To the History of Construction

With the introduction of the railways and steam machinery, transportation and manufacturing costs were considerably reduced and concrete came to be more widely used, but it was still very much a neglected material. Therefore, good concrete was scarce and a great deal of poor concrete was used.

The big break-through was the discovery of Portland cement by Joseph Aspdin in 1824, a worker in an English town.

When he was working an idea came to him as to how to make his work better. He started his experiments. After some time he obtained a powder. When it was mixed with water and allowed to stand it “sets” forming a hard substance. This substance was so much like the building stone from Portland that the powder was named Portland cement. As years passed different materials were found in many countries from which Portland cement could be made.

Portland cement was first used on a large scale in the construction of the Thames tunnel in 1828.

As early as 1830 the first idea of reinforced concrete was mentioned in a publication, which suggested that a lattice of iron rods be embedded in concrete to from a roof.
Patents were taken out for all sorts of systems in all countries. The development of reinforced concrete really got under way in the 1850’s and 60’s.
Lambort, a French contractor, built a concrete boat for the Paris International Exhibition of 1855, with 2 inches sides reinforced with a skeleton of iron rods.
W. Wilkinson, who patented a method of constructing a concrete floor in 1854, is considered by many to be the inventor of reinforced concrete as well.