Today, we seek to cement our knowledge with concrete understanding. The University of Houston's College of Engineering presents this series about the machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them. T he history of concrete is pretty skimpy, considering how important it is.
Most accounts start with the use of gypsum plaster in ancient Egypt.
The Greeks used slaked lime, and the Romans knew how to mix lime with sand and volcanic tuff to make a real cement. In fact, the Romans did some pretty fancy concrete work. What we call Portland cement was invented by another Englishman in 1824. A Russian historian, Znachko-Iavorskii, tells a surprising story about concrete and cement. Too many historians of concrete have studied only written documents.