Bricks

Available for over a year

“I found Rome a city of bricks and left it a city of marble”, Caesar Augustus apparently boasted. If so he wasn’t the only person to under-rate the humble brick. Bricks have been used for tens of thousands of years. They are all rather similar – small enough to fit into a human hand, and half as wide as they are long – and they are absolutely everywhere. Why, asks Tim Harford, are bricks still such an important building technology, how has brickmaking changed over the years, and will we ever see a robot bricklayer? Producer: Ben Crighton Editor: Richard Vadon