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Engineering an Empire
2005 · TV series · documentary · 90 min episodes · 1 season
Created by Dolores Gavin, Randy Martin
Engineering an Empire is a program on The History Channel that explores the engineering and/or architectural feats that were characteristic of some of the greatest societies on this planet. It is hosted by Peter Weller, famous for his acting role as RoboCop but also a lecturer at Syracuse University, where he completed his Master's in Roman and Renaissance Art. The executive producer is Delores Gavin. The show started as a documentary about the engineering feats of Ancient Rome and later evolved into a series. It originally ran for one full season of weekly episodes.
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2 comments on Hacker News
I'm a materials engineer, off the top of my head, the first thing that comes to mind when you mention access to improved metallurgy is lighter, stronger materials and the impact that would have on construction. That could have lead to larger, taller buildings, stronger city walls etc. Then then probably would be flow on effects since stronger walls means need improved artillery to siege a city etc.
But I think the article did a good job of highlighting that technology developments occur out of local circumstances and requirements. I am no history scholar but I understand the Roman empire was expansive, space wasn't necessarily a constraint so there probably wasn't a huge demand to build larger and taller buildings it would have likely been easier to expand cities outwards rather than upwards.
There was a good documentary series I watched years ago called "Engineering an Empire" they had an episode about the technology of Carthage (Rome's great rival), the series pointed out the city of Carthage had large multi-story buildings shared by several families, kind of pseduo-apartment buildings from what the documentary explained there was much more constraints on space in Carthage as it was very desirable to live inside the city walls this led to the development of this type of construction style. Because of these tall buildings there were more advances in things like plumbing, which was different to what the Romans had at the time. The show also pointed out that Carthage placed more emphasis on Naval power so they had relatively sophisticated harbor design, shipbuilding industries etc.
This looks neat. Here is how discover the world online.
- I start with some travel show or a foodalogue to see what people look like there, what is their ethnic makeup, what do they eat, how rich/happy are they, how advanced is their society. I would probably watch gordon ramsey's kitchen nightmares to get the first glace at britain.
- then I watch something about the current affairs of the country. Putin's russia ( Aljazeera documentary) /Khodorkovsky on netflix
- Read a book or two , both fiction and non fiction. Russia: Snowdrops (Fiction) , Starman: The Truth Behind the Legend of Yuri Gagarin.
- Then I dig deeper and try to see how the people there got to be like what they are now. Eg: Battle of Russia on Fandor, National Geographic's Engineering an empire( Russia).