They had to know what materials to use, which alloys, load bearing weight of the materials, how to place and configure them, etc.
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Why would you need computers to know any of that information? How would computers even *help* with any of that?
The same way we built the Eiffel tower: steel is really strong, and engineers are really good at their job.
Engineers figured out materials.
Engineering has been studied in universities since the Greeks in the west and the Ottoman Empire (maybe before) in the Middle East, and I’m not sure how long in Asia(China/india specifically, but more cultures than I want to name), but realistically several thousand years.
Many other cultures had a concept and practice of engineering, but not many had formalized university structures focused on engineering.
Many structures like The Egyptian or Mayan pyramids, Angkor Watt(as examples) are ancient and well engineered.
Computers figured out the numbers.
Computers used to be the catch all term used for a person figuring out the math of a problem. The movie “hidden figures” highlights some of these folks. In the 1960s many of these computers were women, or women of color as this job was seen as “beneath” men at the time.
So the short answer is: engineering and mathematics. All by hand. Sometimes chiseled into a stone, sometimes drawn on animal skins with charcoal. Lots of trial an error until something worked.
The same way the first computer was built, engineering and math. All a computer provides is a quick way to do the same math and convenient way to store and recall information.
The Egyptians built skyscrapers 5000 years ago. And many Roman constructions required tall structures (aqueducts).
Things like math and geometry are well understood (enough for construction) thousands of years ago. The basics are well understood from a long time ago – foundation, support, load bearing etc are the realm of fairly simple models. Concrete was developed thousands of years ago and steel hundreds of years ago.
The main differences in modern construction is efficiency and refinement. A skyscraper built 100 years ago would be ridiculously inefficient and overdesigned today. Rather than 3 feet thick walls, we’d probably design them with one foot thick walls today. Rather than 1000 support columns, we’d probably use 100.
You don’t need computers for any of that. All that information existed and was known, just in books and other print media. Sure we’ve gotten better, but you don’t need computers for skyscrapers.
Though it seems impossible to design complex things today without a computer that is almost entirely an artifact of design methodology and the format modern engineering aids, not an actual requirement of the process. A great deal of the information used by architects and engineers for designing buildings used to be contained in published paper books that contained tables of safe loads for various materials and other design information. Computers make that information more accessible, but they don’t change the process used to test materials and gather the information in the first place.
Similarly, the calculations my father did to create and read physical blueprints in the 70s aren’t conceptually different from what we do with computers now, or really that different from what Archimedes was doing a few thousand years ago. Some of the most enduring design principles and mathematical ratios in architecture are thousands of years old.
What makes you think that the calculations were impossible before computers?
Did you use a computer when you were studying mathematics in elementary school?
It seems weird in the modern era, I get it. But the real, honest to goodness truth of it is that people can do any math that a computer can do. It just takes longer.
So all that science and metallurgy you’re imagining they needed to do that seems impossible without modern technology. They just did it, paper, pencil, and slide rule.
Fun side note on this, the original meaning of the word “computer” was a title for an actual person that an architect or engineer or anyone would pass off the math problems to. It was a job title before it was a noun that meant “machine”.
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