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Clearstory

The (Second) Rise of Concrete

Clearstory

This Old House

History, Home & Garden, Leisure

4.9726 Ratings

🗓️ 20 May 2021

⏱️ 34 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

How did a massive, devastating fire lead to the rebirth of one of our oldest building materials: concrete? Host Kevin O'Connor speaks with author and journalist Vince Beiser and assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering Admir Masic about concrete in the ancient world, how it came into our modern world, and the mystery of why it wasn’t used for a thousand years. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Here's the truth about AI. AI is only as powerful as the platform it's built into. Service Now puts AI to work for people across your business, removing friction and frustration for your employees, supercharging productivity for your developers, providing intelligent tools for your service agents to make customers happier, all built into a single platform you can

0:22.0

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0:27.9

slash UK slash AI for people.

0:34.2

The 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

0:40.3

Biggest natural disaster in American history, there's a huge earthquake which levels the city

0:46.3

and sparks fires that rage for three solid days.

1:05.0

At 512 in the morning on April 18th, 1906, a 7.9 magnitude earthquake shook San Francisco. It lasted less than a minute.

1:07.0

But the destruction was massive.

1:10.0

Buildings crumbled, water mains were damaged, and gas lines broke, engulfing the city in fire.

1:17.6

Nearly 500 city blocks were destroyed.

1:22.6

San Francisco is basically leveled to the ground.

1:26.6

Except, when the smoke clears and the dust finally settles,

1:31.3

standing there amid the ruins, just a two-story warehouse,

1:36.3

but it basically survives the whole disaster unscathed

1:39.3

because it's built out of this very strong, flexible, fireproof material.

1:45.0

This material wasn't groundbreaking technology. It wasn't even new.

1:50.0

It was one of the oldest building materials we have.

1:54.0

Concrete.

1:56.0

And that really got people's attention.

2:00.0

That was a big moment where all around the country, all eyes, everybody was looking at San Francisco in the wake of this horrible disaster.

2:07.1

Everybody sees this building that came through.

2:09.7

And people wrote about it.

...

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