Page 312 - Synthetic Fuels Handbook

298 CHAPTER TEN

One of the first uses of wood for water transport was probably a hollowed-out log.
Around 4000 B.C., the Egyptians were making ships from bundles of reeds and their earli-
est wooden boats copied the hull frame of the reed boats. For larger vessels, the Egyptians
imported cedar from Lebanon. One reason for the northward expansion of Egypt’s influ-
ence was to ensure its cedar supply. Records show that the Egyptian shipbuilder could use
wood on a grand scale. Queen Hatshepsut’s barge, built in 1500 B.C. to transport granite
obelisks from Aswan to Thebes, had a displacement of some 7500 tons, and 30 oar-powered
tugs were needed to tow it.
According to Theophrastus, a pupil of Aristotle, we know what was available for ship-
building in Ancient Greece and the ship-building woods are silver fir, fir, and cedar. Silver
fir is used for lightness; for merchant ships, fir is used because of its resistance to rot. In
Syria and Phoenicia, cedar is used because of the lack of fir.
Technologic improvement in land transport was slower than that of water transport.
From 7000 B.C. onward, wood sledges were used for heavy loads such as stones, and
archeologists reason that the massive stones in the great monument at Stonehenge on
Salisbury Plain, England, must have been moved on sledges placed on rollers, which may
have inspired the discovery of the wheel. But we still have no record of when and where
the wheel was invented, though surely the first axle was made of wood.
Another significant contribution of wood to the ancient world was for war devices.
Examples include the catapult, which enabled a man to attack his enemy from a safe dis-
tance, the battering ram and scaling ladder, the tortoise, and the siege tower. Although the
choice of materials for these purposes was quite limited, the properties of wood made it
eminently suitable. High strength and low weight were highly valued characteristics of
wood then, just as they are today. These siege engines were integral to the expansion of
both Greek and Roman civilizations and of the science, technology, and philosophy that
developed under the tutelage of the great thinkers and teachers of the times.
Ancient man was using wood to conquer his world as well as build it and explore it.
Then some unknown woodman in Ancient Greece invented a primitive wooden lathe, and
man found himself on the threshhold of the age of machines. When he entered that age,
he would find ways to make wood work for him to unprecedented degrees. From the basic
concept of the lathe and the ability to shape wood to circular symmetry developed new
concepts of both materials use and machine development.
In Europe the water-and-wood phase reached a high plateau around the sixteenth cen-
tury with the work of Leonardo da Vinci and his talented contemporaries. At about this
time, the availability of timber diminished, particularly in the United Kingdom. The scar-
city was caused by the expansion of agriculture, the increasing use of wood as a structural
material and fuel, and from growing demands of the smelting furnaces. To smelt one can-
non took several tons of wood. By the seventeenth century, Europeans were turning to coal
for the domestic hearth, and when the secret of smelting metal with coal was discovered,
coal became the unique basis for industrial technology until late in the nineteenth century.
In early nineteenth century America, a seemingly inexhaustible supply of timber existed.
The technology here was geared to exploiting the use of all natural resources to make up
for the scarcity in capital and labor. But the technologic advances of the nineteenth century,
along with the increasing population, would have a major impact on American forests.
Railroads, telegraph lines, charcoal-fueled steel mills, and other industries were consuming
immense quantities of wood. The Civil War made a heavy demand, too. One gun factory
alone used 28,000 walnut trees for gunstocks. During the latter half of the nineteenth cen-
tury, the volume of lumber produced each year rose from 4 thousand million board feet to
about 35 thousand million.
As with many other industries of this time, lumbering was a highly competitive busi-
ness. Quick profits were the name of the game. This encouraged careless and extravagantly
wasteful harvesting and manufacturing methods. The visible devastation that resulted