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Hypocaustum
A hypocaust ( la, hypocaustum) is a system of central heating in a building that produces and circulates hot air below the floor of a room, and may also warm the walls with a series of pipes through which the hot air passes. This air can warm the upper floors as well. The word derives from the Ancient Greek meaning "under" and , meaning "burnt" (as in ''caustic''). The earliest reference to such a system suggests that the temple of Ephesus in 350 BC was heated in this manner, although Vitruvius attributes its invention to Sergius Orata in c. 80 BC. Its invention improved the hygiene and living conditions of citizens, and was a forerunner of modern central heating. Roman operation Hypocausts were used for heating hot baths and other public buildings in Ancient Rome. They were also used in private homes. It was a must for the villas of the wealthier merchant class throughout the Roman Empire. The ruins of Roman hypocausts have been found throughout Europe (for example in Ital ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
De Architectura
(''On architecture'', published as ''Ten Books on Architecture'') is a treatise on architecture written by the Roman architect and military engineer Marcus Vitruvius Pollio and dedicated to his patron, the emperor Caesar Augustus, as a guide for building projects. As the only treatise on architecture to survive from antiquity, it has been regarded since the Renaissance as the first book on architectural theory, as well as a major source on the canon of classical architecture. It contains a variety of information on Greek and Roman buildings, as well as prescriptions for the planning and design of military camps, cities, and structures both large (aqueducts, buildings, baths, harbours) and small (machines, measuring devices, instruments). Since Vitruvius published before the development of cross vaulting, domes, concrete, and other innovations associated with Imperial Roman architecture, his ten books give no information on these hallmarks of Roman building design and technology ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vitruvius
Vitruvius (; c. 80–70 BC – after c. 15 BC) was a Roman architect and engineer during the 1st century BC, known for his multi-volume work entitled ''De architectura''. He originated the idea that all buildings should have three attributes: , , and ("strength", "utility", and "beauty"). These principles were later widely adopted in Roman architecture. His discussion of perfect proportion in architecture and the human body led to the famous Renaissance drawing of the ''Vitruvian Man'' by Leonardo da Vinci. Little is known about Vitruvius' life, but by his own descriptionDe Arch. Book 1, preface. section 2. he served as an artilleryman, the third class of arms in the Roman military offices. He probably served as a senior officer of artillery in charge of ''doctores ballistarum'' (artillery experts) and ''libratores'' who actually operated the machines. As an army engineer he specialized in the construction of ''ballista'' and '' scorpio'' artillery war machines for sieges. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kang Bed-stove
The ''kang'' (; Manchu: ''nahan'', kk, кән) is a traditional heated platform, 2 metres or more long, used for general living, working, entertaining and sleeping in the northern part of China, where the winter climate is cold. It is made of bricks or other forms of fired clay and more recently of concrete in some locations. The word ''kang'' means "to dry". Its interior cavity, leading to an often-convoluted flue system, channels the hot exhaust from a firewood/coal fireplace, usually the cooking fire from an adjacent room that serves as a kitchen, sometimes from a stove set below floor level. This allows a longer contact time between the exhaust (which still contains much heat from the combustion source) and (indirectly) the inside of the room, hence more heat transfer/recycling back into the room, effectively making it a ducted heating system similar to the Roman hypocaust. A separate stove may be used to control the amount of smoke circulating through the ''kang'', ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kachelofen
A masonry heater (also called a masonry stove) is a device for warming an interior space through radiant heating, by capturing the heat from periodic burning of fuel (usually wood), and then radiating the heat at a fairly constant temperature for a long period. Masonry heaters covered in tile are called cocklestoves (also tile stoves or ceramic stoves). The technology has existed in different forms, from back into the Neoglacial and Neolithic periods. Archaeological digs have revealed excavations of ancient inhabitants utilizing hot smoke from fires in their subterranean dwellings, to radiate into the living spaces. These early forms have evolved into modern systems. Evidence found from 5,000 B.C. of massive blocks of masonry used to retain heat foreshadowed early forms of fire hearths that were used as multifunctional heating sources. Later evolutions came in the Roman ''hypocaust'' and Austro-German cocklestove (''Kachelofen'', literally "tile oven", or ''Steinofen'', "sto ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Combustion
Combustion, or burning, is a high-temperature exothermic redox chemical reaction between a fuel (the reductant) and an oxidant, usually atmospheric oxygen, that produces oxidized, often gaseous products, in a mixture termed as smoke. Combustion does not always result in fire, because a flame is only visible when substances undergoing combustion vaporize, but when it does, a flame is a characteristic indicator of the reaction. While the activation energy must be overcome to initiate combustion (e.g., using a lit match to light a fire), the heat from a flame may provide enough energy to make the reaction self-sustaining. Combustion is often a complicated sequence of elementary radical reactions. Solid fuels, such as wood and coal, first undergo endothermic pyrolysis to produce gaseous fuels whose combustion then supplies the heat required to produce more of them. Combustion is often hot enough that incandescent light in the form of either glowing or a flame is produced. A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Castile (historical Region)
Castile or Castille (; ) is a territory of imprecise limits located in Spain. The invention of the concept of Castile relies on the assimilation (via a metonymy) of a 19th-century determinist geographical notion, that of Castile as Spain's ("tableland core", connected to the Meseta Central) with a long-gone historical entity of diachronically variable territorial extension (the Kingdom of Castile). The proposals advocating for a particular semantic codification/closure of the concept (a '' dialogical'' construct) are connected to essentialist arguments relying on the reification of something that does not exist beyond the social action of those building Castile not only by identifiying with it as a homeland of any kind, but also ''in opposition'' to it. A hot topic concerning the concept of Castile is its relation with Spain, insofar intellectuals, politicians, writers, or historians have either endorsed, nuanced or rejected the idea of the ''maternity'' of Spain by Castile, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gloria (heating System)
{{More references, date=April 2010 Gloria (meaning ''glory'' in Spanish) was a central heating system used in Castile beginning in the Middle Ages. It was a direct descendant of the Roman hypocaust, and due to its slow rate of combustion, it allowed people to use smaller fuels such as hay instead of wood. Description The Gloria consisted of a firebox, generally located outside (in a courtyard, for example), which burned hay, and one or more ducts that ran under the floors of the rooms to be heated. The warm exhaust gases from the combustion would pass through these ducts and then be released outside through a vertical flue. The system is more efficient than a fireplace, because the rate of combustion (and therefore the heat output) can be regulated by restricting the airflow into the firebox. Moreover, the air required for combustion does not have to pass through the interior of the building, which reduces cold drafts. Finally, because the firebox is not open to the interior ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Al Andalus
Al-Andalus translit. ; an, al-Andalus; ast, al-Ándalus; eu, al-Andalus; ber, ⴰⵏⴷⴰⵍⵓⵙ, label= Berber, translit=Andalus; ca, al-Àndalus; gl, al-Andalus; oc, Al Andalús; pt, al-Ândalus; es, al-Ándalus () was the Muslim-ruled area of the Iberian Peninsula. The term is used by modern historians for the former Islamic states in modern Spain and Portugal. At its greatest geographical extent, it occupied most of the peninsula and a part of present-day southern France, Septimania (8th century). For nearly a hundred years, from the 9th century to the 10th, al-Andalus extended its presence from Fraxinetum into the Alps with a series of organized raids and chronic banditry. The name describes the different Arab and Muslim states that controlled these territories at various times between 711 and 1492. These boundaries changed constantly as the Christian Reconquista progressed,"Para los autores árabes medievales, el término Al-Andalus designa la totalida ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hammam
A hammam ( ar, حمّام, translit=ḥammām, tr, hamam) or Turkish bath is a type of steam bath or a place of public bathing associated with the Islamic world. It is a prominent feature in the culture of the Muslim world and was inherited from the model of the Roman ''thermae.'' Muslim bathhouses or hammams were historically found across the Middle East, North Africa, al-Andalus (Islamic Spain and Portugal), Central Asia, the Indian subcontinent, and in Southeastern Europe under Ottoman rule. A variation on the Muslim bathhouse, the Victorian Turkish bath, became popular as a form of therapy, a method of cleansing, and a place for relaxation during the Victorian era, rapidly spreading through the British Empire, the United States of America, and Western Europe. In Islamic cultures the significance of the hammam was both religious and civic: it provided for the needs of ritual ablutions but also provided for general hygiene in an era before private plumbing and served other ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Iberian Peninsula
The Iberian Peninsula (), ** * Aragonese and Occitan: ''Peninsula Iberica'' ** ** * french: Péninsule Ibérique * mwl, Península Eibérica * eu, Iberiar penintsula also known as Iberia, is a peninsula in southwestern Europe, defining the westernmost edge of Eurasia. It is principally divided between Spain and Portugal, comprising most of their territory, as well as a small area of Southern France, Andorra, and Gibraltar. With an area of approximately , and a population of roughly 53 million, it is the second largest European peninsula by area, after the Scandinavian Peninsula. Name Greek name The word ''Iberia'' is a noun adapted from the Latin word "Hiberia" originating in the Ancient Greek word Ἰβηρία ('), used by Greek geographers under the rule of the Roman Empire to refer to what is known today in English as the Iberian Peninsula. At that time, the name did not describe a single geographical entity or a distinct population; the same name was us ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Calefactory
The calefactory (also ''warming house'') was an important room or building in a medieval monastery in Western Europe. It was here that a communal fire was kept so that the monks could warm themselves after long hours of study in the (unheated) cloister or other work. In the early Middle Ages this was one of the few heated rooms in the monastery – the others being the infirmary, the guest house and the kitchen – but this policy was generally relaxed, save for a few very strict orders, by the latter part of the medieval period when fireplaces became common throughout the claustral buildings. The warming house was always one of the buildings surrounding the cloister and was entered from it. Often it was located close to the refectory so that the warmth could be shared by the monks when they were eating. In many monasteries an upper floor was built over the warming house that served as the muniment A muniment or muniment of title is a legal term for a document, title deed or o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
