Scaffolding: The 1960's And Today

499 Words1 Page

Steel pipes are used in a variety of applications. The ones that might come immediately to mind are water and sewage. However, they are also used for lightweight but strong structural support, scaffolding, oil and gas pipes and other industrial applications. Steel pipes or tubes are directly responsible for the creation of super tall skyscrapers. This came about in the 1960s when the advent of steel tubes for structural support revolutionized engineering and architecture. It had been a few decades since the world had last seen a building frenzy of skyscrapers. This development fostered a new building frenzy as architects and engineers took to structural steel tubing like a kid to a new toy on Christmas. Thus, all of the tallest buildings in the world today simply could …show more content…

Scaffolding would still exist if there were no steel pipes, but it would be more cumbersome, heavier and not able to reach as high as it does. This would significantly impact renovations and clean up projects on multistory buildings. Again, our cities as we know them today would be different. Buildings that currently get renovated might simply get torn down after years of slowly deteriorating. There would be a lot of history lost in the process, as well as substantial …show more content…

until the 1950s. For health reasons, their use fell out of favor. Thus, most American homes built in the 1960s were built with steel water pipes. Steel pipes were safer than lead and cheaper than copper. Plastic pipes were not yet in common usage. These days, plastic pipes are a commonly used, cheap alternative to copper water pipes. Thus, the post war housing boom of the would have looked different if affordable, safe steel water pipes had not been available. Back then, the average new home was substantially smaller than what we see today and lacked a lot of amenities that are taken for granted now, such as air conditioning and

Open Document