The History Channel episode of Engineering an Empire featuring Great Britain traces engineering development in the British Isles from the time of William the Conqueror up to the 19th century. All of these inventions helped Britain reach its global apex where the “sun never sets on the British Empire.”
William the Conqueror built castles around England, many of them primarily wood. But the castle that would become the Tower of London used leftover stone from Roman fortifications as well as limestone imported from Normandy (today’s northern France). The construction utilized techniques that had not been seen since the Roman Empire such as arches and groin vaults. The Norman kings that followed William improved the Tower, making it safer and larger.
Use your promo and get a custom paper on
"Britain: Engineering an Empire".
Henry VIIIth, a Tudor king, want England’s navy to be the finest in the world. He built his flagship, the Mary Rose, with as many guns as possible placed behind gunpoints with flaps. To build so many guns with brass was very expensive, so Henry’s engineers invented a method of producing cast iron guns which would cost a fifth of a brass gun’s cost. They had to invent the blast furnace in order to reach the high temperatures required to melt iron. The furnace was a tower with raw materials into which a “blast” of hot, compressed air could be pushed. The molten iron descended into molds deep in the ground, then cooled in the shape of guns.
The 19th century was an age of industrialization. In 1822, the steam locomotive Rocket was able to travel at 29 mph. A network of railroads was built in England and in its territories. After a fire in 1834, the Houses of Parliament were rebuilt in an Italian Renaissance / neo-Gothic style. The clock in the tower, known as Big Ben today (although that is really the name of the clock’s bell), is accurate to two-fifths of a second. Other innovations in the 19th century were the telegraph (which allowed communication around the globe), advanced sewer system in London (which helped end a cholera epidemic), and the Tower Bridge, which can be raised in one minute.
- History Channel. (2006). Britain: Blood and Steel. Engineering an Empire. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJI4H4fnALM
