I highly recommend the soon-to-be-released book The Elements of Construction: N. Clifford Ricker, Architecture, and the University of Illinois and not just because I wrote on chapter of it. Marci Uihlein, the editor, an architect and engineer, and a professor of architecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, had the fantastic idea of explaining past practice in engineering and past practice in engineering education by using an old textbook. That book was Ricker’s The Elements of Construction, which was “published” within the school for use by the students. The book was blueprinted and bound informally, allowing Ricker to update it as needed: he was using it as a text in the 1880s and 90s, an era when building technology was advancing rapidly.
Ricker’s book covered topics we might expect today – steel beam design and brick detailing, for example – but also lower-level topics like the industrial production of steel and brick. He knew that his students could end up anywhere in the design and construction communities, not just as consulting architects or engineers, so he tried to give them a context for design and background in related topics. Given the constraints of its era and use, it’s a fascinating text.
It’s also really hard to read. Light-gray typewriter text on a medium blue background, closely spaced, with a weird outline numbering system for paragraphs…it took me longer to read my chapter than I want to admit. This is why Marci’s book has the original reprinted to modern standards, in addition to the various new chapters analyzing different portions of it. I both volunteered for and was voluntold that I’d get the iron and steel chapter, and it was a lot of fun.
A book like this helps explain where we are by explaining how we got here. Not every architect and engineer needs that in their daily practice the way I do, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be interesting to all.
From a later book by Ricker, A treatise on design and construction of roofs, a truss joint:
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