Products made from fired clay have always been intimately entwined with the history of civilisation. The oldest objects, mostly ritual figurines of in the shape of animals or humans, as well as ceramic containers, are many thousands of years old. Construction materials of fired clay have been used in the Middle East since 4000 BC. The use of roof tiles made of fired clay, a Greek invention, has been ascertained in ancient Greece since the middle of the 7th century BC and in Rome since the early 4th century BC. The production of bricks became predominant in Rome and in the provinces from the 2nd century BC. In our regions, roofs with tiles were very common in Roman times, with the most frequent use in Geneva, Avenches and Strasbourg.
Up until the middle of the 19th century, clay roof tiles were fashioned by hand. Small hand brickyards were often located near clay deposits, where bricks were fired in wood burning kilns. Thus a large number of villages and towns had their own brickyards. From the middle of the 19th century, clay roof tiles and bricks began to be more and more often machine made. This was made economically possible after the invention of a steam-powered stamping machine as well as the introduction of new drying and firing methods which led to enormous increases in productivity. In Switzerland, an increase in productivity of 60% was registered due to the use of new production processes between 1890 and 1896.
At the beginning of the 20th century, approximately 350 brickyards were in service in Switzerland. The number of production centres for the brick industry then began to decrease continuously, especially the small brickyards with limited production capacity which were increasingly replaced by larger, mechanised factories. Since 1968, brick making by hand has practically disappeared. Economic advances brought about by the introduction of tunnel ovens in 1960, which permit the continuous firing of bricks, led to continued automation and rationalisation of brick making. The comparison of relative outputs over the last 30 years permits an appreciation of these rationalisation and modernisation processes. Over the last few years, energy consumption in new brickyards has clearly decreased through further technical developments.