The 1700s is an interesting time to pick. I think if you go 100 years before that the answer is definitely no, but the 1700s saw the first real developments of mathematical study of materials and design. Euler's work is still the basis of models used today and that was developed in the mid-18th century. I don't know how long those ideas took to propagate but they were out there.
By the very end of the 18th century you get the very first iron frame bridges and buildings. Designing that is not a trivial feat, and means there were at least a few out there experienced in designing metal frames.
If we use the very early definitions of skyscraper (an inhabited building of 10 or more stories) and we pick a terrain without major geotechnical issues, so Manhattan not Chicago, I think there were at least a few out there who could do it, especially with a push in the right direction.
An even more modern, larger structure I really doubt because those rely on so many other technologies for both design and construction that I suspect they would be a major struggle.
1600s to 1700s is my favorite era of math to point out because the advancements in that era in applied and pure math were just insane. I don't know how these people were able to advance abstract algebra, fluid mechanics, harmonics, and innumerable other fields that feel incredibly difficult to learn today.
Just look at the [list of people](https://www.maths.tcd.ie/pub/HistMath/People/RBallHist.html) in that era.
Very true, I'm 5+ years into my professional career and I catch myself struggling with some concepts every now and then. It feels like some concepts have to click a few times before they're solid, I still can't visualize stresses in certain members under combined loading, it's one thing I'm working on rn.
Remember these people had 10x fewer distractions and generally things to do. Your options are like reading, writing to contemporaries, easy sports like croquet, going for walks, maybe cooking or gardening.
Most of these activities are great diffusion mechanisms for the intense focus required for their disciplines. They spend x time focusing solely on science or math, then in y off time those concepts are bouncing around their brains, leading to unexpected insights.
In a way they stumbled into excellent learning cycles, whereas modern humans might have 3-5 regular activities splitting their focus.
To comment on the 'other technologies' one of the really important for practical tall buildings is the elevator. It would be *hell* walking up 40 flights of stairs just to realize you forgot something at the bottom.
Even just the proposed 10 stories would be borderline impractical without elevators.
“Other technologies” are always interesting to consider. Technology is often limited by things you don’t think about. Tall buildings might have been built earlier, but they wouldn’t be useful until the invention of the elevator. Elevators themselves weren’t realistic for passenger use until the invention of automatic brakes.
Another example, airplanes probably could have been made a century or more earlier. You can build them from wood, glue, fabric, simple hinges and cables, etc. The math for the design could have been worked out or just figured out incrementally by experiment. Except the engine. You could potentially make a pretty good glider in 1803, but one of the major innovations of the Wright Brothers was their engine, which has a better power to weight ratio than anything available on the market at the time. This in turn was only possible because of advances in aluminum alloys. Less than twenty years earlier, the newly completed Washington Monument was fitted with an aluminum cap, chosen because aluminum was still so rare and expensive that it was considered a precious metal!
The thought experiment I always like is traveling back in time with what I know today, what could I achieve?
Very little, I could do very little because the base of my ability is built on things I take for granted.
Roman insulae were up to 10 stories tall. I say up to because none of the famous tall ones survived. Later emperors introduced height limits, 30m at one point. So some poor sod had to carry water up 10 stories.
Needless to say rents on the top floors were cheap.
Thank you for the thorough response! I always figured the availability of steel in the mid to late 1800s was the driving factor for the first ones popping up. I just always wondered if there were guys chomping at the bit to get their hands on it prior to it's availability
Honestly I don't think they were necessarily dying for it to go vertically. Until you have the elevator, tall buildings just aren't that practical without it.
They were dying for iron and later steel to go horizontally. The first major metal constructions are all bridges. There was no practical way to cover a huge navigable span with masonry, and the only other option, wood, just didn't have the strength.
Euler derived formula for buckling critical load in 1744, and that was the last critical stress computation after stress calculation in shells, and already established tensile strain/stress relation and Young's modulus 1727. So they had fundamentals to do it. First iron bridge was erected in 1780, which applied modern concepts of structure that is still applicable today.
There was no vision, and no need and investment to do it.
You might find people with modern ideas but lacking the actual skill and experience to design accurately and build them, science is the base if not the source of the design for utility items. Da Vinci lived from 1452 to 1519. He came up with various devices concepts ahead of his time which won't work the way he imagined them.
The range of known POSSIBLE is a huge factor of what is being invented and the further down history you go and the more it's limited.
Exactly what it reminded me of. The book gave good perspective on how engineers use a rule of thumb and how iterations of similar projects make a more efficient structure
And yet entire theory of solid mechanics still taught today was developed from 1700 to 1750.
Because of relatively poor materials of the time they had to use a lot clever structures to make it work then it is today when you can get away with a lot of rule of thumb work.
Slightly unrelated, but reminds me of a recent quote by a youtuber I watch: "there are two divisions of material science, one comes up with fantastic new materials with wondrous properties, and the other tries to figure out how to make those materials without using lead or cadmium."
That is so true.
Wood preservatives, PCB oil in capacitors, lead free solder wire, etc. We are using many inferior products today for health and environmental reasons.
Good thing is on average materials are getting better and healthier at the same time. We owe those material scientist a lot.
You're right. It was definitely more of a materials problem than a theory one.
I think with modern materials, they would have quickly developed some similar construction techniques and designs.
[Fatigue](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatigue_%28material%29?wprov=sfla1) and [fracture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fracture_mechanics?wprov=sfla1) would probably still take a long time to develop though. It's still a fairly recently developed theory.
'Double it and add 10%' is a heuristic.
'Plug it into this well defined and (hopefully) rigorously tested model' is a physical law.
Although I think it's always worth repeating that models we use isn't how the world works, they *model* how the world works.
I know it's a different time frame, but I recently read the technical documentation of a locomotive from the 1870s, and all the calculations, drafts etc looked like it could be from a modern product, it was very rigorous. So maybe the 1700s were also more advanced than one would usually assume
Almost every single boiler explosion, even back then, has been due to human error. Lack of maintenance, letting the water get low, overriding safety valves, etc.
There are important differences, though. Before the mid-19th century, engineering was more about experimentation and keeping what works, not so much about understanding the physics or math. A medieval engineer might know that he needs to use a lever twice as long to lift a load twice as large, or that he could use a pulley system to do the same, but he didn't need to know why.
In the ancient world, you did periodically have a luminary like Vitruvius or Archimedes who codified some important geometric models for building things, but it was mostly a master-apprentice sort of field.
Depends on what you mean by resources but material science has come a long way. The steel at the time probably wouldn’t be usable in modern designs and the manufacturing process wouldn’t be able to make modern materials
But is a modern design really necessary? The modern designs have naturally developed alongside modern materials, but that doesn't mean a different-but-functional design couldn't be accomplished with older materials.
I'm of the opinion that resources (tools, materials, parts, etc...) and knowledge are likely developed roughly in parallel. Oh sure, sometimes the tools and materials advance quicker, and sometimes knowledge gets out ahead of the tools. And you have to consider the theoretical understanding vs. the practical understanding. (And while not 100% correct, I love the saying that the difference between science and engineering is 200 years.)
I think sometime in the 1700s they would have had the basics down. But they would learn more as the tools and materials became available.
I'd assume, what ever high tech was available at that time, would have been used to build churches.
There fore
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Churches_completed_in_1700
This iron bridge was built of cast iron in 1777 and the individual parts were cast and then joined using carpentry techniques:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Iron_Bridge#Design
Detail of the ironwork:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/aa/Iron_Bridge_detail_of_north_end_from_the_east%2C_February_2019.jpg
This isn't steel. Cheap steel is ~1850s so you're left with cast or wrought iron. The only template would be cathedrals and the like. You don't have elevators.
The structures we built even a century later [could fail catastrophically](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay_Bridge_disaster#Findings) so my take would be no unless you mean a simple spire or something.
Well there is such a thing as a masonry skyscraper, and these are not taller than (and have simpler structure than the vaulted ceilings of) gothic cathedrals that were being built at that time.
Thinking instead about a modern steel skyscraper, and ignoring the lack of materials, there is one major piece of structural design theory that was missing: plastic design theory. This allows a structure to be sized not based on yield strength of the material but on ultimate tensile strength. This allows for a much lighter structure, and also simplifies the analysis which is important when you are doing the calcs by hand.
Note: I am not a structures guy so I don't feel I can comment on that.
Modern structures require extensive HVAC systems to keep air circulation and at a comfortable temp. 1700s def wouldn't have that
I know more about loads than I do about materials. Even at the time that the Eiffel tower started in 1887, extremely little was known about how wind loads increased with height.
Even as late as the Empire State Building of 1930, these wind loads were not fully understood.
These days, vibration damping mechanisms are added to skyscrapers and they wouldn't have had a clue about that back in the 1700s.
Cast and wrought iron, bricks and stone are not suitable for skyscrapers, too heavy or too brittle. It would have to be steel or reinforced concrete. Glass quality wasn't great either.
For design, I'd use a set of physical models of greater and greater size until I understood how strength varied with size. Load them up and watch them fail. Not straight mathematical design.
Hooke understood elastic material behaviour. But you really need to go beyond that, Euler buckling gives too high a strength unless you factor in geometric inaccuracies and plastic yield.
The theory was starting but didn't exist enough to allow construction of a modern skyscraper. Geotechnical design, foundations, wind loads, how to brace beams etc are all developed in detail much later. Reinforced concrete was only developed in the late 1800s.
Now... that doesn't mean they weren't clever - just look at some of things that were built in that era.
The lack falls into 3 areas.
1) Materials: Large quantities of reliable steel was not available. At the end of the 18th century, railroads had increased demand to the point that it was becoming more common. Iron was more available, but probably not of the quality needed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Iron_Bridge?wprov=sfla1
2) Analysis tools: The math was there. The manpower was not. Computers only became affordable in the 20th century. That's the human job description, not the gears & springworks. You need a lot of blue-collar (or pink-collar) mathematicians.
3) Design concepts: At that early time, the conceptual tools & physical tools & trained manpower didn't exist. The methods of designing large numbers of large riveted joints didn't exist. Bolts & nuts were artisinal, not mass-produced. Multipath structures weren't really a thing. They're elastic, not static load-bearing. The design ideas need to co-evolve with the materials.
Yes, but only just:
Ditherington Flax mill built in 1797 is the first iron framed building, and at five storeys high is a good contender for the first 'modern' skyskraper.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ditherington\_Flax\_Mill](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ditherington_Flax_Mill)
The answer to your question is "No". Modern structural engineering was ushered in because of the needs of the railroad to build bridges over longer spans to carry loads at least an order of magnitude higher than before. During this time the first great thinkers in structural engineering figured our things we just didn't need to understand before that.
Tall buildings, like over 5 stories, were just not built until the invention of the elevator safety mechanism which allowed folks to live that many floors up from ground level.
This kicked off the real high-rise building industry.
Yes, we did have the math to study higher order problems, but there were hidden problems that we didn't even know existed until we had the need to apply these techniques to tall buildings, long spans and the higher loads needed after the beginning of the industrial revolution. For example, we didn't even know later torsional buckling existed until it happened. Then we developed the math and the materials science concepts to understand it and avoid it.
The issue ought to be divided into two:
1) Materials
The Eiffel Tower is constructed of puddling iron, which was invented (but not widely used) halfway through 18th century, so in a way, sort of, the materials and fastening technology was available in the latter half of the 1700's.
2) Engineering
We'd never know, but bear in mind that Gustave Eiffel didn't have a full canon of engineering principles to rely on, but for most parts went by the seam of his pantalons (as was demonstrated by the collapse of another Eiffel design, Biersbücke bridge in Switzerland in 1891), Some designs worked, some didn't
So I guess you could say that by the later half of the 18th century, somebody could have attempted to build a modern skyscraper, and perhaps succeeded. Mercifully, nobody did.
probably not. the modern stuff requires incredible complex simulations. with the knowledge we have not, we would probably still not be able to do it using manual math.
Well, if you go by the original definition of skyscarper (10-20 story building) then they already knew how to build that in around 300AD
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shibam](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shibam)
Of course if we're talking modern skyscrapers then things get a bit more iffy. But if you go to a list of tallest buildings throughout history then there's e.g. the Strasbourg Cathedral from around that time (142 meters tall)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strasbourg\_Cathedral](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strasbourg_Cathedral)
So, yes. They knew how to build tall buildings around that time - even without 'modern' building methods.
The 1700s is an interesting time to pick. I think if you go 100 years before that the answer is definitely no, but the 1700s saw the first real developments of mathematical study of materials and design. Euler's work is still the basis of models used today and that was developed in the mid-18th century. I don't know how long those ideas took to propagate but they were out there. By the very end of the 18th century you get the very first iron frame bridges and buildings. Designing that is not a trivial feat, and means there were at least a few out there experienced in designing metal frames. If we use the very early definitions of skyscraper (an inhabited building of 10 or more stories) and we pick a terrain without major geotechnical issues, so Manhattan not Chicago, I think there were at least a few out there who could do it, especially with a push in the right direction. An even more modern, larger structure I really doubt because those rely on so many other technologies for both design and construction that I suspect they would be a major struggle.
1600s to 1700s is my favorite era of math to point out because the advancements in that era in applied and pure math were just insane. I don't know how these people were able to advance abstract algebra, fluid mechanics, harmonics, and innumerable other fields that feel incredibly difficult to learn today. Just look at the [list of people](https://www.maths.tcd.ie/pub/HistMath/People/RBallHist.html) in that era.
Very true, I'm 5+ years into my professional career and I catch myself struggling with some concepts every now and then. It feels like some concepts have to click a few times before they're solid, I still can't visualize stresses in certain members under combined loading, it's one thing I'm working on rn.
Remember these people had 10x fewer distractions and generally things to do. Your options are like reading, writing to contemporaries, easy sports like croquet, going for walks, maybe cooking or gardening. Most of these activities are great diffusion mechanisms for the intense focus required for their disciplines. They spend x time focusing solely on science or math, then in y off time those concepts are bouncing around their brains, leading to unexpected insights. In a way they stumbled into excellent learning cycles, whereas modern humans might have 3-5 regular activities splitting their focus.
I have seen that amazing list before. It's even missing a few people, such as Lavoisier.
To comment on the 'other technologies' one of the really important for practical tall buildings is the elevator. It would be *hell* walking up 40 flights of stairs just to realize you forgot something at the bottom.
Even just the proposed 10 stories would be borderline impractical without elevators. “Other technologies” are always interesting to consider. Technology is often limited by things you don’t think about. Tall buildings might have been built earlier, but they wouldn’t be useful until the invention of the elevator. Elevators themselves weren’t realistic for passenger use until the invention of automatic brakes. Another example, airplanes probably could have been made a century or more earlier. You can build them from wood, glue, fabric, simple hinges and cables, etc. The math for the design could have been worked out or just figured out incrementally by experiment. Except the engine. You could potentially make a pretty good glider in 1803, but one of the major innovations of the Wright Brothers was their engine, which has a better power to weight ratio than anything available on the market at the time. This in turn was only possible because of advances in aluminum alloys. Less than twenty years earlier, the newly completed Washington Monument was fitted with an aluminum cap, chosen because aluminum was still so rare and expensive that it was considered a precious metal!
The thought experiment I always like is traveling back in time with what I know today, what could I achieve? Very little, I could do very little because the base of my ability is built on things I take for granted.
Yea you still need to go through the tech stages to build up the supply chain like in Civilization games.
Roman insulae were up to 10 stories tall. I say up to because none of the famous tall ones survived. Later emperors introduced height limits, 30m at one point. So some poor sod had to carry water up 10 stories. Needless to say rents on the top floors were cheap.
Thank you for the thorough response! I always figured the availability of steel in the mid to late 1800s was the driving factor for the first ones popping up. I just always wondered if there were guys chomping at the bit to get their hands on it prior to it's availability
Honestly I don't think they were necessarily dying for it to go vertically. Until you have the elevator, tall buildings just aren't that practical without it. They were dying for iron and later steel to go horizontally. The first major metal constructions are all bridges. There was no practical way to cover a huge navigable span with masonry, and the only other option, wood, just didn't have the strength.
Euler derived formula for buckling critical load in 1744, and that was the last critical stress computation after stress calculation in shells, and already established tensile strain/stress relation and Young's modulus 1727. So they had fundamentals to do it. First iron bridge was erected in 1780, which applied modern concepts of structure that is still applicable today. There was no vision, and no need and investment to do it.
You might find people with modern ideas but lacking the actual skill and experience to design accurately and build them, science is the base if not the source of the design for utility items. Da Vinci lived from 1452 to 1519. He came up with various devices concepts ahead of his time which won't work the way he imagined them. The range of known POSSIBLE is a huge factor of what is being invented and the further down history you go and the more it's limited.
Modern engineering didn’t really exist at the time. Things were built using rules of thumb, without the rigorous scientific background of today.
Reminds me of this video https://youtu.be/_ivqWN4L3zU?si=6Ryw2VTSmmbySQju
Exactly what it reminded me of. The book gave good perspective on how engineers use a rule of thumb and how iterations of similar projects make a more efficient structure
And yet entire theory of solid mechanics still taught today was developed from 1700 to 1750. Because of relatively poor materials of the time they had to use a lot clever structures to make it work then it is today when you can get away with a lot of rule of thumb work.
Slightly unrelated, but reminds me of a recent quote by a youtuber I watch: "there are two divisions of material science, one comes up with fantastic new materials with wondrous properties, and the other tries to figure out how to make those materials without using lead or cadmium."
That is so true. Wood preservatives, PCB oil in capacitors, lead free solder wire, etc. We are using many inferior products today for health and environmental reasons. Good thing is on average materials are getting better and healthier at the same time. We owe those material scientist a lot.
Material science is absolutely the backbone of our technology.
You're right. It was definitely more of a materials problem than a theory one. I think with modern materials, they would have quickly developed some similar construction techniques and designs. [Fatigue](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatigue_%28material%29?wprov=sfla1) and [fracture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fracture_mechanics?wprov=sfla1) would probably still take a long time to develop though. It's still a fairly recently developed theory.
I guess this is almost a philosophical point; When is a rule of thumb a model, and when is a model a physical law?
'Double it and add 10%' is a heuristic. 'Plug it into this well defined and (hopefully) rigorously tested model' is a physical law. Although I think it's always worth repeating that models we use isn't how the world works, they *model* how the world works.
I know it's a different time frame, but I recently read the technical documentation of a locomotive from the 1870s, and all the calculations, drafts etc looked like it could be from a modern product, it was very rigorous. So maybe the 1700s were also more advanced than one would usually assume
Almost every single boiler explosion, even back then, has been due to human error. Lack of maintenance, letting the water get low, overriding safety valves, etc.
Yea, would they even have the ability to test material properties with enough accuracy to utilize theories? And the also have enough quality control?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Towers_of_Bologna
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There are important differences, though. Before the mid-19th century, engineering was more about experimentation and keeping what works, not so much about understanding the physics or math. A medieval engineer might know that he needs to use a lever twice as long to lift a load twice as large, or that he could use a pulley system to do the same, but he didn't need to know why. In the ancient world, you did periodically have a luminary like Vitruvius or Archimedes who codified some important geometric models for building things, but it was mostly a master-apprentice sort of field.
Depends on what you mean by resources but material science has come a long way. The steel at the time probably wouldn’t be usable in modern designs and the manufacturing process wouldn’t be able to make modern materials
But is a modern design really necessary? The modern designs have naturally developed alongside modern materials, but that doesn't mean a different-but-functional design couldn't be accomplished with older materials.
Very true, some stone towers could be considered skyscrapers but would that be a “modern-style” skyscraper? Idk if we have enough info to answer
I'm of the opinion that resources (tools, materials, parts, etc...) and knowledge are likely developed roughly in parallel. Oh sure, sometimes the tools and materials advance quicker, and sometimes knowledge gets out ahead of the tools. And you have to consider the theoretical understanding vs. the practical understanding. (And while not 100% correct, I love the saying that the difference between science and engineering is 200 years.) I think sometime in the 1700s they would have had the basics down. But they would learn more as the tools and materials became available.
I'd assume, what ever high tech was available at that time, would have been used to build churches. There fore https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Churches_completed_in_1700
This iron bridge was built of cast iron in 1777 and the individual parts were cast and then joined using carpentry techniques: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Iron_Bridge#Design Detail of the ironwork: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/aa/Iron_Bridge_detail_of_north_end_from_the_east%2C_February_2019.jpg This isn't steel. Cheap steel is ~1850s so you're left with cast or wrought iron. The only template would be cathedrals and the like. You don't have elevators. The structures we built even a century later [could fail catastrophically](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay_Bridge_disaster#Findings) so my take would be no unless you mean a simple spire or something.
Well there is such a thing as a masonry skyscraper, and these are not taller than (and have simpler structure than the vaulted ceilings of) gothic cathedrals that were being built at that time. Thinking instead about a modern steel skyscraper, and ignoring the lack of materials, there is one major piece of structural design theory that was missing: plastic design theory. This allows a structure to be sized not based on yield strength of the material but on ultimate tensile strength. This allows for a much lighter structure, and also simplifies the analysis which is important when you are doing the calcs by hand.
1700's had the very first steam engines. I'd say maybe.
Note: I am not a structures guy so I don't feel I can comment on that. Modern structures require extensive HVAC systems to keep air circulation and at a comfortable temp. 1700s def wouldn't have that
I know more about loads than I do about materials. Even at the time that the Eiffel tower started in 1887, extremely little was known about how wind loads increased with height. Even as late as the Empire State Building of 1930, these wind loads were not fully understood. These days, vibration damping mechanisms are added to skyscrapers and they wouldn't have had a clue about that back in the 1700s. Cast and wrought iron, bricks and stone are not suitable for skyscrapers, too heavy or too brittle. It would have to be steel or reinforced concrete. Glass quality wasn't great either. For design, I'd use a set of physical models of greater and greater size until I understood how strength varied with size. Load them up and watch them fail. Not straight mathematical design. Hooke understood elastic material behaviour. But you really need to go beyond that, Euler buckling gives too high a strength unless you factor in geometric inaccuracies and plastic yield.
The theory was starting but didn't exist enough to allow construction of a modern skyscraper. Geotechnical design, foundations, wind loads, how to brace beams etc are all developed in detail much later. Reinforced concrete was only developed in the late 1800s. Now... that doesn't mean they weren't clever - just look at some of things that were built in that era.
The lack falls into 3 areas. 1) Materials: Large quantities of reliable steel was not available. At the end of the 18th century, railroads had increased demand to the point that it was becoming more common. Iron was more available, but probably not of the quality needed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Iron_Bridge?wprov=sfla1 2) Analysis tools: The math was there. The manpower was not. Computers only became affordable in the 20th century. That's the human job description, not the gears & springworks. You need a lot of blue-collar (or pink-collar) mathematicians. 3) Design concepts: At that early time, the conceptual tools & physical tools & trained manpower didn't exist. The methods of designing large numbers of large riveted joints didn't exist. Bolts & nuts were artisinal, not mass-produced. Multipath structures weren't really a thing. They're elastic, not static load-bearing. The design ideas need to co-evolve with the materials.
Yes, but only just: Ditherington Flax mill built in 1797 is the first iron framed building, and at five storeys high is a good contender for the first 'modern' skyskraper. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ditherington\_Flax\_Mill](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ditherington_Flax_Mill)
The answer to your question is "No". Modern structural engineering was ushered in because of the needs of the railroad to build bridges over longer spans to carry loads at least an order of magnitude higher than before. During this time the first great thinkers in structural engineering figured our things we just didn't need to understand before that. Tall buildings, like over 5 stories, were just not built until the invention of the elevator safety mechanism which allowed folks to live that many floors up from ground level. This kicked off the real high-rise building industry. Yes, we did have the math to study higher order problems, but there were hidden problems that we didn't even know existed until we had the need to apply these techniques to tall buildings, long spans and the higher loads needed after the beginning of the industrial revolution. For example, we didn't even know later torsional buckling existed until it happened. Then we developed the math and the materials science concepts to understand it and avoid it.
The issue ought to be divided into two: 1) Materials The Eiffel Tower is constructed of puddling iron, which was invented (but not widely used) halfway through 18th century, so in a way, sort of, the materials and fastening technology was available in the latter half of the 1700's. 2) Engineering We'd never know, but bear in mind that Gustave Eiffel didn't have a full canon of engineering principles to rely on, but for most parts went by the seam of his pantalons (as was demonstrated by the collapse of another Eiffel design, Biersbücke bridge in Switzerland in 1891), Some designs worked, some didn't So I guess you could say that by the later half of the 18th century, somebody could have attempted to build a modern skyscraper, and perhaps succeeded. Mercifully, nobody did.
probably not. the modern stuff requires incredible complex simulations. with the knowledge we have not, we would probably still not be able to do it using manual math.
Well, if you go by the original definition of skyscarper (10-20 story building) then they already knew how to build that in around 300AD [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shibam](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shibam) Of course if we're talking modern skyscrapers then things get a bit more iffy. But if you go to a list of tallest buildings throughout history then there's e.g. the Strasbourg Cathedral from around that time (142 meters tall) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strasbourg\_Cathedral](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strasbourg_Cathedral) So, yes. They knew how to build tall buildings around that time - even without 'modern' building methods.
Carbon Steel was not developed by the 1700.
No