Forget everything you know about brick making from textbooks and modern technology. Do you think a building constructed of modern 21st century bricks can last five hundred years?
Well, okay - three hundred years, at least? And I don’t know. But, old buildings and palaces made of ancient red brick have stood for more than five hundred years.
History of brick production in Russia
The official history says that brick appeared in Russia in the 4th century, and already in the 15th century - its shape became similar to a modern brick.
Brick in the wall of the building. The stigma is 1879. He got it, but he doesn't fall apart!
Everything was built from it: barns, houses, palaces and cathedrals.
Vilnius. St. Anne's Cathedral. The Cathedral is 500 years old!
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Under Peter the Great, according to the set of rules, a single size was approved for the manufactured brick 240x140x70, but only for state-owned factories. It was a prerequisite for the manufacturer to brand their bricks.
They checked the quality very simply: they dumped all the bricks from the wagons into a heap, if more than three pieces were broken, the whole batch was rejected. All bricks of the 19th century have already been marked by the manufacturer. The ancient masters were proud of their product, marriage was not allowed.
Bricks with stamps.
And this was a colossal scale of its manufacture - it is incomparable with the amount of bricks that modern production produces, at our level of technology.
What is the difficulty of high-quality bricks
To make a brick, you need to dry the raw brick for about two days to remove moisture, then it is fired for about a day. The brick begins to bake at temperatures from + 900-1100 degrees Celsius.
After holding in the oven, it is slowly cooled, for about two hundred hours, to the ambient air temperature. As a result, masterpieces of brick art are obtained.
Now about technology
Suppose bricks for fifteenth century palaces were burned by slaves and peasants. Then - they were definitely masters of their craft, who knew the technological process to the smallest details.
An ancient kiln for firing clay products.
And what kind of factories they had with ovens! They did not forget about the firing temperature - from 900 to 1110 degrees, and so on for several days.
In general, the oven must work around the clock, given the volume of brick consumed for the construction of buildings. Was the stove burning on coal, or with wood?
Maybe, after all, there was atmospheric electricity and storage of this energy? Not gas, the ancestors used to fire bricks. Their civilization developed in a different way.
How many centuries will the ancient brick stand
What a global misconception that our civilization has stepped technologically far ahead! After the war, it came to the point that the broken buildings were dismantled on old intact bricks and masterpieces were erected from them.
For example, the main post office in Minsk. It was built in 1953 from old bricks, which were collected throughout the city from destroyed old buildings.
Under all the ancient cities there are tunnels, which are lined with red bricks. These tunnels are more than five hundred years old - the bricks in them are as good as new. We are talking about a brick that is much older than its counterpart by three centuries.
Russia. Biysk. Antediluvian red brick building.
It is an ancient brick that used to be called plinth. The bump stop does not immediately take it, tunnels under the cities are lined with similar bricks.
Ancient sewerage system under the city.
Brick is born from the union of all four elements: earth, water, air and fire. Excellent building material. Our ancestors knew how to make it almost eternal.
This is how the brickwork of the mouth of the underground Neglinnaya River, which flows under the city of Moscow, looks like.
The secrets of making such a brick have long been lost. Its striking strength, together with the cement mortar that has held it together for centuries, is still the subject of discussion among the masters.