The miracle of Cathedral architecture

We don't often think of Cathedrals like Paris' Notre Dame as being high tech, but the architecture that exploded on the scene around 1100 AD was a game changer - one that wasn't really eclipsed until the steel and concrete skyscraper 800 years later.  This scene from the great series The Ascent Of Man sums this up in a very digestible manner.*



Quite frankly, the strength of the design is possibly the reason that Notre Dame still stands, damaged but unconquered.

* The 1970s was perhaps the golden age of educational television, with this series and Kenneth Clark's Civilization as perhaps the pinnacle of TV where you could expect to actually learn something more than how to rap.  The music here is awful - the 1970s intellectual soundtrack par excellence - but the scene still presents the story efficiently and entertainingly.