What is Concrete ?
Concrete is made by mixing Portland cement, water and coarse
(stone) and fine (sand) aggregates and may include the
addition of admixtures (chemicals to control setting properties).
The reaction between cement and water results in the hardening of the mixture, producing concrete. Cement accounts for only 9-13% by weight of the finished concrete. Supplementary cementing materials (SCMs) may also be used to replace a portion of the cement. SCMs used include fly ash (byproduct of coal-fired power generation), ground blast furnace slag (byproduct of metals smelting) and micro silica (silica fume).
Concrete History
Concrete was first used in large-scale construction by the Egyptians around 3000 B.C. Production of hydraulic cement began in Canada in 1830. Ready mixed concrete was first produced in 1913 in Baltimore, Maryland, USA.
12,000,000 BC
A natural deposit of cement compounds forms due to the reactions between limestone and oil shale during spontaneous combustion near present-day Israel.
5600 BC
The first concrete structures were built.
3000 BC
The Egyptians began to use mud mixed with straw to bind dried bricks. They also used gypsum mortars and mortars of lime in the building of the pyramids.
The Chinese used cementitious materials in the construction of the Great Wall.
800 BC
The Greeks used lime mortars that were much harder than later Roman mortars. This material was also in evidence in Crete and Cyprus at this time.
300 BC
The Babylonians and Assyrians used bitumen to bind stones and bricks together.
299 BC to 476 AD
The Romans used pozzolana cement from Pozzuoli, Italy near Mt. Vesuvius to build many famous Roman structures including the Appian Way, the Roman Baths of Caracalla, the Basilica of Maxentius, the Coliseum and Pantheon in Rome, and the Pont du Gard aqueduct in south France. They used broken brick aggregate embedded in a mixture of lime putty with brick dust or volcanic ash by the Romans. Many structures that used stone. They built ~5,300 miles of roads. The current U.S. Interstate Highway System has 4,200 miles.
27 AD
Pollio Vitruvius completes his books on architecture including a discussion of the properties of concrete.
64 AD
Nero's Golden House is built in Rome with concrete walls, domes, and vaults during the rebuilding of Rome.
540 AD
Concrete is used in the construction of the vaults and arches on the lower levels of St. Sophia's in Constantinople.
1200 à 1500 AD
The quality of cementing materials deteriorated and even the use of concrete died out during The Middle Ages as the art of using burning lime and pozzolan (admixture) was lost, but it was later reintroduced in the 1300s.
1414 AD
The manuscripts of the Roman Pollio Vitruvius are discovered in a Swiss monastery reviving general interest in concrete.
1499 AD
Fra Giocondo used pozzolanic mortar in the pier of the Pont de Notre Dame in Paris. It is the first acknowledge use of concrete in modern times.
1774 AD
John Smeaton discovered that combining quicklime with other materials created an extremely hard material that could be used to bind together other materials.
1779 AD
Bry Higgins was issued a patent for hydraulic cement <http://www.deeconcrete.com/concreteglossaryh.html> (stucco) for exterior plastering use.
1780 AD
Bry Higgins published "Experiments and Observations Made With the View of Improving the Art of Composing and Applying Calcareous Cements and of Preparing Quicklime."
1793 AD
John Smeaton found that the calcination of limestone containing clay produced a lime that hardened under water (hydraulic lime). He used hydraulic lime to rebuild Eddystone Lighthouse in Cornwall, England.
1796 AD
An Englishman, James Parker, patented natural hydraulic cement by calcining nodules of impure limestone containing clay, called Parker's Cement or Roman Cement.
1800 AD
William Jessop uses mass concrete on a large scale to build the West India Dock in Great Britain.
1802 AD
A similar Roman Cement process was used in France.
1810 AD
Edgar Dobbs received a patent for hydraulic mortars, stucco, and plaster, although they were of poor quality due to lack of kiln precautions.
1812 to 1813 AD
Louis Vicat of France prepared artificial hydraulic lime by calcining synthetic mixtures of limestone and clay.
1816 AD
The world's first unreinforced concrete bridge was built at Souillac, France.
1818 AD
Canvass White, an American engineer, discovered rock in Madison County, New York, that made natural hydraulic cement with little processing.
Maurice St. Leger was issued patents for hydraulic cement. Natural Cement was produced in the USA. Natural cement is limestone that naturally has the appropriate amounts of clay to make the same type of concrete as John Smeaton discovered.
A British engineer, Ralph Dodd, takes out a patent introducing wrought iron bars into concrete.
1820 to 1821 AD
John Tickell and Abraham Chambers were issued more patents for hydraulic cement.
1822 AD
James Frost of England prepared artificial hydraulic lime like Vicat's and called it "British Cement."
1824 AD
Joseph Aspdin, a British bricklayer, produced and patented the first "Portland" cement , made by burning finely pulverized lime and clay at high temperatures in kilns. The sintered product was then ground and he called it Portland cement since it looked like the high quality building stones quarried at Portland, England. It may have been invented as early as 1811.
1825 AD
The Erie Canal used the first modern concrete to be manufactured in the USA made with cement from lime deposits, "hydraulic lime", located in Madison, Cayuga, and Onondaga counties in central New York.
The Menaj Bridge is built with iron bars in the abutments to tie them together more soundly by Thomas Telford.
1828 AD
I. K. Brunel is credited with the first engineering application of Portland cement, which was used to fill a breach in the Thames Tunnel.
1830 AD
The first production of lime and hydraulic cement took place in Canada.
New York's Obadiah Parker develops a cement similar to Aspdin's and builds a number of houses using monolithic walls.
1836 AD
The first systematic tests of tensile and compressive strength took place in Germany.
1843 AD
J. M. Mauder, Son & Co. was licensed to produce patented Portland cement.
1845 AD
Isaac Johnson claims to have burned the raw materials of Portland cement to clinkering temperatures.
1849 AD
Pettenkofer & Fuches performed the first accurate chemical analysis of Portland cement.
1850 AD
Joseph Monier, a French nurseryman, conceived and developed a form of reinforced concrete in an effort to build a durable flowerpot.
1854 AD
Louis Cézanne invents the hand-operated concrete mixer.
1855 AD
Francois Coignet invents a system to combining concrete with iron joists.
1860 AD
The beginning of the era of Portland cement of modern composition.
1867 AD
Joseph Monier, of France, reinforced William Wand's (USA) flowerpots with wire ushering in the idea of iron reinforcing bars (re-bar).
1868 AD
Chicagoan, G. A. Frear, sets up a manufacturing plant to make his patented concrete block including pieces with decorative trim to substitute for expensive carved stone. Many of his blocks survived the Chicago Fire in 1871.
1871 AD
David O. Saylor was issued the first American patent for Portland cement in Copley, Pennsylvania. He showed the importance of true clinkering.
1879 AD
In Scotland, a concrete road was built that used Portland cement for binding and which exhibited a very good surface, but which ultimately broke apart.
1880 AD
J. Grant of England showed the importance of using the hardest and densest portions of the clinker. Key ingredients were being chemically analyzed.
1886 AD
The first rotary kiln was introduced in England to replace the vertical shaft kilns.
1887 AD
Henri le Chatelier of France established oxide ratios to prepare the proper amount of lime to produce Portland cement.
1889 AD
The first concrete reinforced bridge is built.
1890 AD
The addition of gypsum when grinding clinker to act as a retardant to the setting of concrete was introduced in the U.S. Vertical shaft kilns were replaced with rotary kilns and ball mills were used for grinding cement.
1891 AD
George Bartholomew placed the first concrete street in the U.S. in Bellefontaine, Ohio which still exists today
1893 AD
William Michaelis claimed that hydrated metasilicates form a gelatinous mass (gel) that dehydrates over time to harden.
1894 AD
Anatole de Baudot designs and builds the Church of St. Jean de Montmarte with slender concrete columns and vaults and enclosed by thin reinforced concrete walls.
1897 AD
The Sears Roebuck offered #G2452 - a barrel of "Cement, natural" at $1.25 per barrel; and also they listed #G2453, "Portland Cement, imported" at $3.40 per 50 gallon barrel.
1898 AD
Cement manufacturers used 91 different formulas.
1900 AD
Basic cement tests were standardized.
1902 AD
August Perret designs and builds an apartment building in Paris that uses what was called "a system for reinforced concrete". This structure deeply influenced architecture and concrete construction for decades since it was built without load-bearing walls using instead columns, beams, and slabs.
1903 AD
The first concrete high rise was built in Cincinnati, Ohio.
1908 AD
Thomas Edison built 11 cheap, cast-in-place, concrete houses in Union, New Jersey that still exist and laid the first mile of concrete road near New Village, New Jersey.
1909 AD
Thomas Edison was issued a patent for rotary kilns.
Wayne County, Michigan, built the first mile of rural pavement for automobiles in the U.S.
1911 AD
Reinforced concrete is used to build the Risorgimento Bridge in Rome that spans 328 feet.
1913 AD
The first load of ready-mixed concrete was delivered in Baltimore, Maryland.
1914 AD
The Panama Canal is completed with three pairs of concrete locks having floors up to 20 feet thick and walls up to 60 feet thick at the base. The Panama Canal locks were built with reinforced concrete, and this led to the first hydroelectric dams to be constructed with reinforced steel and concrete.
1915 AD
Matte Trucco builds the five-story Fiat-Lingotti Autoworks in Turin using reinforced concrete with a automobile test track on the roof.
1916 AD
The Portland Cement Association was formed in Chicago.
Stephen Stepanian of Columbus, Ohio applied for a patent for the first truck mixer.
1917 AD
The National Bureau of Standards (now the National Bureau of standards and Technology) and the American Society for Testing Materials established a standard formula for Portland cement.
1921 AD
The immense parabolic airship hangars at Orly Airport near Paris, France were finished.
1923 AD
Two of the Western Paving Company's concrete plants in Oklahoma City each produced up to 1,000 cubic yards of concrete a day.
1927 AD
In Seattle, Washington the first horizontal drum truck mixer - the Paris Transit Mixer - debuted and became popular across the country.
1929 AD
The Erie Steel Construction Company of Erie, Pennsylvania, developed the Aggremeter hopper, a device which weighed and measured concrete ingredients by volume.
Eugene Freyssinet, a French engineer, developed pre-stressed concrete.
Martin Elasser builds the barrel-vaulted market hall at Frankfurt am Main demonstrating the first use of shell concrete in a large facility.
1930 AD
Horizontal-axis revolving-drum mixer trucks - similar to today's concrete mixers - were introduced by three American manufacturers.
Air entraining agents were introduced to improve concrete's resistance to freeze/thaw damage.
1933 AD
Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary is completed and opened. The first inmates were the prison work gang that built it.
1936 AD
The first major concrete dams, Hoover Dam and Grand Coulee Dam, were built.
1948 AD
Pre-stressed concrete was introduced and first used in airport pavements.
1951 AD
~1,700 ready mix plants operate in over 1,300 U.S. towns and cities.
1954 AD
The slipform paver comes into use.
1956 AD
U.S. Congress approved the Federal Interstate Highway Act.
1967 AD
The first concrete domed sports structure, The University of Illinois' Assembly Hall, was constructed at Champaign-Urbana.
1970 AD
Fiber reinforcement in concrete was introduced.
1973 AD
The Opera House in Sydney, Australia was opened. Its distinctive concrete peaks quickly became a symbol for the city.
1975 AD
CN Tower in Toronto, Canada, the tallest slip-form building and Water Tower Place in Chicago, Illinois, the tallest concrete building, were constructed.
1980 AD
Superplasticizers were introduced as admixtures.
1985 AD
Silica fume was introduced as a pozzolanic additive.
1992 AD
The tallest reinforced concrete building in the world was constructed at 311 South Wacker Drive in Chicago, Illinois.
1993 AD
The J. F. K. Museum in Boston, Massachusetts was completed. The dramatic concrete and glass structure was designed by renowned architect I. M. Pei.
Today
Concrete is an essential product used in a variety of construction, infrastructure and industrial applications. Ready-mixed concrete is Canada's most widely used construction material, accounting for about 70% by volume of all construction materials. Up to two thirds of Canadian concrete is estimated to be used in residential and commercial foundations or basements. Concrete is also used in the construction of municipal and transportation infrastructure including roads, bridges and sidewalks.
Source: http://www.ec.gc.ca/cleanair-airpur/default.asp?lang=En&n=B02E25FD-1
Concrete is made by mixing Portland cement, water and coarse
(stone) and fine (sand) aggregates and may include the
addition of admixtures (chemicals to control setting properties).
The reaction between cement and water results in the hardening of the mixture, producing concrete. Cement accounts for only 9-13% by weight of the finished concrete. Supplementary cementing materials (SCMs) may also be used to replace a portion of the cement. SCMs used include fly ash (byproduct of coal-fired power generation), ground blast furnace slag (byproduct of metals smelting) and micro silica (silica fume).
Concrete History
Concrete was first used in large-scale construction by the Egyptians around 3000 B.C. Production of hydraulic cement began in Canada in 1830. Ready mixed concrete was first produced in 1913 in Baltimore, Maryland, USA.
12,000,000 BC
A natural deposit of cement compounds forms due to the reactions between limestone and oil shale during spontaneous combustion near present-day Israel.
5600 BC
The first concrete structures were built.
3000 BC
The Egyptians began to use mud mixed with straw to bind dried bricks. They also used gypsum mortars and mortars of lime in the building of the pyramids.
The Chinese used cementitious materials in the construction of the Great Wall.
800 BC
The Greeks used lime mortars that were much harder than later Roman mortars. This material was also in evidence in Crete and Cyprus at this time.
300 BC
The Babylonians and Assyrians used bitumen to bind stones and bricks together.
299 BC to 476 AD
The Romans used pozzolana cement from Pozzuoli, Italy near Mt. Vesuvius to build many famous Roman structures including the Appian Way, the Roman Baths of Caracalla, the Basilica of Maxentius, the Coliseum and Pantheon in Rome, and the Pont du Gard aqueduct in south France. They used broken brick aggregate embedded in a mixture of lime putty with brick dust or volcanic ash by the Romans. Many structures that used stone. They built ~5,300 miles of roads. The current U.S. Interstate Highway System has 4,200 miles.
27 AD
Pollio Vitruvius completes his books on architecture including a discussion of the properties of concrete.
64 AD
Nero's Golden House is built in Rome with concrete walls, domes, and vaults during the rebuilding of Rome.
540 AD
Concrete is used in the construction of the vaults and arches on the lower levels of St. Sophia's in Constantinople.
1200 à 1500 AD
The quality of cementing materials deteriorated and even the use of concrete died out during The Middle Ages as the art of using burning lime and pozzolan (admixture) was lost, but it was later reintroduced in the 1300s.
1414 AD
The manuscripts of the Roman Pollio Vitruvius are discovered in a Swiss monastery reviving general interest in concrete.
1499 AD
Fra Giocondo used pozzolanic mortar in the pier of the Pont de Notre Dame in Paris. It is the first acknowledge use of concrete in modern times.
1774 AD
John Smeaton discovered that combining quicklime with other materials created an extremely hard material that could be used to bind together other materials.
1779 AD
Bry Higgins was issued a patent for hydraulic cement <http://www.deeconcrete.com/concreteglossaryh.html> (stucco) for exterior plastering use.
1780 AD
Bry Higgins published "Experiments and Observations Made With the View of Improving the Art of Composing and Applying Calcareous Cements and of Preparing Quicklime."
1793 AD
John Smeaton found that the calcination of limestone containing clay produced a lime that hardened under water (hydraulic lime). He used hydraulic lime to rebuild Eddystone Lighthouse in Cornwall, England.
1796 AD
An Englishman, James Parker, patented natural hydraulic cement by calcining nodules of impure limestone containing clay, called Parker's Cement or Roman Cement.
1800 AD
William Jessop uses mass concrete on a large scale to build the West India Dock in Great Britain.
1802 AD
A similar Roman Cement process was used in France.
1810 AD
Edgar Dobbs received a patent for hydraulic mortars, stucco, and plaster, although they were of poor quality due to lack of kiln precautions.
1812 to 1813 AD
Louis Vicat of France prepared artificial hydraulic lime by calcining synthetic mixtures of limestone and clay.
1816 AD
The world's first unreinforced concrete bridge was built at Souillac, France.
1818 AD
Canvass White, an American engineer, discovered rock in Madison County, New York, that made natural hydraulic cement with little processing.
Maurice St. Leger was issued patents for hydraulic cement. Natural Cement was produced in the USA. Natural cement is limestone that naturally has the appropriate amounts of clay to make the same type of concrete as John Smeaton discovered.
A British engineer, Ralph Dodd, takes out a patent introducing wrought iron bars into concrete.
1820 to 1821 AD
John Tickell and Abraham Chambers were issued more patents for hydraulic cement.
1822 AD
James Frost of England prepared artificial hydraulic lime like Vicat's and called it "British Cement."
1824 AD
Joseph Aspdin, a British bricklayer, produced and patented the first "Portland" cement , made by burning finely pulverized lime and clay at high temperatures in kilns. The sintered product was then ground and he called it Portland cement since it looked like the high quality building stones quarried at Portland, England. It may have been invented as early as 1811.
1825 AD
The Erie Canal used the first modern concrete to be manufactured in the USA made with cement from lime deposits, "hydraulic lime", located in Madison, Cayuga, and Onondaga counties in central New York.
The Menaj Bridge is built with iron bars in the abutments to tie them together more soundly by Thomas Telford.
1828 AD
I. K. Brunel is credited with the first engineering application of Portland cement, which was used to fill a breach in the Thames Tunnel.
1830 AD
The first production of lime and hydraulic cement took place in Canada.
New York's Obadiah Parker develops a cement similar to Aspdin's and builds a number of houses using monolithic walls.
1836 AD
The first systematic tests of tensile and compressive strength took place in Germany.
1843 AD
J. M. Mauder, Son & Co. was licensed to produce patented Portland cement.
1845 AD
Isaac Johnson claims to have burned the raw materials of Portland cement to clinkering temperatures.
1849 AD
Pettenkofer & Fuches performed the first accurate chemical analysis of Portland cement.
1850 AD
Joseph Monier, a French nurseryman, conceived and developed a form of reinforced concrete in an effort to build a durable flowerpot.
1854 AD
Louis Cézanne invents the hand-operated concrete mixer.
1855 AD
Francois Coignet invents a system to combining concrete with iron joists.
1860 AD
The beginning of the era of Portland cement of modern composition.
1867 AD
Joseph Monier, of France, reinforced William Wand's (USA) flowerpots with wire ushering in the idea of iron reinforcing bars (re-bar).
1868 AD
Chicagoan, G. A. Frear, sets up a manufacturing plant to make his patented concrete block including pieces with decorative trim to substitute for expensive carved stone. Many of his blocks survived the Chicago Fire in 1871.
1871 AD
David O. Saylor was issued the first American patent for Portland cement in Copley, Pennsylvania. He showed the importance of true clinkering.
1879 AD
In Scotland, a concrete road was built that used Portland cement for binding and which exhibited a very good surface, but which ultimately broke apart.
1880 AD
J. Grant of England showed the importance of using the hardest and densest portions of the clinker. Key ingredients were being chemically analyzed.
1886 AD
The first rotary kiln was introduced in England to replace the vertical shaft kilns.
1887 AD
Henri le Chatelier of France established oxide ratios to prepare the proper amount of lime to produce Portland cement.
1889 AD
The first concrete reinforced bridge is built.
1890 AD
The addition of gypsum when grinding clinker to act as a retardant to the setting of concrete was introduced in the U.S. Vertical shaft kilns were replaced with rotary kilns and ball mills were used for grinding cement.
1891 AD
George Bartholomew placed the first concrete street in the U.S. in Bellefontaine, Ohio which still exists today
1893 AD
William Michaelis claimed that hydrated metasilicates form a gelatinous mass (gel) that dehydrates over time to harden.
1894 AD
Anatole de Baudot designs and builds the Church of St. Jean de Montmarte with slender concrete columns and vaults and enclosed by thin reinforced concrete walls.
1897 AD
The Sears Roebuck offered #G2452 - a barrel of "Cement, natural" at $1.25 per barrel; and also they listed #G2453, "Portland Cement, imported" at $3.40 per 50 gallon barrel.
1898 AD
Cement manufacturers used 91 different formulas.
1900 AD
Basic cement tests were standardized.
1902 AD
August Perret designs and builds an apartment building in Paris that uses what was called "a system for reinforced concrete". This structure deeply influenced architecture and concrete construction for decades since it was built without load-bearing walls using instead columns, beams, and slabs.
1903 AD
The first concrete high rise was built in Cincinnati, Ohio.
1908 AD
Thomas Edison built 11 cheap, cast-in-place, concrete houses in Union, New Jersey that still exist and laid the first mile of concrete road near New Village, New Jersey.
1909 AD
Thomas Edison was issued a patent for rotary kilns.
Wayne County, Michigan, built the first mile of rural pavement for automobiles in the U.S.
1911 AD
Reinforced concrete is used to build the Risorgimento Bridge in Rome that spans 328 feet.
1913 AD
The first load of ready-mixed concrete was delivered in Baltimore, Maryland.
1914 AD
The Panama Canal is completed with three pairs of concrete locks having floors up to 20 feet thick and walls up to 60 feet thick at the base. The Panama Canal locks were built with reinforced concrete, and this led to the first hydroelectric dams to be constructed with reinforced steel and concrete.
1915 AD
Matte Trucco builds the five-story Fiat-Lingotti Autoworks in Turin using reinforced concrete with a automobile test track on the roof.
1916 AD
The Portland Cement Association was formed in Chicago.
Stephen Stepanian of Columbus, Ohio applied for a patent for the first truck mixer.
1917 AD
The National Bureau of Standards (now the National Bureau of standards and Technology) and the American Society for Testing Materials established a standard formula for Portland cement.
1921 AD
The immense parabolic airship hangars at Orly Airport near Paris, France were finished.
1923 AD
Two of the Western Paving Company's concrete plants in Oklahoma City each produced up to 1,000 cubic yards of concrete a day.
1927 AD
In Seattle, Washington the first horizontal drum truck mixer - the Paris Transit Mixer - debuted and became popular across the country.
1929 AD
The Erie Steel Construction Company of Erie, Pennsylvania, developed the Aggremeter hopper, a device which weighed and measured concrete ingredients by volume.
Eugene Freyssinet, a French engineer, developed pre-stressed concrete.
Martin Elasser builds the barrel-vaulted market hall at Frankfurt am Main demonstrating the first use of shell concrete in a large facility.
1930 AD
Horizontal-axis revolving-drum mixer trucks - similar to today's concrete mixers - were introduced by three American manufacturers.
Air entraining agents were introduced to improve concrete's resistance to freeze/thaw damage.
1933 AD
Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary is completed and opened. The first inmates were the prison work gang that built it.
1936 AD
The first major concrete dams, Hoover Dam and Grand Coulee Dam, were built.
1948 AD
Pre-stressed concrete was introduced and first used in airport pavements.
1951 AD
~1,700 ready mix plants operate in over 1,300 U.S. towns and cities.
1954 AD
The slipform paver comes into use.
1956 AD
U.S. Congress approved the Federal Interstate Highway Act.
1967 AD
The first concrete domed sports structure, The University of Illinois' Assembly Hall, was constructed at Champaign-Urbana.
1970 AD
Fiber reinforcement in concrete was introduced.
1973 AD
The Opera House in Sydney, Australia was opened. Its distinctive concrete peaks quickly became a symbol for the city.
1975 AD
CN Tower in Toronto, Canada, the tallest slip-form building and Water Tower Place in Chicago, Illinois, the tallest concrete building, were constructed.
1980 AD
Superplasticizers were introduced as admixtures.
1985 AD
Silica fume was introduced as a pozzolanic additive.
1992 AD
The tallest reinforced concrete building in the world was constructed at 311 South Wacker Drive in Chicago, Illinois.
1993 AD
The J. F. K. Museum in Boston, Massachusetts was completed. The dramatic concrete and glass structure was designed by renowned architect I. M. Pei.
Today
Concrete is an essential product used in a variety of construction, infrastructure and industrial applications. Ready-mixed concrete is Canada's most widely used construction material, accounting for about 70% by volume of all construction materials. Up to two thirds of Canadian concrete is estimated to be used in residential and commercial foundations or basements. Concrete is also used in the construction of municipal and transportation infrastructure including roads, bridges and sidewalks.
Source: http://www.ec.gc.ca/cleanair-airpur/default.asp?lang=En&n=B02E25FD-1
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