Page 26 - Trenchless Technology Piping Installation and Inspection

CHAPTER 1

New Pipeline

Installations

1.1 Buried Pipe History
The history of buried pipes started about 2500 B.C., when the Chinese
delivered water through bamboo pipes. In some Mediterranean
countries, clay pipes supplied water to villagers at a central well. Bur-
ied pipes in Persia, called “khanats,” were rock-lined tunnels, dug by
hand back under the mountains, to collect clean water and pipe it as
much as 30 mi to parched cities on the plains. In ancient Greece, pipe-
lines and tunnels were constructed to distribute water in urban areas.
From A.D. 100 to 300 in Rome, with plenty of low-cost slave labor,
pipes became the guts of the infrastructure for the emperor and elite.
Water was delivered to Rome in aqueducts and distributed in lead
pipes to the mansions of the elite and to their luxurious Roman baths.
The “fall of Rome” may have been brought about, in part, by those
lead pipes. The acidic water of Rome dissolved lead from the pipes.
The elite were lead-poisoned. Lead caused impotence, and the few
successful pregnancies produced heirs who were imbeciles.
In North America, European settlers fashioned pipes by boring
logs. Later they made wooden pipes from carefully sawed staves held
together by steel hoops. The concept was adapted from coopers who
made wooden barrels and tubs. Some old wooden stave pipes are still
in service. Iron had been known since 1000 B.C., but before the Renais-
sance, iron was used mostly to make spears, swords, and shields. In
A.D. 1346, iron was used to make guns. Those guns became the inspi-
ration for iron pipe—the dream of “ingeniators” (the ingenious ones)—
because of the demand for water in the burgeoning cities and because
iron was stronger than bamboo or clay. Iron pipes became reality in
England in 1824 when James Russell invented a device for welding
iron tubes (gun barrels) together into pipes. Costly, handmade, iron
pipes supplied gas for the gas lamps in the streets and the dwellings
of the elite. In 1825, Cornelius Whitehouse made long iron pipes by

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