166 Fun Facts About Construction

The Great Pyramid of Giza was the world's tallest human-made structure for roughly how long?

More than 3,700 years: finished for Khufu around 2560 BC at 146.6 metres, it was not overtaken until Lincoln Cathedral's spire around 1311.

Roughly how many large stone blocks were quarried to build the Great Pyramid?

About 2.3 million blocks, averaging over two tonnes each and weighing some six million tonnes in total; the white Tura limestone casing arrived by boat.

The Empire State Building was structurally completed how many days after construction began?

Al Smith drove the final rivet, made of solid gold, and the building opened on May 1, 1931.

According to official accounts, how many workers died building the Empire State Building?

Five deaths were officially recorded among more than 3,000 workers, a low toll for a 1930s skyscraper; many were Mohawk ironworkers from Kahnawake near Montreal.

How tall is Dubai's Burj Khalifa to its architectural top?

828 metres, the tallest building in the world when it opened in January 2010; its Y-shaped plan is based on the Hymenocallis desert flower.

Which Chicago firm designed the Burj Khalifa, having earlier designed the Sears Tower?

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill designed it, with Adrian Smith as chief architect and Bill Baker as structural engineer; Samsung C&T of South Korea was the main contractor.

Hoover Dam sits in the Black Canyon of which river?

The Colorado: the concrete arch-gravity dam in Black Canyon, on the Nevada-Arizona line, was built from 1931 to 1936, two years ahead of schedule.

Under the Roosevelt administration, Hoover Dam was officially known by what name until 1947?

Boulder Dam: Interior Secretary Harold Ickes dropped Hoover's name in 1933, and Congress restored the name Hoover Dam in 1947.

Workers saved by the movable safety net under the Golden Gate Bridge formed a group with what name?

The Half Way to Hell Club was formed by the nineteen men Joseph Strauss's net caught; eleven others died, ten when a scaffold tore through it on February 17, 1937.

What did the US Navy suggest for the Golden Gate Bridge before Irving Morrow chose International Orange?

The Navy proposed black and yellow stripes so ships could see the bridge in fog; Morrow's International Orange won, and it opened on May 27, 1937.

Who led France's failed 1880s Panama canal attempt, fresh from building the Suez Canal?

Ferdinand de Lesseps, the hero of Suez, began digging in 1881; disease killed an estimated 22,000 and his company collapsed in 1889, ruining some 800,000 investors.

Ships crossing the Isthmus by canal are lifted by locks to which artificial lake, 26 metres up?

Gatun Lake, formed by damming the Chagres River with Gatun Dam in 1913, sits 26 metres above sea level and replaced a huge amount of digging.

The Channel Tunnel connects Folkestone in England with which town in northern France?

Coquelles, just outside Calais, holds the French terminal; opened in 1994, the tunnel has a 37.9 km undersea section, the longest of any tunnel.

How many bores make up the Channel Tunnel?

Two rail tunnels flank a smaller service tunnel that was bored ahead as a pilot, all linked by 270 cross-passages.

Which Roman building holds the world's largest unreinforced concrete dome?

The Pantheon's dome, finished under Hadrian around 126 AD, spans 43.3 metres and thins toward the top, with lighter pumice aggregate used higher up.

Research published in 2023 credits Roman concrete's ability to self-repair cracks to what?

Lime clasts: a 2023 MIT study found hot-mixing with quicklime left small reactive lime lumps that dissolve into cracks and recrystallise, sealing them.

Portland cement takes its name from Portland stone, a Dorset building material, because of what?

Its hardened colour resembled the stone: Joseph Aspdin chose the name when he patented the cement in 1824 because, once set, it looked like the fine, pale limestone of Portland.

Concrete is the second most used substance on Earth after what?

Water: concrete is the most consumed material on Earth after water, with tens of billions of tonnes produced every year from cement, aggregate and water.

Joseph Monier, a key figure in reinforced concrete, first patented it in 1867 for what use?

Flowerpots: the French gardener reinforced his concrete tubs with iron mesh, patenting them in 1867 before moving on to tanks, pipes and bridges.

Why does steel rebar work so well inside concrete as temperatures change?

The two expand at similar rates: steel and concrete both have thermal expansion coefficients of roughly 10 to 12 millionths per degree Celsius, so heat does not split them apart.

The Bessemer process, patented in 1856, made steel cheap by blowing what through molten pig iron?

Air: oxygen in the blast burned off excess carbon and silicon in about twenty minutes, cutting the price of steel so far that it replaced wrought iron for rails.

Which 1885 Chicago tower is often cited as the world's first skyscraper?

The Home Insurance Building, William Le Baron Jenney's ten-storey tower of 1885, was the first to carry its walls on a fireproof metal frame; it was demolished in 1931.

Elisha Otis's 1853 invention that made tall buildings practical was a device that did what?

He demonstrated it at the New York Crystal Palace in 1854 and installed the first passenger safety elevator in 1857.

The 'Hard-Boiled hat', patented in 1919 by E. W. Bullard, was made from what?

Steamed canvas, glue and black paint: E.W. Bullard, back from the war, copied the shape of his army steel helmet, and the US Navy ordered a shipyard version the same year.

Which 1931 project was the first where the contractor required helmets for all workers?

The Colorado River dam, Hoover Dam: its contractors required hard hats from 1931, and Joseph Strauss made them compulsory on the Golden Gate Bridge in 1933.

Which US president signed the act creating OSHA into law in December 1970?

Richard Nixon signed the Occupational Safety and Health Act on December 29, 1970; the agency itself opened on April 28, 1971, and requires fall protection like harnesses and guardrails on sites.

The first bulldozer designs, in 1923, came from a farmer and a draftsman working in which state?

Kansas: James Cummings and J. Earl McLeod built the first blade in Morrowville in 1923, fitting it to a Holt tractor; a replica stands in the town park.

The nail gun was designed by Morris Pynoos for work on which famous aircraft?

Howard Hughes's Spruce Goose: Pynoos's gun tacked the birch fuselage together while the glue cured, and the nails were then pulled; pneumatic nail guns went on sale in the 1950s.

The standard 4-by-8-foot plywood sheet came from a company that developed veneer-core plywood for which 1905 event?

The Portland World Fair: Portland Manufacturing Company made the first Douglas-fir plywood panels for the 1905 Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition in Oregon, and 4-by-8 sheets followed.

Drywall panels are made from which mineral, sandwiched between paper?

Gypsum, calcium sulfate dihydrate, is extruded between facer and backer paper; Sackett Board layered plaster between four plies of wool felt paper, and US Gypsum launched Sheetrock in 1917.

Ordnance worker Vesta Stoudt wrote to Roosevelt proposing duct tape for sealing what?

Ammunition boxes: Stoudt wanted a waterproof cloth tape that sealed ammo cases yet tore open fast; Johnson & Johnson's Revolite division made it in 1943 on duck cloth.

Building cranes first appeared in which ancient civilization, in the late 6th century BC?

Greece: distinctive cuttings for lifting tongs and lewis irons appear on Greek temple blocks from about 515 BC, the earliest evidence of cranes replacing ramps for heavy stone.

The Taisun crane at Yantai, China, set a 2008 lifting record of how many tonnes?

20,000 tonnes: the Taisun lifted 20,133 tonnes in April 2008, a Guinness record; the double-bridge gantry stands 133 metres tall with a 120-metre span.

The Three Gorges Dam spans which Chinese river?

The Yangtze: the dam at Sandouping in Hubei has 22,500 MW of capacity from 32 main turbines and used 463,000 tonnes of steel, enough for 63 Eiffel Towers.

In 2005, NASA calculated water behind the Three Gorges Dam lengthens Earth's day by how much?

0.06 microseconds: NASA's Benjamin Fong Chao calculated that lifting some 39 cubic kilometres of water to 175 metres shifts mass outward, slowing the spin and making Earth fractionally rounder.

Which engineer effectively supervised the Brooklyn Bridge's completion after her husband was left bedridden?

Emily Warren Roebling relayed her bedridden husband Washington's instructions and mastered the engineering herself; the bridge opened in 1883 and P. T. Barnum marched 21 elephants across in 1884.

Men digging the Brooklyn Bridge's foundations in pressurised chambers got a mystery illness that project physician Andrew Smith named what?

Caisson disease was decompression sickness, the bends; 110 cases were treated in four months of 1872 and three men died.

How many rivets hold together the 18,038 iron parts of the Eiffel Tower?

2.5 million rivets hold the 18,038 wrought-iron pieces, about a million of them driven on site by four-man teams; any piece that did not fit went back to the Levallois-Perret workshop.

Which British architect co-designed France's Millau Viaduct with engineer Michel Virlogeux?

Norman Foster's practice designed it with Virlogeux; the cable-stayed deck runs about 270 metres above the Tarn, and the viaduct took three years to build, opening in December 2004.

In which year did the Sydney Opera House, designed by Jørn Utzon, open?

1973: Queen Elizabeth II opened it on 20 October 1973, fourteen years after work began; the final cost was A$102 million and the shells carry 1,056,006 Swedish tiles.

Marc Isambard Brunel's first successful tunnelling shield dug under which river in 1825?

The Thames: Brunel's shield let miners dig in protected cells while the brick lining followed; the Thames Tunnel opened in 1843 after 18 years of floods and delays.

The tunnel boring machine 'Bertha' was built in 2013 for a highway tunnel in which US city?

Seattle: Hitachi Zosen built the 17.5-metre Bertha for the State Route 99 tunnel under downtown; it started in July 2013, stalled that December and did not break through until April 2017.

'Skyscraper' was first applied to steel-framed buildings of at least how many storeys?

Ten storeys: the word was first used in the late 1880s for the steel-framed towers rising in Chicago and New York, borrowing a nautical term for a ship's highest sail.

What is the non-load-bearing outer skin hung from a skyscraper's steel frame called?

A curtain wall: the non-structural skin of glass and metal hangs from the frame, which carries all the loads; Liverpool's Oriel Chambers of 1864 is often cited as the first.

Lego takes its name from a Danish phrase meaning what?

Play well: 'leg godt' was chosen by carpenter Ole Kirk Christiansen of Billund in 1934, two years after he began making wooden toys.

In Bob the Builder, how do the characters answer Bob's catchphrase 'Can we fix it?'

The theme song of the same name was a million-selling UK number one; the show was created by Keith Chapman and ran from 1999.

Which president turned on the Empire State Building's lights at its 1931 opening, from a button in Washington?

The building opened 45 days ahead of schedule and just eighteen months after work started.

Roughly how many workers died during the American phase of building the Panama Canal?

About 5,600: official records count 5,609 deaths from disease and accidents between 1904 and 1914, most of them West Indian labourers, especially Barbadians; about 350 were Americans.

Under a 1977 treaty, which country's government took full control of the Atlantic-Pacific canal at the end of 1999?

Panama's government took over after a period of joint American-Panamanian control; by 2012 more than 815,000 vessels had passed through.

Which two leaders agreed in 1981 to set up the working group behind the Channel Tunnel?

Thatcher assumed the tunnel would carry cars rather than trains.

What is the rotating platform that holds an excavator's cab and boom called?

The house: cab, engine and boom sit on this upper structure, which swings on a slewing ring above the undercarriage; modern excavators pull the bucket toward themselves rather than pushing away.

Which number is a common British site nickname for a tracked excavator?

360: the house can swing a full circle on its undercarriage, so UK sites call tracked excavators '360s'; wheeled ones are 'rubber ducks'.

What was the first known crane machine, a water-lifting device from ancient Mesopotamia?

Construction cranes powered by men or donkeys came later in ancient Greece.

A jackhammer combines a hammer directly with which tool?

A chisel: the hammer drives a chisel bit into the surface with rapid blows; William McReavy invented it and sold the patent to Charles Brady King.

Which Columbus, Ohio industrialist is credited with inventing the concrete mixer?

Gebhardt Jaeger, whose Jaeger Machine Company of Columbus built rotating-drum mixers from the early 1900s; simpler hand-fed mixers had existed in Britain in the 1880s.

In tube-and-coupler scaffolding, what are the vertical load-bearing tubes called?

Standards are the vertical tubes that carry the load down to base plates; ledgers run horizontally along the scaffold and transoms cross it to support the boards.

Bamboo scaffolding has long been particularly common in China, India and which city?

Hong Kong: licensed scaffolders lash bamboo poles with nylon ties to clad even high-rise sites, a practice the government began phasing out of public works in 2025.

A wheelbarrow, with the load between the wheel and the handles, is which kind of lever?

Second-class: the wheel is the fulcrum and the load sits between it and the handles, like a nutcracker, so the operator lifts only part of the weight; a typical barrow holds about 100 litres.

Traditional Chinese wheelbarrows differed from Western ones in what way?

A central wheel carried the whole load: the big Chinese wheel sat in the middle so the operator only balanced and pushed, unlike the front-wheeled Western barrow that shares the weight.

Why is a spirit level so called?

Its vial liquid is commonly alcohol, a 'spirit': ethanol resists freezing and is less viscous than water, so the bubble moves freely.

Which French scientist invented the spirit level before February 1661?

Melchisédech Thévenot described his bubble level in letters to Christiaan Huygens before February 1661 and to Robert Hooke in 1662; it came into general use in the early 1700s.

The 'plumb' in plumb bob comes from the Latin word for which metal?

Lead: Latin plumbum, the root of plumber and plumbing too, because the bob was a lead weight; Egyptian builders used plumb lines to check verticals.

Fired bricks have been used as a building material since roughly when?

Around 4000 BC: fired bricks appear at Neolithic sites in China and in Mesopotamia during the fourth millennium BC; air-dried mudbricks bound with straw are even older, from before 7000 BC.

In masonry, why is mortar deliberately weaker than the bricks it binds?

It is the sacrificial element, cheaper to repair: a weaker mortar lets movement crack the joints rather than the bricks, and repointing a joint is far easier than replacing masonry.

What has been the most common binder in mortar since the early 20th century?

Portland cement: it sets faster and harder than the lime mortars it displaced in the early 1900s, though lime mortar is preferred for repointing historic brickwork because it is softer and breathes.

What is asphalt concrete commonly called in the UK and Ireland?

Tarmac: named after Edgar Hooley's 1902 tar-bound macadam, the word survives in Britain and Ireland for any bitumen-bound aggregate laid in layers and rolled.

On an I-beam, what are the horizontal elements called?

Flanges: the two horizontal plates sit far from the neutral axis, where bending stress is highest, so they carry most of the bending load.

What is the vertical element of an I-beam called?

The web: the vertical plate joining the flanges carries the shear, and the I shape is efficient in bending but poor at resisting torsion.

The word 'adobe' reached English via Spanish from which language?

Arabic: Spanish adobe comes from Arabic al-ṭūb, 'the brick', itself borrowed from Coptic and ultimately ancient Egyptian; mudbrick building goes back thousands of years.

Which civilization popularized the structural, load-bearing arch from the 4th century BC?

The Romans: from the 4th century BC they built arches into aqueducts, bridges and gates, the Pont du Gard being a famous example; the Greeks preferred posts and beams.

A construction system based on posts and beams rather than arches is called what?

Ancient Greek, Chinese and Japanese architecture, and modern steel frames, are trabeated.

In a truss, what are the joints connecting the members called?

Nodes: members meet at nodes and are analysed as two-force members carrying only tension or compression, with loads applied at the nodes.

Which Scottish rail crossing is a famous example of a cantilever truss design?

The Forth Bridge, opened in 1890 with three huge steel cantilever towers over the Firth of Forth; the current Tay Bridge is a lattice-girder design.

In traditional timber framing, what is a cantilevered overhang called?

A jetty: an upper storey projecting beyond the one below on cantilevered joists, common in medieval English towns; on a Pennsylvania bank barn the overhang is called a forebay.

What is the open circular hole at the apex of a dome called?

Squinches and pendentives handle the transition from a square room to a round dome base.

What is the arched part of a flying buttress that spans from wall to pier called?

The flyer: the half-arch that carries the vault's outward thrust across to a free-standing pier, a system that flourished in Gothic cathedrals such as Notre-Dame de Paris.

Foundations are generally classified into which two broad types?

Shallow and deep: footings and rafts bear near the surface, while piles and caissons carry loads down to firmer strata; foundation engineering applies soil and rock mechanics to both.

Under which emperor did construction of the Colosseum begin in AD 72?

Vespasian began it around AD 72 on the site of Nero's lake; his son Titus opened it in AD 80, and the Flavian dynasty gave it its formal name, the Flavian Amphitheatre.

Which emperor added the hypogeum, the tunnels beneath the Colosseum floor?

Domitian, Titus's brother, added the hypogeum and the top tier of seating; the two-level tunnels held animals, scenery and slaves, with lifts and trapdoors up to the arena floor.

The Colosseum's brick-faced concrete is combined with travertine limestone and which volcanic rock?

Tuff: this soft volcanic rock, quarried locally, fills the inner walls between the travertine frame and the brick-faced concrete vaults; the arena held an estimated 50,000 to 80,000 spectators.

The best-known sections of the Great Wall of China were built by which dynasty?

The Ming (1368-1644) built the stone-and-brick walls near Beijing, including Badaling; earlier walls date to the 7th century BC and were joined under the Qin.

Which Mughal emperor commissioned the Taj Mahal in 1631?

Shah Jahan commissioned it after Mumtaz Mahal died in childbirth in 1631; it houses her tomb and, from 1666, his own.

On the bank of which river does the Taj Mahal stand?

The Yamuna: the tomb stands on the river's south bank at Agra, its foundations built on wells; the mausoleum was finished in 1648 and the complex around 1653.

Under which bishop did construction of Notre-Dame de Paris begin in 1163?

Maurice de Sully, bishop from 1160, laid the first stone in 1163 with Pope Alexander III present; the cathedral was largely complete by 1260 and was among the first to use flying buttresses.

In which month and year did Notre-Dame de Paris reopen after its 2019 fire?

December 2024: the cathedral reopened on 7 December 2024, five and a half years after the fire of 15 April 2019 destroyed the spire and roof.

Which architect began the Sagrada Família in 1882 before Gaudí took over in 1883?

Francisco de Paula del Villar designed a conventional neo-Gothic church and resigned after a year of disputes; Gaudí took over in 1883, and under a quarter was built when he died in 1926.

Which pope consecrated the Sagrada Família and proclaimed it a basilica in 2010?

Benedict XVI consecrated the church on 7 November 2010 and declared it a minor basilica; Gaudí's Nativity façade and crypt had been listed by UNESCO in 2005.

Which building surpassed the Petronas Towers as the world's tallest in 2004?

Taipei 101, at 508 metres, took the title in 2004 and held it until the Burj Khalifa in 2010; the 452-metre Petronas Towers had been the tallest since 1998.

How many stories does the Shanghai Tower have?

128 storeys: the 632-metre tower, completed in 2015, twists 120 degrees as it rises and was the tallest building in China when finished.

Which design firm designed the Shanghai Tower?

Gensler, led by design director Jun Xia, designed it; the twisting double-skin facade divides the tower into nine vertical zones, each with its own sky-lobby garden.

To what symbolic height in feet does One World Trade Center rise?

1,776 feet, for the year of the Declaration of Independence; the final spire section was installed on May 10, 2013 and the tower opened in November 2014.

Which architect designed One World Trade Center?

He worked at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill; the tower is the tallest in the Western Hemisphere.

Which architect designed London's Tower Bridge, built between 1886 and 1894?

Horace Jones, the City Architect, designed it in Gothic dress to match the Tower of London; John Wolfe Barry engineered it with Henry Marc Brunel, and it opened in June 1894.

What term describes the lifting central spans of Tower Bridge?

Bascules: the two leaves pivot upward on counterweighted trunnions, originally raised by steam-pumped hydraulic power so ships could reach the Pool of London; electric motors took over in 1976.

Which two engineers designed the great cantilever rail crossing of the Firth of Forth, opened in 1890?

John Fowler and Benjamin Baker designed it after Thomas Bouch's scheme was dropped following the 1879 Tay Bridge disaster; William Arrol built it, and it became a UNESCO site in 2015.

Which Canadian span overtook the Firth of Forth crossing's cantilever record in 1919?

The Quebec Bridge, with a 549-metre main span, opened in 1919 after two collapses during construction killed 88 men in 1907 and 1916; the Forth's longest span is 521 metres.

Which Turkish span overtook Japan's Akashi Kaikyo crossing for the longest suspension span in 2022?

The 1915 Çanakkale Bridge, opened in March 2022 across the Dardanelles with a 2,023-metre main span, the first past two kilometres; Akashi Kaikyō's 1,991 metres had led since 1998.

The Akashi Kaikyo suspension crossing links Kobe with what?

Awaji Island: the bridge crosses the Akashi Strait to Awaji, the first leg of the Kobe-Awaji-Naruto expressway to Shikoku; its 1,991-metre main span opened in 1998.

The Itaipu Dam sits on the Paraná River between Brazil and which other country?

Paraguay: a 1973 treaty between the two countries split the dam's output equally; its name means 'the sounding stone' in Guarani, and the first turbine ran in 1984.

How long is the Gotthard Base Tunnel, the world's longest railway tunnel?

It opened in June 2016 as the first flat, low-level route through the Alps.

Which two Swiss cantons does the Gotthard Base Tunnel connect?

Uri and Ticino: the tunnel runs from Erstfeld in Uri to Bodio in Ticino, passing beneath Sedrun in Graubünden, where an 800-metre shaft served the construction.

Boston's Big Dig rerouted the elevated Central Artery of which highway into the O'Neill Tunnel?

I-93: the elevated Central Artery carrying I-93 through downtown was replaced by the Thomas P. O'Neill Jr. Tunnel; the project also extended I-90 to Logan Airport via the Ted Williams Tunnel.

Which cable-stayed crossing of the Charles River was built as part of the Big Dig?

The Rose Kennedy Greenway now occupies the space of the old elevated roadway.

Which company led the management joint venture for Boston's Big Dig?

Bechtel, in a joint venture with Parsons Brinckerhoff, managed the project, whose cost rose from under $3 billion to nearly $15 billion; a 2006 ceiling collapse and tunnel leaks dogged it.

Which act signed by Eisenhower launched the Interstate system?

The Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, signed on June 29, 1956, funded some 41,000 miles of interstate; the system was formally named for Eisenhower in 1990.

The canal completed across upstate New York in 1825 links the Hudson River with which of the Great Lakes?

Lake Erie: the 363-mile canal ran from Albany on the Hudson to Buffalo on Lake Erie, cutting freight costs between the coast and the Midwest by more than 90 percent.

Which New York governor was the Erie Canal's lead supporter, mocked by opponents as building a 'Big Ditch'?

DeWitt Clinton, governor from 1817, pushed the canal through; opened in 1825 at a cost of about $7 million, it had repaid its construction debt from tolls by 1837.

Where was the 'Golden Spike' driven to complete America's first transcontinental railroad in 1869?

Promontory Summit, Utah, north of the Great Salt Lake: Leland Stanford tapped the golden spike with a silver maul on May 10, 1869; the spike itself is kept at Stanford University.

How many miles of track did the Union Pacific build westward for the first transcontinental railroad?

1,085 miles: Union Pacific laid track west from Omaha across Nebraska and Wyoming, while the Central Pacific built 690 miles east from Sacramento through the Sierra Nevada.

Caterpillar Inc. was formed by the 1925 merger of Holt Manufacturing and which other firm?

C. L. Best Tractor Company of San Leandro merged with Holt of Stockton in 1925 to form Caterpillar Tractor Co., headquartered first in San Leandro and from 1930 in Peoria, Illinois.

How did the Holt company's tracked tractor get its famous name?

A photographer said the tracks looked like a caterpillar: Charles Clements, watching a 1904 test through his inverted camera image, made the remark, and Holt trademarked the name in 1910.

To which city did Caterpillar move its headquarters in 2022?

Irving, Texas: Caterpillar announced the move from Deerfield, Illinois in June 2022; it had left its century-old Peoria base for Deerfield in 2017 after cancelling a planned new Peoria headquarters.

How did Bechtel's founder begin building railroads in Oklahoma Territory in 1898?

With a team of mules: Warren Bechtel, raised in Kansas, took a mule team to Oklahoma Territory in 1898 to grade railbeds, and incorporated W. A. Bechtel Co. in San Francisco in 1925.

Which consortium of western contractors, formed in January 1931, took on the Colorado River dam?

Six Companies, Inc.: Utah Construction, Pacific Bridge, Kaiser-Bechtel, MacDonald & Kahn, Morrison-Knudsen and J. F. Shea pooled resources to post the $5 million bond and won the $48.9 million contract in March 1931.

JCB founder Joseph Cyril Bamford built his first vehicle in 1945 using a welding set bought for how much?

£1: Bamford bought a second-hand welding set for a pound and, in a rented lock-up in Uttoxeter, turned war-surplus steel into a tipping trailer he sold at market for £45.

In which English county is JCB based?

Staffordshire: JCB's headquarters have stood at Rocester, near Uttoxeter, since 1950; the word JCB appears in the Oxford English Dictionary as a generic term for diggers.

What does the name of Japanese equipment maker Komatsu mean?

Small pine tree: Komatsu is the city in Ishikawa Prefecture where Meitaro Takeuchi founded the company in 1921, and its kanji, ko-matsu, mean 'small pine'.

Under Hammurabi's Code, what happened if a house collapsed and killed the owner?

The builder was put to death: law 229 of the code, from about 1750 BC, prescribes death for a builder whose house collapses and kills its owner; law 230 kills the builder's son if the owner's son dies.

Which 1666 disaster prompted the first significant building regulation in England?

The Great Fire of London: after it destroyed some 13,200 houses in September 1666, the Rebuilding of London Act required brick or stone walls and set minimum street widths.

Which non-profit developed the LEED certification program?

The U.S. Green Building Council launched LEED in 1998; the rating awards points for energy, water and materials performance across four certification tiers.

Which UK-developed green building rating method, launched in 1990, predates LEED?

BREEAM, launched by the UK's Building Research Establishment in 1990, was the first widely used green building rating system; Australia's Green Star followed in 2003 and Germany's DGNB in 2007.

Levittown, New York was built between 1947 and 1951 for whom?

Returning World War II veterans: Levitt & Sons built the Long Island development for ex-servicemen with GI Bill mortgages, and it is regarded as the first truly mass-produced American suburb.

By July 1948, Levitt & Sons were finishing houses at Levittown at what rate?

30 a day: Levitt broke building into repeatable steps done by specialised crews moving from house to house; by 1951 the firm had built 17,447 homes in and around Levittown.

Roughly how many mail-order kit houses did Sears sell between 1908 and 1942?

More than 70,000: each kit of some 30,000 numbered pieces shipped by railroad boxcar with a 75-page instruction book; the Modern Homes programme began in 1908.

How many house designs did the Sears Modern Homes line offer over its 34 years?

More than 370 designs, from small bungalows to the grand Magnolia, were offered between 1908 and 1942; most included central heating, indoor plumbing and electricity.

The topping-out ceremony traces to which culture's rite of placing a tree atop a new building?

Ancient Scandinavian: the rite placed a tree atop a new building to appease the tree spirits displaced by its timber; the custom spread to England and the Americas, where an evergreen or flag tops the last beam.

What does a contractor's punch list record near the end of a project?

Defects and unfinished items to fix before handover: the punch list, or snag list in Britain, is drawn up at the final walk-through, and retention money is released once it is cleared.

What did ancient cornerstone ceremonies typically involve placing on or under the stone?

Offerings of grain, wine and oil, symbolising the land's produce, were placed on or under the stone to which every other stone was then set; Masonic cornerstone rites consecrate it with corn, wine and oil.

Which country is most associated with timber-framed, half-timbered houses?

Germany: some two million Fachwerk houses survive, strung along the Deutsche Fachwerkstraße of half-timbered towns; joints are cut as mortise and tenon and beams hewn with broadaxes and adzes.

What is a wooden nail used in timber construction called?

A treenail, also spelled trunnel: a dry hardwood peg driven into a bored hole, it swells with moisture to lock a mortise-and-tenon joint, and was the standard fastener of shipwrights and framers.

Which type of fastener dominated roughly from 1800 to 1914, between hand-wrought and wire types?

The cut nail, sheared from flat iron plate by machines developed in the 1790s, ruled from about 1800 until cheap steel wire nails took over by 1914.

What is the distance between each thread of a screw called?

The pitch: the axial distance between adjacent threads, equal to the lead on a single-start screw; most screws have a right-hand thread and tighten clockwise.

Which screw drive is the oldest type, in use since the 16th century?

The slot: a single straight groove driven by a flat-bladed screwdriver, in use since at least the 1500s; the Phillips drive arrived in 1936 and Torx in 1967.

Which British metalworker is credited with the first retractable steel tape measure?

James Chesterman of Sheffield made the first spring-return steel tapes in the 1820s, winding flat steel wire into a case; Alvin Fellows patented the familiar locking tape in the US in 1868.

Why does the hook on a construction tape measure move slightly on its rivets?

The play equals the hook's thickness so inside and outside measurements both read true.

A theodolite measures what?

Angles in the horizontal and vertical planes: a telescope mounted on graduated circles reads both, and the electronic total station adds distance measurement by laser or infrared.

The word 'theodolite' first appears in a 1571 surveying textbook by which author?

Leonard Digges coined the word in Pantometria, published in 1571 by his son Thomas after his death, though his 'theodelitus' measured horizontal angles only.

What is the handle of a hammer also known as?

A haft or helve: the shaft, traditionally hickory or ash for shock absorption, is wedged into the eye of the head; the claw on a claw hammer pulls nails.

Which British prime minister took up bricklaying as a hobby?

Winston Churchill laid bricks at Chartwell, his Kent home, building garden walls and a cottage, and in 1928 was admitted to the Amalgamated Union of Building Trade Workers.

On a British or Australian building site, which tradesman is called a 'chippie'?

A carpenter, from the wood chips of the trade; an electrician is a sparkie, a bricklayer a brickie, and any tradesperson a tradie in Australia.

Steel-frame construction displaced which predecessor in the early 20th century?

The iron skeleton: cast- and wrought-iron frames of the 1800s gave way to rolled steel, stronger and more uniform, once the Bessemer and open-hearth processes made it cheap, making the skyscraper possible.

What does the R-value of building insulation measure?

Resistance to heat flow: the higher the R-value, the better the insulation; a wall's layers add their R-values together, and the U-value is the reciprocal.

How tall is the Bailong Elevator, the glass cliff lift at Zhangjiajie, China?

326 metres: the glass-fronted lift was built into a sandstone cliff in Wulingyuan and opened in 2002; Guinness listed it as the world's tallest outdoor elevator in 2015.

How many 100-metre steel masts hold up the roof of London's Millennium Dome?

Twelve masts, one for each month, hold the 365-metre-diameter roof, a metre for each day of the year; the exhibition drew about 6.5 million visitors against a 12 million forecast.

The Pont du Gard carried water to which Roman colony?

Nemausus, modern Nîmes: the 50-kilometre aqueduct from springs near Uzès crossed the Gardon on the bridge's three tiers of arches, 48.8 metres high; it became a UNESCO site in 1985.

How much water a day did the Pont du Gard aqueduct carry, by estimate?

40,000 cubic metres: the aqueduct dropped only 17 metres over 50 kilometres, a gradient averaging 1 in 3,000 and just 2.5 centimetres across the bridge's 456 metres.

How did Roman aqueducts move water?

By gravity alone: conduits were laid on a gentle, continuous downhill gradient, mostly buried and following the terrain, with bridges across valleys and inverted siphons where needed.

Roman roads were built from roughly which year onward?

About 300 BC: the Via Appia, begun in 312 BC by the censor Appius Claudius Caecus, was the first great Roman road; roads were cambered for drainage and flanked by ditches.

How many Quonset huts were manufactured during World War II?

About 170,000: between 150,000 and 170,000 were made during the war, the 16-by-36-foot standard hut being shipped flat and put up by a ten-person crew in a day.

The Quonset hut was based on which British World War I design?

The Nissen hut, designed by Major Peter Nissen of the Royal Engineers in 1916; the US Navy's version was first built in 1941 at Quonset Point in Davisville, Rhode Island.

What is a tunnel boring machine nicknamed?

A mole: the machine's rotating cutterhead chews through rock or soil while rings of lining are placed behind it; the largest, about 17.6 metres across, can bore a double-deck road tunnel.

Which rear-mounted bulldozer attachment breaks up hard ground before the blade pushes it?

A ripper: one or more tungsten-tipped shanks on the rear, lowered hydraulically to tear up rock, frozen ground or pavement ahead of the blade.

Which company developed a steam dust-cart with a tipper mechanism in 1896, an ancestor of the dump truck?

Thornycroft, the Chiswick steam-wagon maker, built the 1896 dust-cart with a tipping body; in Britain such vehicles are called tipper lorries.

The section of a backhoe arm closest to the vehicle is called what?

The boom: it pivots on the machine's king-post, and the dipper or stick hinges from its far end to carry the bucket; both terms come from steam shovels.

How does a skid-steer loader turn?

It can turn within its own length by driving one side forward and the other in reverse.

Which North Dakota company bought the rights to the Keller loader in 1958, leading to the Bobcat?

Melroe Manufacturing of Gwinner, North Dakota, bought the rights from the Keller brothers of Rothsay, Minnesota, in 1958 and launched the M-200 self-propelled loader that year; the Bobcat name came in 1962.

What is the chemical reaction between cement and water called?

Hydration: cement minerals react with water to form calcium silicate hydrate, which binds the aggregate; the reaction gives off heat, so warm weather speeds setting and cold slows it.

What does 'curing' freshly placed concrete mean?

Keeping it moist while it gains strength: concrete hardens by reacting with water, not by drying, so slabs are covered or sprayed for about seven days and reach design strength at 28 days.

In welding, what is the molten zone at the joint called?

The weld pool: the molten mix of base and filler metal that solidifies into the bead; unlike brazing and soldering, welding melts the base metal itself.

What is the flattened tail end of an installed rivet called?

The shop head, or buck-tail: the tail is hammered or squeezed flat against a bucking bar so the rivet grips like a bolt; rivets are far better in shear than in tension.

Hans Liebherr founded his crane and equipment group in 1949 in which country?

West Germany: Hans Liebherr, a master builder, made his first mobile tower crane in 1949 at Kirchdorf an der Iller in southern Germany; the family-owned group's holding company later moved to Bulle, Switzerland.

Who received the 1839 patent for the steam shovel?

William Otis, a cousin of elevator pioneer Elisha, received the patent on February 24, 1839; his steam shovel dug US railroad cuttings, but he died the same year aged 26.

In cross-laminated timber, each layer's grain is turned how far from its neighbour's?

90 degrees: alternating the grain at right angles gives the panel strength and stiffness in both directions, and panels are glued up from three, five or seven layers.

Which country used Gerhard Schickhofer's research to create the first national CLT guidelines in 2002?

Austria: Gerhard Schickhofer's doctoral research at Graz University of Technology underpinned the 2002 national guidelines; Austrian firms such as KLH had pioneered the panels in the 1990s.

Nobel's 1867 dynamite made which unstable explosive safe to handle by absorbing it into kieselguhr?

Nitroglycerine: Nobel soaked the shock-sensitive liquid into diatomaceous earth, kieselguhr, making a paste that could be shaped into sticks; he patented dynamite in 1867.

In which US city did T. L. Smith develop an early tilting-drum concrete mixer in 1900?

The first portable concrete mixer was patented in 1904; Columbus industrialist Gebhardt Jaeger is also credited with the invention.