Which of the following breakthroughs made building skyscrapers possible?

Question

Which of the following breakthroughs made building skyscrapers possible?

A. All of the answer choices apply.
B. Frameworks that made thinner walls possible
C. The production of cheap, strong steel
D. Elevators that could move quickly up and down many floors

Answer 1

A. All of the answer choices apply

Please, as in any debate, argument or position--refer to the source--see enclosed source below:

The rise of the tall building, as a new type of urban structure, truly began with the first "steel" structural frames, "elevators" instead of stairs, and "thinner walls" (masonry was eliminated by the thinner steel). Hence, it is all the above.

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries several
buildings in the United States signaled a new age of structural engineering and architectural form at the service of increasingly dense and intense central business districts. The Carson Pirie Scott Department Store (Chicago, 1894), the Guaranty Building (Buffalo, 1895), and the Reliance Bu ilding (Chicago, 1895), among others, initiated the entry of the tall building into urbanism as a viable economic response to the pressures of the densification of modern central business districts.

The first tall buildings were massive masonry structures with bearing walls that reached a thickness of 6-8 feet at their lowest levels. However, the rise of the tall building, as a new type of urban structure, truly began with the first steel structural frames. The Woolworth Building (New York, 1913), one of the earliest structural steel frames, retained its
title as world’s tallest building for 17 years until the construction of the Chrysler Building. Eventually, engineers invented any number of structural technologies that made very tall buildings possible. In concert with the development of structural technologies and safe elevators to lift occupied space ever higher into the sky came building systems to support and protect life.

Answer 2

It is D. You'll find that most European cities had a 5 or 6 story limit on buildings prior to the early 1900's - that's as far as anyone cared to walk. Curiously the cheaper places were at the top - the concept of the 'penthouse' and paying extra for views didn't exist. But in a sense this answer is 'wrong' because skyscrapers 'could' have been built prior to elevators - just that nobody would live in them (except pigeons). The question should say 'practicable' not 'possible'.

Regarding C: Steel wasn't essential to skyscrapers, and in any case was around long before skyscrapers (for instance the Eiffel Tower). And B doesn't make any sense.

***edit****
As usual illumination comes from my fellow answerers. If B means that thick stone/brick walls were replaced by thin steel frame walls the I'd still argue that thick walls were used in early skyscrapers (and other tall structures such as lighthouses, minarets, and medieval towers). I'd still argue the reason why nobody 'bothered' to build higher in the four or five hundred years prior to 1900 was the problem of moving people 'up' them hadn't been solved. The engineers who built the cathedrals in the period 1200 to 1400 could have easily constructed towers (to my mind) if there had been a 'demand' for them.

I'd also acknowledge the problem of water pressure that others have raised, and the fact that land values prior to the 1900's hadn't increased so much as to 'trigger' the interest in solving the people-lifting problem in order to be able to squeeze more folk into smaller real estate 'footprints'.

Having said all this I suspect that if you have been set the question as part of a school exam then the examiners would be more favorable to A, as they tend to steer clear of answers which are more a matter of opinion (such as mine) than of 'accepted fact'.
***End edit***

Answer 3

Their brothers will fly airplanes into ours if we build it, but yes, it is probably possible. We didn't stop caring about tall buildings. It's just that we are seeking safer ways to protect them against unscrupulous people who hate any non-Muslim success. NASA wants to build an elevator to Geosynchronous Orbit, if you can imagine that. That would be a 33,000 mile high structure. I think it would top all records. I doubt some oil baron is going to pull off something like that. And anyone who says it is as simple as having to have a bigger foundation has never studied civil construction or engineering a day in his life. The average 9-year-old's experience with tinkertoys should tell him that wider foundations don't always mean adequate support for the whole structure. If that alone were enough, someone in Nebraska would have built a mile wide on the open plains . . . but the wind would have torn down the whole kit and kaboodle. Buildings have to be more dynamic at the foundation as they get larger, since they are not truly standing still as we would like to think. Each level must be capable of supporting not only the level above it but ALL the levels above it -- and without buckling, allowing too much sway or preventing a certain degree of sway from occurring... They have to be adapted at each level to the truly bizarre effects of airflow, turbulence and the resultant sound-wave-invoked oscillation of the building materials... All their systems have to be modular, from plumbing to elevator shafts. There is nothing simple about building skyscrapers.

Answer 4

Skyscraper Invention

Answer 5

Chronologically, first the safety elevator, then iron frameworks, then cheap, strong steel.

"The structural definition of the word skyscraper was refined later by architectural historians, based on engineering developments of the 1880s that had enabled construction of tall multi-story buildings. This definition was based on the steel skeleton—as opposed to constructions of load-bearing masonry, which passed their practical limit in 1891 with Chicago's Monadnock Building."

"The crucial developments for modern skyscrapers were steel, glass, reinforced concrete, water pumps, and elevators. Until the 19th century, buildings of over six stories were rare. So many flights of stairs were impractical for inhabitants, and water pressure was usually insufficient to supply running water above about 15 metres (50 feet)."

"Skyscraper" : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyscraper

"The increase in urban commerce in the United States in the second half of the 19th century augmented the need for city business space, and the installation of the first safe passenger elevator (in the Haughwout Department Store, New York City) in 1857 made practical the erection of buildings more than four or five stories tall. Although the earliest skyscrapers rested on extremely thick masonry walls at the ground level, architects soon turned to the use of a cast-iron and wrought-iron framework to support the weight of the upper floors, allowing for more floor space on the lower stories."

"It was, however, the refinement of the Bessemer process, first used in the United States in the 1860s, that allowed for the major advance in skyscraper construction. As steel is stronger and lighter in weight than iron, the use of a steel frame made possible the construction of truly tall buildings."

"skyscraper" : Encyclopædia Britannica CD 2000

Answer 6

A. The production of cheaper, stronger steel was made possible by the Bessemer Process. Elevators was an invention to make it easier for people to go up and down the tall buildings. It was still a critical invention to allow buildings to continue to grow.

Answer 7

All.......

Steel made it all possible (along with making the Transcontinental RR possible).

Elijah Otis - Otis Elevator is STILL making elevators today!

Before - buildings were made of masonary and couldn't be more than a couple floors high.


.

Answer 8

C. cheap strong steel

Answer 9

elevators. without elevators we never would've wanted to build anything that tall, id we did, it would seriously be a privilege to work on the lower floors with no view.

Answer 10

i guess all the above, but the MOST important was steel reenforced concrete