大象传媒

鈥淚 found Rome a city of bricks and left it a city of marble鈥�, Caesar Augustus apparently boasted. If so he wasn鈥檛 the only person to under-rate the humble brick. Bricks have been used for tens of thousands of years. They are all rather similar 鈥� small enough to fit into a human hand, and half as wide as they are long 鈥� 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