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Harrison thinks aluminum may become one of the future's prime building materials. Metal is cheaper than stone, also lighter and dryer. Dampness is an old bugaboo of the builder: the use of stone means water for cement, and water is heavy, messy, freezes in winter. Rain soaks through even the best-built stone wall and causes a whole flock of new problems. "I have always tried to move forward to something better—even at the risk of being wrong," says Harrison. "That way, you are certainly ahead of the man who is right and doesn't do anything." Maybe Cheops' architect talked the same way.
*Whose steel-ribbed Wainwright Building in St. Louis was one of the earliest (1891) ancestors of the modern skyscraper.