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Redridge Steel Dam (upstream side) with a low water level. A steel dam is a type of dam (a structure to impound or retard the flow of water) that is made of steel, rather than the more common masonry, earthworks, concrete or timber construction materials. Relatively few examples were ever built.
Glass block wall in Chicago. Glass blocks can provide light and serve as a decorative addition to an architectural structure, but hollow glass blocks are non load-bearing unless stated otherwise. Hollow glass wall blocks are manufactured as two separate halves and, while the glass is still molten, the two pieces are pressed together and annealed.
A steel dam is a type of dam briefly experimented with around the start of the 20th century which uses steel plating (at an angle) and load-bearing beams as the structure. Intended as permanent structures, steel dams were an (failed) experiment to determine if a construction technique could be devised that was cheaper than masonry, concrete or ...
The mortar glues the blocks together, and also smooths out the interface between the blocks, avoiding localised point loads that might have led to cracking. Since the widespread use of concrete, stone is rarely used as a primary structural material, often only appearing as a cladding, because of its cost and the high skills needed to produce it.
Clear windows have been used since the invention of glass to cover small openings in a building. Glass panes provided humans with the ability to both let light into rooms while at the same time keeping inclement weather outside. Glass is generally made from mixtures of sand and silicates, in a very hot fire stove called a kiln, and is very brittle.
Broadly, modern glass container factories are three-part operations: the "batch house", the "hot end", and the "cold end". The batch house handles the raw materials; the hot end handles the manufacture proper—the forehearth, forming machines, and annealing ovens; and the cold end handles the product-inspection and packaging equipment.
The Bessemer process was the first inexpensive industrial process for the mass production of steel from molten pig iron before the development of the open hearth furnace. The key principle is removal of impurities from the iron by oxidation with air being blown through the molten iron.
The 1872 George Peabody Library in Baltimore is a similarly elaborate atrium with glass roof, where all the structural members are also decorative and made of cast iron. The lofty glass roof of Milan's Galleria, built 1865–77, is both a dome and glass roofed shopping arcade, the grandest ever built. [22]