The Origins of the Computer

The Origins of the Computer

This report is to be distributed freely and not to be sold for profit ect. This

report can be modifyed as long as you keep in mind that you didn't write it. And

you are not to hand in this report claiming credit for it heheh.

The Roman Empire, founded by Augustus Caesar in 27 B.C. and lasting in

Western Europe for 500 years, reorganized for world politics and economics.

Almost the entirety of the civilized world became a single centralized state. In

place of Greek democracy, piety, and independence came Roman authoritarianism

and practicality. Vast prosperity resulted. Europe and the Mediterranean bloomed

with trading cities ten times the size of their predecessors with public

amenities previously unheard of courts, theaters, circuses, and public baths.

And these were now large permanent masonry buildings as were the habitations,

tall apartment houses covering whole city blocks.

This architectural revolution brought about by the Romans required two

innovations: the invention of a new building method called concrete vaulting and

the organization of labor and capital on a large scale so that huge projects

could be executed quickly after the plans of a single master architect.

Roman concrete was a fluid mixture of lime and small stones poured into

the hollow centers of walls faced with brick or stone and over curved wooden

molds, or forms, to span spaces as vaults. The Mediterranean is an active

volcanic region, and a spongy, light, tightly adhering stone called pozzolana

was used to produce a concrete that was both light and extremely strong.