Hammurabi code (oldest written rules)

Historical anchor — 1750 BC, 282 laws, in the Louvre since rediscovery c. 1900. Used to set up "code" as a category older than industrial engineering.

Hammurabi, very good. And here's one of the most complete Hammurabi codes around. [Tom shows an image of the Code of Hammurabi.] The Hammurabi code was about 1750 BC, and there were 282 laws. It was a set of rules by which society was supposed to interact, and the most famous one is an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. There were other things — if you buy a house and it falls down and kills the person, the builder should be killed. So it was sort of an ancient, vicious code, but nonetheless it was a set of rules. It's not the earliest set of rules that we know of, but it is one of the earliest set of written rules, and it's actually in the Lou [Louvre] in Paris. This was found in 1900 somewhere, and the 282 rules cover lots of different things — not necessarily just manufacturing, but some of it is manufacturing, certainly trade and commerce.