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  Building Materials

  It is difficult to exaggerate the radical change that the new industrial world of the nineteenth century brought to architectural materials Since the beginning of architectural history,the same basic substances had been employed.They were provided directly by nature and used in their natural or near-natural state,only cut,shaped,and dried into the functional forms of timbers,stone blocks,and clay bricks.The exceptions were lime mortar and Roman concrete.Metals,which had the tensile strength that masonry materials lacked,were employed in minor and supplementary ways.Bronze was expensive as well as brittle Iron,the structurally more important metal,was available in limited quantities and uneven quality,and was too easily converted to rust by the elements.It was,therefore,restricted in use to things such as tie-rods and chains, and, along with bronze,to masonry clamps and decoration.Prior to the nineteenth century, the structural presence of iron in architecture was scarcely noticeable.

  The Industrial Revolution changed all that Iron materials became available in such large quantities that they could play far more than a minor architectural role In 1800,the world production of iron stood at 825,000 tons,by 1830 it was 1,825.000 tons,and nearly 40,000,000 in 1900-an increase of almost SO-fold over the century.The growth was not only in quantity, but quality as well.Iron, found bountifully in Earth's crust as an oxide,is a material of almost protean variability It is not simply pure or impure,but can be made hard or soft,brittle or ductile,strong or weak. These qualities depend on carbon content,freedom from impurities (slag),and heating and cooling treatments of the refined metal.Traditionally, three versions existed:cast iron,wrought iron,and steel.Cast iron is the crudest form,containing the most impurities and thus being extremely brittle. Wrought iron,because it includes almost no carbon,is highly malleable (hence its name),but also comparatively soft.The optimum material is steel,which incorporates a restricted amount of carbon for hardness but is otherwise free of impurities,giving it great strength, and which, as a result of tempering treatments,is also malleable.

  Cast and wrought iron came into prodigious manufacture in the early and mid-nineteenth century as a result of rapid growth in demand, new means to transport materials,and more efficient iron-founding techniques. But the mass production of steel required further technological innovations to rid the metal of weakening impurities and to control more perfectly the amount of carbon added Such advances were made with the Bessemer process(put into use in 1860)and the open-hearth process of 1864,scientific iron metallurgy in the last third of the century perfected these techniques.

  A significant but little-known fact is that the mam form of increased steel production was technically not steel but a kind of wrought iron.It lacked a crucial property of true steel-its hardening power-yet it differed from the older forms of wrought iron because it was free from the weakening presence of slag,at the same time being malleable(unlike cast iron).It was called steel only because the name carried the status of a high-quality and high-priced product.

  Another alternative new building substance was concrete,composed of an aggregate of broken stone, gravel,or other small chunks of hard matter embedded in a matrix of lime,sand,and water First used in Roman times,its modern revival depended on the invention of portland cement in 1824,a substance of many times greater strength,durability,and fire resistance than ancient lime cement Mass-produced concrete began to come into widespread use in the 1850s and 1860s,in the construction of the sewers of Paris,for example However, even with portland cement,the use of concrete was still severely restricted by its low tensile strength,but the remedy was at hand in the newly available iron and steel; their properties complemented those of concrete.The latter material was cheap, easily molded into large structural forms with great compressive but little tensile strength Iron and steel,on the other hand were expensive,difficult to shape,yet endowed with extreme tensile strength and easily procurable in the simple form of long,thin bars.

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  1. According to paragraph 1, building materials in use before the nineteenth century were

  A. not significantly changed from their natural forms

  B. strong and durable

  C. too expensive to use on a large scale

  D. eventually replaced by lime mortar and Roman concrete

  2. In paragraph 1, the author discusses the properties of bronze and iron in order to

  A. contrast the qualities of bronze with those of iron

  B. explain why metals were not widely used in architecture before industrialization

  C. provide a reason why industrialization radically changed architectural materials

  D. demonstrate that decorative materials were used in architecture before industrialization

  3. According to paragraph 2, how did iron production change during the Industrial Revolution?

  A. As the level of production dramatically increased, the quality of the finished product became more and more

  B. New, higher-quality sources of iron were discovered in Earth's crust.

  C. The distinction between pure and impure iron was replaced by distinctions among cast iron, wrought iron, and steel

  D. Better iron was produced through heating and cooling treatments, control of carbon content, and purification of the metal

  4. The word "bountifully" in the passage is closest in meaning to

  A. originally

  B. usually

  C. with difficulty

  D. Abundantly

  5. The word "crudest" in the passage is closest in meaning to

  A. least common

  B. least processed

  C. least expensive

  D. least useful

  6. According to paragraph 2, how does steel compare with other forms of iron?

  A. It is the most widely available because it is the easiest to produce

  B. It is the hardest because it contains the least carbon

  C. It is the easiest to shape because it contains the fewest impurities

  D. It is the most useful because it is both strong and flexible.

  7. All of the following are mentioned in paragraph 3 as reasons for the increase in production of cast and wrought iron in the early and mid-nineteenth century EXCEPT

  A. lack of technology for steel production

  B. quickly rising demand for iron

  C. improved methods for producing iron

  D. new ways to move materials from place to place

  8. According to paragraph 4, how did the wrought iron referred to as steel differ from true steel?

  A. It was softer than true steel

  B. It contained more impurities than true steel did

  C. It was less expensive than true steel

  D. It could not be shaped as easily as true steel.

  9. According to paragraph 4, why did some manufacturers of wrought iron call their product steel?

  A. To differentiate their product from cast iron

  B. To indicate that their product did not contain slag

  C. To take advantage of the value attached to true steel

  D. To suggest that steel could be as soft as wrought iron

  10. According to paragraph 5, all the following were advantages of concrete made with portland cement EXCEPT:

  A. It lasted longer than other types of concrete.

  B. It did not burn as easily as other types of concrete

  C. It was stronger than other types of concrete.

  D. It was cheaper than other types of concrete.

  11. Which of the sentences below best expresses the essential information in the highlighted sentence in the passage? Incorrect choices change the meaning in important ways or leave out essential information

  [ Paragraph 5] Another alternative new building substance was concrete,composed of an aggregate of broken stone,gravel,or other small chunks of hard matter embedded in a matrix of lime,sand,and water First used in Roman times,its modern revival depended on the invention of portland cement in 1824,a substance of many times greater strength, durability,and fire resistance than ancient lime cement Mass-produced concrete began to come into widespread use in the 1850s and 1860s,in the construction of the sewers of Paris, for example However,even with portland cement,the use of concrete was still severely restricted by its low tensile strength,but the remedy was at hand in the newly available iron and steel;their properties complemented those of concrete.The latter material was cheap, easily molded into large structural forms with great compressive but little tensile strength Iron and steel,on the other hand were expensive,difficult to shape,yet endowed with extreme tensile strength and easily procurable in the simple form of long, thin bars.

  A. Even with portland cement, concrete had a lower tensile strength than iron and steel did and thus was used less as these metals became more available.

  B. The new availability of iron and steel complemented the use of concrete but could not make up for the low tensile strength of portland cement.

  C. Like iron and steel, concrete went from being a material whose use was severely restricted to being one that was widely available.

  D. The widespread use of concrete would not have been possible without iron and steel to offset its low tensile strength

  12. The word "revival" in the passage is closest in meaning to

  A. application

  B. return to use

  C. manufacture

  D. result

  13. Look at the four squares [ ] t hat indicate where t he following sentence could be added to the passage

  The remedy to concrete' s shortcomings was to reinforce it with such bars.

  Where would the sentence best fit? Click on a square [] to add the sentence to the passage.

  [ Paragraph 5] Another alternative new building substance was concrete,composed of an aggregate of broken stone,gravel,or other small chunks of hard matter embedded in a matrix of lime,sand,and water First used in Roman times,its modern revival depended on the invention of portland cement in 1824,a substance of many times greater strength,durability,and fire resistance than ancient lime cement Mass-produced concrete began to come into widespread use in the 1850s and 1860s,in the construction of t he sewers of Paris,for example [A] However,even with portland cement,the use of concrete was still severely restricted by its low tensile strength,but the remedy was at hand in the newly available iron and steel;their properties complemented those of concrete.[B]The latter material was cheap,easily molded into large structural forms with great compressive but little tensile strength.[C]Iron and steel, on the other hand were expensive, difficult to shape,yet endowed with extreme tensile strength and easily procurable in the simple form of long,thin bars.[ D]

  14. Industrialization in the nineteenth century revolutionized building materials.

  Answer Choices

  A. The only early building materials t hat were not provided directly by nature were lime mortar and Roman concrete

  B. In the second half of the nineteenth century, it became possible to mass produce steel that was both strong and malleable

  C. The problem with iron as a building material is that, unlike wood and masonry,it quickly rusts

  D. Technological advances and increased demand led to the production of vast quantities of cast and wrought iron in the first half of the nineteenth century

  E. Cast iron and wrought iron were the most common building materials until they were replaced by steel in the last third of the nineteenth century7

  F. The introduction of portland cement led to the large-scale use of concrete as a building material.

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