The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1914-03-25
USE OF CONCRETE AnTIDATES TIME
 OF OLD PHAR0AH
Ancient Builders Used It, But Not As We'll As Modern 
 Contractors.
Much of Present Day Constr.1c- ton Would Be Impossible
 But For Material.

55s4
 The werd ssConcrete,' is itself or Latin origin, meaning grown togeth.s CT z Con- together and .cresere, to grow, and implies a. body form &n by the coalition of separate particles into a solid mass
 No onks knows when, where or by whom concrete was invented or first employed. Its use as a material Of construction dates back to- the dim antiquity of prehistoric times. and examples of the ancient craft have. come down to us with practically ulI-s
 5irninfshed strength which have with stood the bonnbardment of natures forces ttI1rough all the centuries OFpheas himself, whose lyric strains animated the very stones oN W hlch the walls of Thehes were built may, for all we know, have been merely sk1li--il ed4worker in concrete.
 @The ancient Egyptians understood the use or hydraulic cement It has. been proved that in some of the mar yeHous constructions which stIH en-
 11are as n1onuments of their engineer ihR skill, they used a porous lava possessing hydraulic properties and containing the basic element, neces- sary to the making of cement some where sim liar to the portland cement of the present day Many of the sar-s Echo phaei in which they placed their dead were made of artificial stone
 The majestic pyramids which for over
 4 900 years have reared their stupen-5 dous for1fis above the desert and which tranquilly laugh defianee at the ravages of time. were puIirs n n part of concrete. It is now gener-s ally conceded that in the constr truc-. ton of their upper tiers. at least, con crete, was the material employeds and She massive blocks Of stone that
 have baffled past ages by the mystery
 of their transporfation to such .ele- vations were probably borne t0 their
 destination by the painful. and form
 ed directly in place Evidences that these blocks are of mans formation is found in the fact that, breakages in some of them have revealed small. pieces of wood embedded in the mass.
 Tine Romans constructed many miles of highways and walls and aaueducts from hydraulic cements, which they also used to some extent | in the building of their residences and FtanlpI Roadbeds of concrete re- 1.-the Roman legions as they went4out or returned from their campaigns of world wide conquest. The famous iAppian Way. lover which the Apostle EPauI entered Rome was underIaid
 with cement concrete and topped with worn away but the concrete Is still lintact just as when the R oHlans lad it = ...;'ss
 s,lle cement lining of the Pont du Gard at Nismes in Southern France. 1 a Roman auueduct built ins the first century 5D., is still hard and smooth as when first put in place. The lDooIs Of King SoIomans nine miles from Jerusalem, were built of con crete, and still furnish water for the city, The Colosseum was built on piers and foundations of concrete, and Ithe entire upper floor Of the. AttrIurn. Vesta was formed of one great slab of concrete fourteen inches thick and | having a span of twenty feet, sup ported on edges, but having nos inteI-
 Pantheon of Rome is constructed mai irlIy of concrete and is still in per feet condition after I % years Of ser vice.
 The Aurelian wall about the city. lover ten miles in length, still stand ing. was built of the same material 1 In strength and durability no ma sonry however hard the stone. or large Ethe blocks, could ever equal these Ro- man walls of concrete. for each wall was one perfect coherant mass and l-coufd be destroyed only by a 1aborious process like that of quarrying hard stone from it's natural bed.
 The lookout towers of Ireland sup posed to have been built by the Druids
 more than l, ,000 years ago were made of concrete. The use of concrete by l the vanished races of the new world are still in evidence The Peruvian
 builders in the days or Incas em- ployed concrete, impel1ed probably by 1 the necessity of adopting a form of construction that would withstand Some of their structures built centur-
 ies ago have endured to me present i time
 The remarkable race of Mound Builders, along what are now the edges of the Ohio Valley, were accus- 1 toned to boil salt in kettles of tarti-
 hciaI stone, and in the manufacturel of their pottery, specimens Of which from I the most enduring mementos of their l intelligence, they used as ingredients of their concrete, clay and carbonate of lime or sandwich are used for I similar purposes to the present day.
 The ancient skill which had been l developed in the making and work I ing of concrete. appears for many I hundreds of years to have become a s.1ost art'' until the beginning of the Il Eighteenth century. there came re- i vival in the demand for hydraulic
 nortars, which was met by supplies I from Italy and was known asa "Poz-
 zuolana," and the low grade natural l cement known as sstrass'' from Ger
 many The first form of natural hy- 1 drauIic cement for concrete was de- lve1oped by John Smeaton. in the erec- ] ton of the kEddystone Light. about l 1756,s and he demonstrated for the
 first time the practical importance of ] chemical analysis in cement making So from the use of concrete way I back to the early Romans to the pres ent day, concrete has played an inn
 portant part in construction. and in one sense, therefor concrete can lay no claim to novelty. being return to 1 principles<once well known if less per fectly understood than now, but for l a long time lost sight of or forgotten.
 The early workers did not attain any thing like the high standards of tech I nical accuracy that characterize the manufacture of various forms Of con- crete construction of the present day. I The wonderful engineering feats of the Panama Canal, the CatskiI auue- I d,1r.t. tI,e. r-el,1,tIdtner <,f ca..