Are the Romans great engineers

Answer 1

The arch. Without the arch much of buildings made today and throughout the centuries wouldn't be standing or built.

Answer 2

Roman engineering was very advanced for its time. The Romans were the first to make large scale use of the barrel (simple) arch, the vaulted arch (or vault) and concrete. With this they could construct building without the use of the Greek post-and-lintel technique. It also enabled them to build bridges which were much longer than ever before and could cross much wider rivers and valleys. Trajan's' bridge crossed the River Danube. It was 1,135 m (3,724 ft.) long and the longest bridge in the world for more than 1,000 years. The Romans were also the first to use bridgework for the water conduits of the aqueducts. They were built when the aqueducts had to cross rivers or valleys or in the plain when the conduit had to be kept a gradient to make the water move by gravity. If the bridge needed to be high, two or three tiers of arches were built to reach the desired height. The most famous example is the Pont du Gard in France, which has three tiers and is 48.8 m (160 ft.) high. To cross very deep or long depressions, the Romans invented a system of inverted siphons. Water was led to a tank at a slightly lower elevation and passed on to other conduits which led to other tanks and conduits also at slightly lower elevations. This was done to maintain a mild gradient to avoid an excessive build-up of water pressure.

With the development of much better aqueducts, the Romans developed water wheel technology to a high level. They were used to power flourmills. At Barbegal, in France, there were sixteen wheels which went down a hill in two parallel lines, feeding each other. They took water downhill form an aqueduct to power a complex of flourmills furthr down the hill which produced enough flour to make the amount of bread needed to feed the town of Arelates (Arles). Water wheels were also used to power saw mills. One such mill at Heliapolis (in today's Turkey) is the earliest known system which combined a crank with a connecting rod. The waterwheel powered two frame saws through a gear train. It was used to saw stone into rectangular blocks for construction. There were several such mills with crank and connecting rod without a gear train around the Roman Empire.

The Romans were the first to use the power of water for mining. Aqueducts took water to the mines. In opencast mines water from a tank was poured to scour away the soil and expose the veins in the bedrock. Water was also used to remove waste rock or to extinguish rocks which were exposed to fire to weaken them. For deep level mines they invented a system of reverse water-wheels to take underground water to the surface. In a copper mine in Spain a set of sixteen such wheels has been found.

The Romans invented the famous stone-paved roads. This was made possible by learning how to cut stones into slabs, and the invention of Roman concrete. A ditch was ploughed down to the firmest layer of ground that was found. The ditch was filled with rubble from local materials or sand (when it could be found) up to one metre from the surface level. A flat floor of compressed gravel was then made. Then a surface was made by embedding the stones in concrete to create the paving. The concrete was laid in two thin layers. The bottom one had coarse concrete and the top one had fine concrete.

The Romans adopted the cranes of the Greeks and massively improved on them. The simplest one was the trispastos, which had triangular frame held up by two ropes fixed to the ground, a winch, a rope, and a block with three pulleys. It had had a mechanical advantage of 3:1, and single man could raise 150 kg. The pentaspastos had five pulleys. The polyspastos had a set of three by five pulleys with two, three or four masts depending on the maximum load they could lift. It was worked by four men at both sides of the winch and could lift 3,000 kg. The winch could be replaced by a treadwheel. This doubled the load to 6,000 kg with only half the crew, because the treadwheel had a much larger diameter and thus a much bigger mechanical advantage.