History of concrete (1200-1828)

1200 to 1500

• 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

• The manuscripts of the Roman Pollio Vitruvius are discovered in a Swiss monastery reviving general interest in concrete.

• 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.

• John Smeaton discovered that combining quicklime with other materials created an extremely hard material that could be used to bind together other materials.

1779

• Bry Higgins was issued a patent for hydraulic cement (stucco) for exterior plastering use.

1780

• 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

• 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.

• An Englishman, James Parker, patented a natural hydraulic cement by calcining nodules of impure limestone containing clay, called Parker's Cement or Roman Cement.

1800

• William Jessop uses mass concrete on a large scale to build the West India Dock in Great Britain.

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• A similar Roman Cement process was used in France.

1810

• 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

• Louis Vicat of France prepared artificial hydraulic lime by calcining synthetic mixtures of limestone and clay.

1816

• The world's first unreinforced concrete bridge was built at Souillac, France.

1818

• 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

• John Tickell and Abraham Chambers were issued more patents for hydraulic cement.

1822

• James Frost of England prepared artificial hydraulic lime like Vicat's and called it "British Cement."

1824

• 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

• 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

• I. K. Brunel is credited with the first engineering application of Portland cement, which was used to fill a breach in the Thames Tunnel.