Hoyt A. Stearns Jr. <hoyt-stea...@cox.net> wrote: Thanks for teaching me a new word. > > > > I sure see a lot of that in architecture: >
That's true! I had forgotten about architecture when I cited automobiles. I guess I was thinking of high-tech machinery, such as automobiles, generators, computers and so on. > Steep roofs that could shed snow really well ( but it doesn't snow here, > or rain much for that matter). > I do wish I had a steep roof here in Atlanta. It would shed the pine needles better. But then again maybe I don't want one, because I could not safely climb it to get at the ones that are not washed off by the rain. The new MacMansions have much steeper roofs than the houses made in the 1950s, such as mine. > Shingles -- taking perfectly good roofing material and cutting it up into > little pieces. > Actually, there is a good reason for making them the size they are. One package of shingles is about as heavy as an ordinary worker can lift. (It is as much as *I* can lift, anyway.) Make them any heavier and you would need a fork lift to get them on the roof, plus the package might break through the plywood -- which is not very strong. What we need is a machine to lift a continuous roll of roofing material to the level of the roof, and then position it. Sort of like a cherry picker, or one of these machines they used to pour concrete into tight places. The machine would lift the material up, and then a human would grab the end of the roll and pull it into position, and nail it down. You would cut off the material at the end of the roof. Actually, what we need are houses build mainly in factories by robots. Pre-fab houses and components such as bathrooms are more common in Japan than the U.S. They are kind of soulless but cheap and well made. Human strength is still the limiting factor in many tasks in construction, farming and other industries. The civil engineer Samuel Florman pointed this out in one of his books, describing a mistake he made when he was starting out. He ordered wooden beams that were twice as big but much cheaper than the ones they usually purchased to shore up some construction. The problem was, they were too big for the workers to install. - Jed
