TOOLS

    Today, building a house is a diverse undertaking which involves many disciplines using highly developed tools from one end of the job to the other.  CAD software with high-resolution monitors and plotters;  3-D printers;  plasma cutters;  laser levels and transits;  electronic testing devices;  pneumatic nailers and staplers;  powered multi-tools;  airless sprayers;  an array of battery-operated saws, drills, impact drivers, grinders, sanders, and planers  …..  all of these incredible inventions have become an essential part of the building process.  It’s stunning, really, how many devices come into use during the course of a project.  A good plumber might carry several hundred different tools in his truck, while a skilled electrician might have more than a thousand in hers.  Carpenters, masons, metal-workers, and tile-setters all arrive at the job site carrying a wide assortment of equipment, some of it cutting-edge and some unchanged for centuries.  Even the clean-up crew brings dozens of implements to help accomplish their work better and more efficiently.  And if you include the manufacturers and fabricators supplying parts to the job, then we’re looking at thousands of tools used to make a modern house what it is.

    This remarkable assortment of tools available to the 21st century builder is the end result of a very long process of development.  In the beginning the selection was far more limited.  When home-building began about 2.5 million years ago, at the start of the Stone Age, Paleolithic carpenters carried nothing more in their bags than a sharp Hand-axe and a good Hammerstone.  Simply two chunks of rock, small enough to be easily handled, and yet these early tools enabled mankind to survive in the environment found throughout the African savanna.  And for the next 2 million years, Homo Erectus chopped, scraped, dug, and hammered out a living by way of manual dexterity and creative thinking.  With experience, the hand-brain connection grew stronger and more versatile while constant adaptation led to valuable new skills, and our ability to contend with the environment continued to increase.  So important were these stone implements that some anthropologists speculate they increased in size over time because they became symbols for sexual display and attraction.  Bigger is better, right???  Eventually people realized they could combine their stones with wood and bone, use one tool to make another, teach the new-found skills to others  ….  and evolution took a huge leap forward.  Habitats and shelters grew more secure and long-lasting.  They may have been simple, but at some point these primitive tools became essential to our survival and from that moment on humanity would forever be known as “The Tool Makers”.

     Our success as a species led to an ever-increasing population, and things couldn’t stay simple forever.  The demand for tools increased, both in terms of quantity and in terms of utility.  At the same time, people learned to control fire which led to the discovery of workable metals  ….  the event that marks the beginning of the Neolithic Epoch.  Stone and mortar ovens were used to melt certain elements like copper, gold and silver, giving us wonderful new materials which were both highly malleable and remarkably strong and durable.  By the year 3000 BCE (about 5000 years ago), copper and tin had been alloyed together, ushering in the Bronze Age of tool-making.  Things continued to heat up and after another 1500 years the ovens had grown hot enough to melt iron, revolutionizing the fabrication of light-weight and long-lasting implements.  Throughout the Iron Age, which lasted for the next 3000 years, the diversity and quality of tools grew exponentially, making possible the millions of houses that habited the world by the year 1500 AD.   Many of the tools developed during this period are still being copied today.  Tool-using skills became more and more valuable so trade guilds emerged to organize and protect the workers while passing on this knowledge from one generation to the next.  There was real power here and the building industry grew to become one of the pillars of the world economy.  The face of the Earth was changing rapidly and it was all made possible by tools.

     Up until the end of the Iron age, 500 years ago, tools were mostly powered by hand.  One person, or sometimes two, using their muscles, provided the energy necessary to fashion a building component which could then be combined with other components to ultimately make a house.  With larger devices horses might be utilized as a source of additional power, and on an industrial level water power was sometimes engaged when it was available, but the productive output of most tools was limited to the work done by people.  Then something changed.

      The energy released by fire, by the chemical process of Combustion, was combined with water to produce steam and the Industrial Age began.  We started making mechanical muscles that had far more power than our own and far more than those of our horses.  Suddenly we had machines with the power of hundreds and even thousands of horses.  Tasks which had for millenia taken laborers countless hours of back-breaking work could now be completed in minutes.