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Construction Management, A History: To Tech Or Not To Tech The Early Ages Of ...


Construction Management, A History: To Tech or Not To Tech
The early ages of Technology
Traced through history, the age of stone tools would generally represent the utilization of a unit of assistance to aid in a construction project. Early man and the advent of such marveled achievements such as the pulley or even the wheel, would find that it was not so much the difficulty of the task which they were charged to overcome, but the creation and comprehension of the tools which would make those tasks far more effortless. The continued progression of engineering structures and uniquely intuited architecture required much more sophisticated calculations and education not always attained by the private citizen.
Early definitions of architecture and construction included the following standards as stated by Sir Henry Wotton in the 17th century:
1. A building must be constructed to serve a purpose.
2. The building must be capable of withstanding the elements and normal usage for a reasonable period of time.
3. The building, inside and out, must be visually pleasing.
Through the intricacy with which architecture continue to evolve, it became apparent that a new pre-requisite for construction of future structures had also become created. That requirement was the focus on the foreman or the project manager. It was through his guidance, attention to detail, and decision making ability, that buildings would be created which would withstand the trials of time and weather. Without modern technological tools to assist in these difficult choices, the project manager would rely on a team of experts to source raw materials, monitor the workforce, and maintain appropriate schedules. How this manager could have benefited from the advent of IT software can never be realistically evaluated; however, the remarkable techniques and specificity employed during these periods of furious growth continue to astound scientists and archeologists to this day.
One of the most remarkable historical figures in the world of technological advancement would have to be Charles Babbage who lived in the midst of the 18th and 19th centuries. His initial project involved mechanization of a tool used for numerical calculation. Babbage proposed a machine which could not only perform more complex arithmetic, but one which would also emboss the results on a soft-metal block that could subsequently be used for printing. The mechanization of this process meant that the hundreds of hand written calculations performed by the era's most astute mathematicians were reduced to a series of lever pulls and gear turns in a massive machine. While his design was not ever fully completed, the advanced thought and industrial based design which helped form the prototype would re-align future thinkers and their pursuit of mechanical support for a variety of tasks.


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