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2 What future?
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On the Future of Industrial Floors
by Dipl.-Chem. Dr. Peter Seidler
Industrial Floors 1999, International Colloquium Jan 12-16, 1999 2. What future? 5 years, 25 years, 50 years, 100 years?
Four years ago I showed a painting dating from 1520 by Bartel Bruyn the Elder: the birth of Christ. The floor on which this event took place was of very suspect quality as you can see from the enlargement.
There have been many changes since the time of Leonardo da Vinci (1452 - 1519). People also wondered about the future back then. Did the people of that time anticipate these changes? Could they foresee the developments which have occurred to date? And what will the world look like in 400 years' time? An accurate prediction is undoubtedly asking too much. However we must note one thing with great admiration: Leonardo had visions and premonitions of many developments which he recorded in his sketch books.
The future is frequently a simple extrapolation of the past. Any of us may therefore indulge in speculation. Life in general is indeed very conservative, unvarying. It is this capacity for the status quo which makes it bearable. We would not know where we were if the growth in innovation was too fast (Hermann Lübbe). Today's flood of information means that we are simply no longer able to absorb any more information. This is the reason why many of us are still against the Internet. But I am convinced that this is a great mistake.
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But do remember that data is not information. Information (for example from the Internet) is not knowledge. Knowledge is not a decision. And a decision is not necessarily a decision which is right in the long term. |
Let us ask ourselves what the future looked like 100 years ago when my grandfather founded our business in 1900. Or 50 years ago when I was a child and allowed to (or was it more "told to"?) help my father in the office and production. Or 25 years ago when we first turned to industrial floors as a new sector and the first ICPIC congress was held in London. Or 12 years ago when the 1st Intern. Colloquium was held at the Technical Academy Esslingen. What did the future look like then and how do we perceive the progress?
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1100 |
Cistercians and Templars: The industrial and economic revolution of the Middle Ages: granite, sandstone or straw-reinforced clay. A search for a better solution which lasted 150 years. Roger Bacon (1214 - 1292) initiator of the experimental, empiric method. Then reaction and oppression of freedom: 1252 bull "ad extirpanda" against the Cathars, 1274 death of Saint Thomas Aquinas, from 1276 expulsion of the Jews, 1277 restrictions imposed on free research by the Bishop of Paris, 1284 collapse of the Cathedral of Beauvais, 1294 inflation, from 1307 annihilation of Templars, 1312 Dante's Divine Comedy, around 1300 the mysticism of Meister Eckhart, followed by the Black Plague in 1347 and the 100 Years' War between France and England. The bubble had burst. Darkness until the Renaissance. |
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1500 |
Leonardo da Vinci: Renaissance and rediscovery of technology. Many new, apparently Utopian ideas. Invention of book printing. |
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1900 |
Turn of the century: A time when many businesses were founded. Development of steel, concrete, electricity, telephony, railways, automobiles and aircrafts. |
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1950 |
Reconstruction of Germany: Old structures were swept away, followed by a new start. |
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Table 1 History of Technology since the Middle Ages
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1975 |
1st Intern. Congress of Polymers on Concrete (ICPIC) in London. Industrial floors: forklift trucks, logistics, market research. |
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1987 |
1st Intern. Colloquium "Industrial Floors '87"
First appearance of PCs with graphics (human) interface (Macintosh). Publications statistics. |
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1999 |
4th Intern. Colloquium "Industrial Floors '99"
with over 140 papers, all four colloquia available on CD-ROM, totalling 3,200 pages. Knowledge management. After 28 years reprinting of "Lea's Chemistry of Cement and Concrete". Immediate access to information in the global village of the Internet. Discussion about basic salary free of costs without work in the industrialised countries. Africanisation in the rest of the world. Scepticism towards progress; still many problems but certain positive trends are emerging. |
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2003 |
Short-term future: 10th Intern. Congress on Polymers in Concrete ICPIC in Hawaii in 2001 • 5th Intern. Colloquium "Industrial Floors 2003" |
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Table 2 Congresses "Polymers in Concrete" and "Industrial Floors"
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2025 |
Long-term future: Industrial floors in 25 years: Good Site Practice (GSP) has finally been accepted. ISO 9000 has become a thing of the past: the standard is considered as a kind of "phlogiston" theory. For transport, if at all, hovercraft replacing the forklift truck, no longer water in the building sector, shrinkfree concrete only as a "subcourse" for carbon fibre-reinforced indestructible polymers which can be recycled.
We've seen all this before. After the fall of the East German wall in 1989 the factories were to continue producing immediately. For this reason glassfibre-reinforced polymers (GRP) were laid on low-cement oil-saturated concrete. Dowels spaced at 30 cm were used to ensure bonding. You can read about this on the CD-ROM in the paper by J. Pleißner.
Concrete is installed without joints as in the case of anhydrite overlay today. Robot installation has at last become possible. |
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