behind the famous nursery rhyme."
The domesday book mentioned hall across the road from me here, caught fire about 25 years ago as they were 'renovating it'.
But there is a lot of the 15th century timber framed house still left. The original 1066 or thereabouts manor may be in there somewhere.
The estate is anglo saxon.
I think there are a few houses in the Downland Museum that are Dark ages. But they are repros. I dont think any actual example that was taken down and moved there, dates from much before 1400.
The oldest houses I know of in the UK are stone, at Skara Brae.
"The site was occupied from roughly 3180 BC to about 2500 BC and is Europe's most complete Neolithic village. Skara Brae gained UNESCO World Heritage Site status as one of four sites making up "The Heart of Neolithic Orkney". Older than Stonehenge and the Great Pyramids of Giza, it has been called the "Scottish Pompeii" because of its excellent preservation"
-Wiki
It can prevent a fire if the fault is a resistance that heats sufficiently connected accidentally between live and earth, at the metal chassis, which has not sufficient current to blow the fuse.
just an example.
Not much wood in Spain, and not of building quality. A lot has to be imported.
My house is all stone, mortar and bricks, and iron, except wood beams supporting the roof tiles, made from Canadian pines.
The adobe construction in the US southwest has similar properties. The energy efficiency may be a byproduct. Sun-dried mud bricks require thick walls and overhanging eaves prevent them from washing away in the infrequent but intense rains.
Trees are sparse and most aren't suitable for lumber. Stone was used in other areas like Chaco Canyon where sandstone was abundant. There may have been more timber in the period but from today's conditions they would have had to go as much as 60 miles to find suitable timber for the vigas.
You use what you have. Sod construction wasn't very pleasant but when you're on the Great Plains with plenty of sod and no trees you make do.
Exactly, I dont think adobe construction is that bad either. Surprised they never lit a fire and turned it into bricks
Exactly, I dont think adobe construction is that bad either. Surprised they never lit a fire and turned it into bricks
In the 1920s you probably had to take the 2V accumulator (that powered the valve filaments) down to the local bicycle shop to be charged.
Unless you had a cat's whisker...
It doesn't heat all both sides, and needs a lot of wood, which is usually scarce in those areas.
However, I read about somewhere (Africa?) where they lit a big fire inside the house (of rounded shape, like an igloo), turning at least part of the mud to ceramics.
Fuel
Cow s*it is fairly common
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