This is a delightful article that isn't at all what I thought it would be about. The section about how Britain's brick tax disincentivized experimenting with new technology is great stuff.
I thought it would talk about how brick got displaced by newer building tech. It mostly talks about how making bricks got moved from a manual process to a mechanized one.
I will also note that the Great Fire of London in 1666 is one of the reasons London and Britain were so very powerful and globally influential. So much of the city was destroyed that when they rebuilt it, they de facto modernized the city. It was the most modern city in the world because of the fire.
Another random factoid that comes to mind: Some guy who was a bricklayer all his life became locally important in, I believe, Washington DC when he was an old man and was the only guy they could find who knew how to authentically recreate the old bricks these historic buildings were made from. (There were many old buildings in need of restoration at that point.)
The author has also done other analyses of how industrialization of construction work hasn't really taken off in a way that lowers prices. The case of how something as simple and interchangeable as bricks not succumbing to industrialization is a damning data point in that theme.
I thought it would talk about how brick got displaced by newer building tech. It mostly talks about how making bricks got moved from a manual process to a mechanized one.
I will also note that the Great Fire of London in 1666 is one of the reasons London and Britain were so very powerful and globally influential. So much of the city was destroyed that when they rebuilt it, they de facto modernized the city. It was the most modern city in the world because of the fire.
Another random factoid that comes to mind: Some guy who was a bricklayer all his life became locally important in, I believe, Washington DC when he was an old man and was the only guy they could find who knew how to authentically recreate the old bricks these historic buildings were made from. (There were many old buildings in need of restoration at that point.)