A significant achievement of the first industrial age was the emergence of
building
science
, particularly the
elastic
theory of structures. With it, mathematical models could be used to predict structural performance with considerable accuracy, provided there was adequate quality control of the materials used. Although some elements of the elastic theory, such as the Swiss mathematician
Leonhard Euler’s
theory of column buckling (1757), were worked out earlier, the real development began with the English scientist
Thomas Young
’s modern definition of the modulus of elasticity in 1807.
Louis Navier
published the elastic theory of
beams
in 1826, and three methods of analyzing forces in trusses were devised by
Squire Whipple
, A. Ritter, and
James Clerk Maxwell
between 1847 and 1864. The concept of a statically determinate
structure
?that is, a structure whose forces could be determined from
Newton’s laws of motion
alone?was set forth by
Otto Mohr in 1874, after having been used intuitively for perhaps 40 years. Most 19th-century structures were purposely designed and fabricated with pin joints to be statically determinate; it was not until the 20th century that statically indeterminate structures became readily solvable. The elastic theory formed the basis of structural analysis until
World War II
, when bomb-damaged buildings were observed to behave in unpredicted ways and the underlying assumptions of the theory were found to require modification.
Emergence of design professionals
The coming of the industrial age also marked a major change in the role of the architect. The artist-architects of the Renaissance had the twin patrons of
church and state
upon whom they could depend for commissions. In the rising industrial
democracies
the market for large-scale buildings worthy of an architect’s attention widened, and the different users asked for a bewildering range of new building types. The response of the architect was to develop the new role of licensed professional on the model of professions such as law and
medicine
. In addition, with the coming of building science, there was a further
division of labour
in the design process; structural
engineering
appeared as a separate
discipline
specializing in the application of mathematical models in building. One of the first buildings for which the architect and
engineer
were separate persons was the Granary (1811) in Paris. Societies representing the building design professions were founded, including the
Institution of Civil Engineers
(1818) and the
Royal Institute of British Architects
(1834), both in London, and the
American Institute of Architects
(1857). Official government licensing of architects and engineers, a goal of these societies, was not realized until much later, beginning with the
Illinois Architects Act of 1897.
Concurrent
with the rise of professionalism was the development of government regulation, which took the form of detailed municipal and national building codes specifying both
prescriptive
and performance requirements for buildings.
Improvements in building services
Environmental control technologies began to develop dramatically in the first industrial age. The first major advance was the use of
coal gas
for lighting. Coal gas was first made in the 1690s by heating coal in the presence of water to yield methane, and in 1792
William Murdock
developed the gas jet lighting fixture. The first large building to have gas lighting (from a small
gas plant
on the site) was
James Watt’s
foundry in Birmingham in 1803. The
Gas Light and Coke Company was founded in London in 1812 as the first real
public utility
, producing coal gas as a part of the coking process in large central plants and distributing it through underground pipes to individual users; soon many major cities had gasworks and distribution networks. Gas was expensive, however, and was used mainly for lighting, not for heating or cooking; it also contained many impurities that produced undesirable products of combustion (particularly carbon soot) in occupied spaces. Relatively pure methane in the form of
natural gas
would not be available until the exploitation of large oil fields in the 20th century.
The
stove
and fireplace continued as the major sources of space heating throughout this period, but the development of the
steam engine
and its associated boilers led to a new
technology
in the form of
steam heating
. James Watt heated his own office with steam running through pipes as early as 1784. During the 19th century, systems of steam and later hot-water heating were gradually developed; these used coal-fired central boilers connected to networks of pipes that distributed the heated fluid to cast-iron radiators and returned it to the boiler for reheating. Steam heat was a major improvement over stoves and fireplaces because all combustion products were eliminated from occupied spaces, but heat sources were still localized at the radiators.
Plumbing
and
sanitation
systems in buildings advanced rapidly in this period. Public water-distribution systems were the essential element; the first large-scale example of a mechanically pressurized
water-supply system
was the great
array
of waterwheels installed by
Louis XIV
at Marley on the
Marne River
in
France
to pump water for the fountains at Versailles, about 18 kilometres (10 miles) away. The widespread use of cast-iron pipes in the late 18th century made higher pressures possible, and they were used by Napoleon in the first steam-powered municipal
water supply
for a section of Paris in 1812. Gravity-powered underground drainage systems were installed along with water-distribution networks in most large cities of the industrial world during the 19th century; sewage-treatment plants were introduced in the 1860s. Permanent plumbing fixtures appeared in buildings with water supply and drainage, replacing portable basins, buckets, and chamber pots.
Joseph Bramah
invented the metal valve-type
water closet
as early as 1778, and other early lavatories, sinks, and bathtubs were of metal also; lead, copper, and zinc were all tried. The metal fixtures proved difficult to clean, however, and in England during the 1870s
Thomas Twyford developed the first large one-piece ceramic lavatories as well as the ceramic washdown
water closet
. At first these ceramic fixtures were very expensive, but their prices declined until they became standard, and their forms remain largely unchanged today. The bathtub proved to be too large for brittle ceramic construction, and the porcelain-enamel cast-iron tub was devised about 1870; the double-shell built-in type still common today appeared about 1915.