As I was watching some YouTube videos about the architect Frank Lloyd Wright, his experiments with concrete were explored, and I asked myself the question: Who Invented Concrete? Obviously. After writing a few articles for this blog, I noticed that the answer is not just one person. It’s not that easy. So, I invite you to join me in the past to discover the history of concrete.
What is concrete?
First, for those of us who are not in the know, what exactly is concrete? The Cambridge Dictionary described it as a very hard-building material made by mixing together cement, sand, small stones, and water. In short, it’s a really resistant composite material we are using to build houses and other structures.
If we go back in time, in the 1520s, concrete was used to talk about “that which is material or not abstract.” We had to wait until the 1650s for it to mean “a mass formed by concretion” from the literal sense of Latin concretus. But…
Who Created Concrete?
Some would say that the Egyptians did, as they were using a form of concrete to build pyramids around 3000 BC. There is a debate over the real first utilization of concrete, especially before the Egyptians did. An early form of concrete was found in the Göbekli Tepe temple in what is today called Turkey.
That said, concrete, as we are using it today, was used for everything by the Romans (around 300–500 AD). They used it to build the Colosseum, their famous bathhouses, roads, and the majority of their constructions. But for the Romans, it was not named “concrete,” it was caementis—or “cement” if you prefer. Their cement was not our cement, they did it the way we do concrete today. It’s confusing. Whatever their concrete recipe was, it was effective. The Colosseum is still here 2000 years later. The Pantheon too. Roman engineers perfected their mix (using volcanic ash), and it survived the fall of the Empire.
After that, during the Middle Ages, concrete was not used as much, and the recipe changed, mortar became in demand as stone was mostly used to build castles and churches. It made a comeback during the 15th century, but it was during the 19th century that concrete found a new life, a reinforced one.
Thomas Edison with a model for a concrete house, c. 1910.
Who invented reinforced concrete?
In the 16th century, a German found out that mixing volcanic ash called trass with lime mortar led to strong water-resistant material. Years later, this led the French and the British to use this recipe on buildings, and in 1793, John Smeaton was tasked to build a new lighthouse. He needed water-resistant materials and rediscovered how to make cement. This changed a lot in the construction business and, in 1824, Joseph Aspdin revised the recipe to create what is now called the Portland Cement, the basic ingredient of concrete.
In 1849, a Parisian gardener named Joseph Monier started making garden pots and tubs of concrete reinforced with an iron mesh. This reinforced concrete changed a lot, especially after California-based engineer Ernest Ransome popularized its use—first with the Arctic Oil Company Works warehouse in San Francisco in 1884, but especially with the Alvord Lake Bridge in Golden Gate Park, the world’s first reinforced concrete bridge, in 1889. His technique was what made the construction of the 16-story Ingalls Building in Cincinnati in 1903 possible, the first concrete skyscraper.
In 1891, another American inventor, George Bartholomew, constructed the world’s first concrete street in Bellefontaine, Ohio. In 1908, Thomas Edison (yes, that Edison) designed the first American concrete homes in Union, New Jersey.
During the 20th century, like the Romans, we are using concrete everywhere, to build houses, roads, and even our “Colosseum”—the first sports arena with a concrete dome was built on the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1963. But reinforced concrete is not as durable as “Roman concrete.”
Maybe Romans didn’t invent concrete per se, but they apparently created the best version of it.
With new sciences come new kinds of science-fiction stories. Because with new possibilities come new ideas about the present and the future, and new types of stories. In the second half of the 20th century, the idea of High Tech led to the emergence of cyberpunk literature.
The Origin of the Word Cyberpunk
Cyberpunk is a science-fiction subgenre. The name was coined by the American writer Bruce Bethke who used it as the title for a short story he wrote in 1980 (published in November 1983 in Amazing Stories magazine). In it, the character uses his talent with computers to cause trouble. He was a “hacker,” even if the term was not used in the story.
I recently watched the movie Riders of Justice (Retfærdighedens ryttere, 2020) starring Mads Mikkelsen and there’s a scene with a character saying, I quote, “Chess is the only game in the world where chance and luck aren’t a factor. There are no dice, no jokers or hidden elements. Everything is right in front of us and it is purely your own actions that determine the result.” I thought it was an interesting tidbit. By the way, great movie. Anyway, you know what’s coming next:
Who Created Chess?
First of all, to avoid any confusion, we never know … what is chess? Here is what Merriam-Webster has to say about that:
A game for 2 players each of whom moves 16 pieces according to fixed rules across a checkerboard and tries to checkmate the opponent’s king.
Now that we all know that we are not talking about checkers, let’s take a look at the history of the game.
The other day, I don’t remember why, but my sister was ranting about bras. That’s when I learned that it was invented just a century ago, and I’m like… What? Only a century? But…
Who Created the Bra?
The invention of the bra is technically a century old, but not really. Once again, it’s a case of patents. The oldest “bra” found is as old as ancient Greece. For as long as we know, women had their ways of binding and supporting their breasts. But we are here to talk about the modern bra.
It seems that more people ask “who invented electricity?” than “who discovered electricity?” There’s a difference between inventing and discovering, but there’s also a difference between discovering the existence of electricity and the invention of technic to produce it.
What is electricity?
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines electricity this way:
a fundamental form of energy observable in positive and negative forms that occurs naturally (as in lightning) or is produced (as in a generator) and that is expressed in terms of the movement and interaction of electrons.
a science that deals with the phenomena and laws of electricity
Who discovered electricity?
The best way is to begin with the natural occurrence of electricity. In that domain, the Greeks seem to take the first place (not Benjamin Franklin, he’ll come way later in history). In fact, the word “electricity” comes from the Greek elektron which means “amber,” because they rubbed amber with fur and observed the attraction of feathers and other objects. That was the discovery of static electricity—this phenomenon was not perceived as connected to the electric current until the 19th century.
It was in about 600 BC. With time, researchers and archeologists discovered what they believe may have been ancient batteries meant to produce light at ancient Roman sites, but also in archeological digs leading to Persians artefacts.
Who invented electricity?
The famous Ben Franklin’s kite experiment—with a kite, a key, and a storm—occurred in 1752. It proved that lightning and electric sparks were connected. But it didn’t lead to the use of the word “electricity.’ That came even before. English physician William Gilbert used the Latin word ‘electricus’ in the year 1600 to describe the product of that first Greek experiment. And a few years later, another English scientist, Thomas Browne, used the word ‘electricity’ in a paper in which he talked about his research based on William Gilbert’s work. That said, Franklin’s work inspired a lot of Europeans.
Benjamin Franklin Drawing Electricity from the Sky (1816)
English scientists were really dedicated to exploring the possibilities of electricity. In the early 1700s, Francis Hauksbee invented the first electrostatic generator based on German scientist Otto von Guericke’s invention—it was a primitive form of the frictional electrical machine. But it’s another discussion, one about lamps.
Francis Hauksbee was a member of The Royal Society—formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge—as was William Nicholson who, with surgeon Anthony Carlisle, discovered electrolysis in May 1800, the decomposition of water into hydrogen and oxygen by voltaic current. This led Italian physicist and chemist Alessandro Volta to the discovery of the voltaic pile, a battery. That’s why batteries are rated in volts.
Englishman Michael Faraday is also famous for the construction of a voltaic pile, one with seven British halfpenny coins stacked together with seven disks of sheet zinc, and six pieces of paper moistened with salt water—as it was learned in 1812. A few years later, in 1821, after the Danish physicist and chemist Hans Christian Ørsted discovered the phenomenon of electromagnetism, Faraday built devices to produce what he called ‘electromagnetic rotation’—one of these is known as the homopolar motor, and helped build the foundation of modern electromagnetic technology. These discoveries can’t all be credited to Faraday though. He based his work on the failed experiments of William Hyde Wollaston and Humphry Davy, fellow members of the Royal Society.
Michael Faraday English Scientist is a drawing by Mary Evans
But Faraday didn’t stop there. He explored the electromagnetic properties of materials, worked with light and magnets, and more. In 1831, he discovered electromagnetic induction—the production of an electromotive force across an electrical conductor in a changing magnetic field. What he established was then modeled mathematically by James Clerk Maxwell as Faraday’s law. This discovery leads Faraday to construct the electric dynamo, the ancestor of modern power generators and the electric motor. Finally, Faraday established that only a single ‘electricity’ exists—at that time, it was thought that there was more than one.
Faraday was not the only one influenced by Hans Christian Ørsted’s discovery. Another one was André-Marie Ampère, a French physicist and mathematician who was one of the founders of the science of classical electromagnetism, which he referred to as ‘electrodynamics.’ For him, it really started when his friend François Arago showed the members of the French Academy of Sciences the discovery made by Ørsted. After that, Ampère began developing a mathematical and physical theory to understand the relationship between electricity and magnetism. He showed that two parallel wires carrying electric currents attract or repel each other, depending on whether the currents flow in the same or opposite directions, respectively. This is what laid the foundation of electrodynamics and, of course, Ampère’s law, which states that the mutual action of two lengths of current-carrying wire is proportional to their lengths and the intensities of their currents. The base unit of electric current in the International System of Units (SI) was subsequently named after him—the ‘ampere’ or ‘amp.’
In 1826, German physicist Georg Ohm defined the relationship between power, voltage, current, and resistance in what is now known as ‘Ohm’s Law.’ That’s why the ohm became the basic unit for resistance.
Really, the late 19th century saw the greatest progress in electrical engineering. As you may have noticed, I avoided talking about lights, and more precisely the light bulb, because it will be the subject of another article. For now, let’s go back to electricity.
James Clerk Maxwell was a Scottish scientist who specialized in the field of mathematical physics. In 1865, he published ‘A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field,’ a paper on electromagnetism in which he derived an electromagnetic wave equation with a velocity for light in close agreement with measurements made by experiment, and deduced that light is an electromagnetic wave. Basically, he demonstrated that electric and magnetic fields travel through space as waves move at the speed of light. His work made him a founder of the modern field of electrical engineering.
It certainly influenced German physicist Heinrich Hertz who, in 1886, was the first to conclusively prove the existence of the electromagnetic waves predicted by Maxwell’s equations of electromagnetism. Hertz’s proof of the existence of airborne electromagnetic waves led to an explosion of experimentation with this new form of electromagnetic radiation, which was called ‘Hertzian waves.’ That was until the 1910s when the term ‘radio waves’ became current.
Other discoveries were made after that. A lot. We will explore those subjects in subsequent articles.
The Commercial Electricity
Discoveries, theories, and experiments had to lead somewhere. We needed practical uses of electricity. Michael Faraday’s power generator set the stage for an electrical revolution—this is where the history of the light bulb became important. Having light bulbs was useless unless you had a practical source of energy to power them. Thomas Edison wanted to provide that. In order to make electricity practical and inexpensive. In 1882, he built the first electric power plant that was able to produce electricity, the Pearl Street generating station’s electrical power distribution system, which provided 110 volts of direct current (DC) to 59 customers in lower Manhattan.
Nikola Tesla
By working in Paris with the Continental Edison Company, Serbian-American inventor Nikola Tesla gained a lot of practical experience in electrical engineering. Soon, he started to design and build updated versions of generating dynamos and motors. In 1884, he moved to the United States with the help of his manager, Charles Batchelor. He ended up working on street lighting but quit after six months with the company. That didn’t stop his work and his new systems didn’t go unnoticed. Nevertheless, investors were not interested in his ideas for new types of alternating current (AC) motors and electrical transmission equipment.
Thomas Edison’s direct current had limitations that were overcome by the AC. In fact, in Europe, the AC power system was developed and adopted rapidly after 1886. In the US, Edison tried to discredit alternating currents as too dangerous in a public campaign called the ‘war of the currents.’ But progress can’t be stopped and, in 1888, alternating current systems gained further viability with the introduction of a functional AC motor—Nikola Tesla’s design for an induction motor was one of them. With Thomas Edison leaving the electric power business, direct current lost the war, and, by October 1890, Edison Machine Works began developing AC-based equipment. Mergers, patents, and other financial deals pushed AC power to the front. Well into the 20th century, some cities still used DC, but most adopted AC quickly.
A lot of people contributed to the ‘invention’ of electricity as we think of it today. Now, the difficulty is to produce more and more of it. That leads to new inventions!
After watching a video about science-fiction books on youtube, I got recommended a video about keeping a common place book made by the same person. That’s how I discovered that this type of diaries had a name. The name stuck with me and, the other day, I started to search about it and it turns out that there’s an history behind that type of books.
What is a Commonplace Book?
A commonplace book is a personal journal or notebook in which facts, ideas, observations, quotations, and other interesting bits are collected–and possibly organized.It serves as a repository for thoughts, insights, and inspiration.
Last year, I wrote about the invention of the Piano. Since then, I’m thinking of continuing my exploration of the subject as I thought it was quite interesting. But as time goes on, I wrote about a lot of things, but not much about music-related subjects (I wrote about what was the first rap song recently though). I’m listening to classical music lately when I’m working, and this brings the idea back to the forefront. So today, we are talking about:
Who Created the Violin?
The birth of the violin can be traced back to the Brescia area of Northern Italy in the early 16th century. It was around 1485 that the region became known for its skilled string players and renowned instrument makers, including creators of viols, violas, and other stringed instruments of the Renaissance.
