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A comment on Why No Roman Industrial Revolution?. Parent comment
Steel does not rust without cause.
It needs something like a drip on to a part of it to wash away the layer of oxide and create more. Electrical effects then spread the decay.
There are a lot of steel reinforced structures around from the 1920s that are doing very well with no visible signs of structural decay.
Here is one close to me form the nineteenth century. Everything else decayed. It burnt at least once. And it stands, still.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargill's_Castle
It will be interesting to see if continues for another few hundred years....
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Steel does not rust without cause.
It needs something like a drip on to a part of it to wash away the layer of oxide and create more. Electrical effects then spread the decay.
There are a lot of steel reinforced structures around from the 1920s that are doing very well with no visible signs of structural decay.
Here is one close to me form the nineteenth century. Everything else decayed. It burnt at least once. And it stands, still.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargill's_Castle
It will be interesting to see if continues for another few hundred years....