Samara. 1895 year. Desolation and stench due to lack of sewage. The owner of the brewery Alfred Filippovich Vakano in 1906 offered the thought 15 thousand rubles to draw up a sewage project, and this project was ordered to a German engineer from Frankfurt on the Main V. G. Lindley. Construction began in the middle of 1909.
“By 1918, 35.4 kilometers of sewerage network had been built in Samara. Sewerage lines passed through the streets of Nikolaevskaya (Chapaevskaya), Saratovskaya (Frunze), Dvoryanskaya (Kuibyshevskaya), Panskaya (Leningradskaya), Preobrazhenskaya (Vodnikov), Zavodskaya (Ventseka), Voskresenskaya (Pionerskaya). The Volzhsky and Samara collectors were built of bricks, with a depth of 18-22 meters, and were underground passages up to a meter wide and about 1.75 meters high. Some sections of these collectors are still in use."
Think about it! For 9 years - 35 kilometers. Hands !!! Brick by brick !!! I'm not even talking about where the brick was made in such volumes and of such quality that it still serves today! Do you know how to make a modern brick? Well, such that it would stand for five years without finishing?
Nizhny Novgorod. Old and new masonry:
Nizhny Novgorod. Old and new masonry.
Like the photo above. The pre-revolutionary brick stands, but the whole new one has been crumbled. The production cycle is nine days! With firing and stuff. And this is at the current level of technology development! And we also need to dig up and bring consumables to the plant. And then the brick is ready from the factory! Can you imagine how many bricks are needed for 35 kilometers of these tunnels? How many factories do you need to produce this brick? How much fuel is needed for roasting? What kind of quarries were they supposed to be and what were they developed? Semicircular vaults and semicircular bricks. Yes, it's still beautiful! And where did the provincial town get so much money for all this?
Promotional video:
And now the modern metro construction:
With all the modern technology! One open-type station is 3-3.5 years old and deep 10-20 meters - 5 years. The cost of one kilometer is 5-10 billion rubles! (This is in Russia of course)
Well? Did the peasants build sewers in Samara? In bast shoes? From homemade bricks to mortar with egg yolks? Did you bring it on carts? 35 kilometers in 9 years ???
Now imagine that there is a minimum of the same in almost every major city. The scale of brick production, masonry technology never ceases to amaze me … Without computers, laser levels, autoclaves and megawatts of energy …
There was definitely an industrial development of quarries, and huge factories, where the heating of the furnaces was carried out not with coal and wood.
As for what is in the photo - I think we just took advantage of what came before them. And everywhere else …
Continue reading the article: "Glass Civilization".