What the FVCK is calculus?

Roman engineering is pretty much:
slaps bridge this baby can hold so many people on it. Aint going anywhere.
It was pretty much like that all across the world until the 20th century when we figured out how to make things barely stand up enough, but for cheaper.
- There's an example of this going backwards in Scotland. There was a rail bridge built over the River Tay (one of the biggest in the UK) in the 1870s that used a whole bunch of then-new ideas, taking particular inspiration from the Crystal Palace and the work of Gustave Eiffel. The aim was to give ships passing underneath more clearance and to reduce the cost. The engineer that designed it was knighted for his work.
  Less than two years after the bridge opened, it collapsed under high wind while a train was crossing it. At least 59 people died. The engineer was, at that time, already working on a bridge to cross another of Scotland's biggest rivers just a little bit south of the Tay. This ended immediately.
  There was absolutely no chance anyone was letting the same thing happen again. As such, the Forth rail bridge would go on to use twice as much material despite being shorter and also made from stronger metal. The thing is just a mountain of steel. It still sees sees regular use to this day, well over a century after it was built
  
  There’s a ballad about this, by the german poet Theodor Fontane. It’s called „Die Brück am Tay“.
  Tand, Tand ist das Gebilde von Menschenhand…
  It’s about that human engineering in the end is powerless against the forces Nature.
  https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Br%C3%BCck%E2%80%99_am_Tay?wprov=sfti1#Inhalt
- tbf, the Roman engineering marvels that have survived are largely the prestigious "Some rich elite is funding this and gods help you if you make the rich elite look bad", or "The military needs this and someone is going to get FLOGGED if it isn't up to snuff".
  There are a lot of accounts of private construction - particularly of apartments, and especially of apartments in the city of Rome before the establishment of building codes during the early Empire - wherein they were shoddy buildings that collapsed at the slightest (or no) pressure.
- Certainly not a case of survivorship bias and public confirmation. Nope definitely no Roman ruins around. The kids these days are all stupid and lazy.
  
  There is a difference, tbf. Starting primarily in the 19th century, when material science was better understood, it became possible to engineer things with much smaller safe margins than previously. This is, entirely unironically, a good thing - pre-modern buildings, when they are not shoddily made, are typically severely 'overengineered' by modern standards - that is to say, they use far more material than is needed for what they are used for and for how long they are intended to be in service.
- Also we expect far more from our bridges and such these days. Roman engineering pretty much just had to worry about people with some horses and carriages and the like. Modern engineering has to account for us driving 2 ton metal boxes on them all day every day forever.
  
  Modern engineering expects infrastructure to last 50 year with bare minimum maintenance, 100 with scheduled remodeling. "Built for eternity" is megalomaniac stuff.

Is it rough if you censor fuck?
- Fuck this motherfucking censoring trend shit! FUCK, FUCK, FUUUUUCK!
  My bad, my fingers slipped 👀
  
  Honestly people can communicate however they want, doesn’t bug me. Just funny to see that censored on “rough Roman memes”

But you do need calculus to build stuff in Roman times! Lots and lots of calculi. Some cement too.
[Explanation: "calculus" is literally "pebble", "little chalk", something like this. The association with maths makes sense when you remember abaci.]
- *Caligulus
  
  ...you know, naming things after small pebbles is less cringe than being called "bootsie" (Caligula).
  (Both words are similar by coincidence: calx "chalk/limestone"→ calculus "pebble" vs. caliga "boot" → caligula "little boot". I'm not aware of any word like caligulus, at most caliculus "little cup" ← calix "cup". inb4 sorry I probably just explained a joke, but I couldn't resist.)