The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1918-02-14
DOZEN NATIONS
 ALREADY USING
 CONCRETE SHIPS

The suggestion that the use of con- crete in ship building may aid in solving the shipping problems of the United States, lends interest to a com pilation by the National City Bank of New York the cement and concrete industries of the United States and the world, and the progress of con- crete vessel building in this and other countries.
 The statement shows that concrete, made from Portland" cement. is now being used in the construction of ves- sells in more than a dozen leading countries of the world and that the United States is the worlds largest producer of the materials used in this new form of ship building. The type of vessels now being constructed from concrete range from the barge and floating dock up to the ocean steamer of several thousand tons ca pacity.
 Concrete made from Portland or other hydraulic cement, reinforced with steel, is the chief material of these vessels. The keel and ribs of the vessel are of g el, and quantities of wire mesh arc also used in re- tainipg and reinforcing the concrete which fills the spaces between the steel ribs. This combination of con- crete and steel has given to this type of work, the title of 'ferro concrete" and "reinforced concrete" but in both the chief requirements of the new type of vessel, concrete and steel, the United States far exceeds any other country in it's ordinary year-to- year production. Portland" cement, which gets it's name from it's re- semblance in appearance to Portland stone, is produced in far greater quantities in the United States than any other country of the world and in fact probably exceeds that of all other countries combined. Our own output of Portland cement in 1917 was the largest in the history of our production, amounting to 93 55O,OOO barrels, while that of the other prin- Cipal cement producing countries in the latest available year was, Ger many 30,O00,000 barrels, England 17,OOO,OOO barrels and France 8,0O0,- 900 barrels. Our own production has grown with great rapidity from Az 900 barrels in 1880 to 335, 1000 in 1890, 8.4S2,OOO in 1900; 6S,2O5,0oO in 1910 and 93,54O,OOO in 1917, the high re- cord year of production, while the value has grown from $126 900 in 1880 to $1O1, 100000 in 1917. In the iron and steel required for use in conjunction with the cement in ship building, we are also by far the worlds largest producer, our total output of pig iron, the basis of all iron and steel products, being more than the combined production of any other three countries in the world.
 Portland cement, which is scien- tifically described as "an artificial mixture, based on chemical analysis, of limestone and clay, or mari and chalk, or shale and limestone" burn ed to incipient vitrification and the clinkers finely ground, hardens when exposed to water and is thus often designated hydraulic cement, !" though the smaller quantities desig- mated as natural" and "puzzolanic' cement are also properly included in the term hydraulic" The natural cement, made solely from certain classes of limestone, and the "puzzo- lanic" composed of blast furnace slag and lime, show a marked fall off in production in the United States in recent years, while the Portland shows a rapid increase. and now forms over 95 per cent. of the output of hydraulic cement in the United States, it's value amounting in 1917 to S1O1, 100000 and that of the natural and "puzzolanic" less than s1,0O0,0O The census of 1914 shows the capital invested in cement manufacture $243, ,O00.
 The countries which have already utilized concrete for vessel construc- ton in some form include Great Brit ain, France, Italy, Germany. Neither lands, Denmark, Norway, Argentina Brazil Australia, Canada and the United States, the construction in the United States of vessels of this type occurring chiefly at New York, Balti' more, and San Francisco. Cemen, production in the United States i! widely distributed, occuI ring in nc less than 28 states, while its genera use for locks, piers, reservoirs, irri gation works, tunnels, bridges ant pavements. is even more widely dis tributed, and it's use rapidly increas ing. The production in the United States is almost exclusively for do nestle use, the exports having arDounted in value to but S582200(