1. When was cement first used?

Cement has been a naturally occurring substance for more than 12 million years and was used in
rudimentary forms from about 3000 BC by the Egyptians, Chinese and Greeks. In man-made form,
however, concrete was first developed by the Romans and was used for building bridges, roads and
buildings

History of Cement
The Long Road to Today's Portland Cement
 

Ancient History:
Cement has been in use by humans throughout history; variations of the material
were used up to 12,000 years ago, with the earliest archaeological discovery of
consolidated whitewashed floor made from burned limestone and clay found in
modern-day Turkey. 

The first fired clay bricks were developed in the so-called Fertile Crescent,
where it was discovered that lime could be produced from burnt limestone
to prepare mortar. Around 800BC, the Phoenicians used the knowledge
that a mixture of burnt lime and volcanic ash, today called 'pozzolana',
could be used to produce hydraulic lime, that was not only stronger than
anything previously used, but also hardened under water.

The Romans developed new masonry techniques, with which they could
erect grand buildings with heavy foundations. One such development was
"opus caementitium", a type of concrete made of lime with aggregates of
sand and crushed rock. This was mostly used between masonry stones or
bricks, serving as formwork. Other cements used crushed brick, tiles and
ceramic pottery as aggregates. The Roman architect and engineer Marcus
Vitruvius Polllio comprehensively described the knowledge and
construction techniques of the time, which went on to to serve as the basis
of building methods for hundreds of years.  
 Famous historical buildings made from concrete, still standing today, are
the Colosseum and Pantheon in Rome, and the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul.
Cement

A cement is a binder, a substance used for construction that sets, hardens, and adheres to other materials to
bind them together. Cement is seldom used on its own, but rather to bind sand and gravel together. Cement
mixed with fine aggregate produces mortar for masonry, or with sand and gravel, produces concrete.
Concrete is the most widely used material in existence and is behind only water as the planet's most-
consumed resource

1. Joseph Aspdin
Joseph Aspdin was an English cement manufacturer who obtained the patent for Portland cement on 21
October 1824.

o Born: Dec 1778 · Leeds, England

o Died: Mar 20, 1855 · Wakefield, United Kingdom
o Inventions: Portland cement
o Children: William Aspdin (Son)
o Buried: St John's, Wakefield

2. Who was the first person to invent concrete?

In 1824 Joseph Aspdin invented Portland cement by burning finely ground chalk and clay until the carbon
dioxide was removed. Aspdin named the cement after the high-quality building stones quarried in
Portland, England. In the 19th Century concrete was used mainly for industrial buildings

1. When was the first cement made in the world?

Perhaps the earliest known occurrence of cement was before recorded history. A deposit of cement was
formed after an deposit of oil shale, located adjacent to a bed of limestone, burned due to natural causes.
These ancient deposits were investigated in the 1960s and 1970s.
The History of Concrete
The legacy of concrete is as enduring as the material itself. The following article
discusses the 5,000 year history of concrete and how it has developed into Today's
most frequently used material in the building industry.

Cement has been a naturally occurring substance for more than 12 million years and was used
in rudimentary forms from about 3000 BC by the Egyptians, Chinese and Greeks. In man-made
form, however, concrete was first developed by the Romans. Some time in the third century BC,
they discovered that mixing volcanic ash with lime mortar, sand and gravel made a rock-hard
substance similar to today's concrete. With the addition of animal fat, milk and blood, this
substance was called pozzolan cement and was used to construct the Appian Way, the
Coliseum and the Pantheon, as well as the Pont du Gard in Southern France.
After the fall of the Roman Empire, the quality of cementing materials diminished rapidly
because most people simply were more interested in building with stone. The technique for
making pozzolan cement was lost and didn't reappear again until midway through the Middle
Ages. In 1414, the manuscripts of the Roman Pollio Vitruvius - which contained information
about pozzolan cement - were discovered, thus reviving the interest in concrete. Fra Giocondo
used pozzolan cement to build the pier of the Pont de Notre Dame in Paris in 1499, the first
modern use of concrete.

Concrete technology took a huge leap in the 1700s. John Smeaton was an English engineer
looking for a building material that would not be adversely affected by water. He discovered in
1774 that quicklime made a harder cement. In 1793 he took that discovery another step
forward when he realized that the calcinations of limestone that contained clay produced
hydraulic lime, a lime that hardens under water. It was this material that was used in the
historic rebuilding of the Eddystone Lighthouse in Cornwall, England.
Smeaton's work led to a more widespread use of concrete throughout England and further
advances in technology. James Parker patented a natural hydraulic cement in 1796 that was
made by calcinating pieces of pure limestone that contained clay. William Jessop used this
technology to create the West India Dock in Great Britain, one of the first structures to use
concrete on such a large scale.

From there, the popularity of concrete as a building material spread to France, where Louis
Vicat developed an artificial hydraulic lime composed of synthetic limestone and clay in 1812.
This technology was used in 1816 to build the world's first unreinforced concrete bridge in
Souillac, France.

The 19th century saw rapid advances in concrete technology all over the world. One of the most
important advancements took place in 1824 when an English bricklayer named Joseph Aspdin
made an important discovery. He learned that burning finely ground chalk with divided clay in a
lime kiln produced a cement that is much stronger than the previously used crushed limestone
cement. This was called Portland cement and is still used in today's concrete production. Four
years later, Portland cement was used in its first engineering application for filling a breach in
the Thames Tunnel.

Another important technological advance came about in 1849 when the French gardener
Joseph Monier began experimenting with ways to make a more durable flowerpot. He
reinforced American William Wand's garden pots and tubs with iron mesh and the idea of iron
reinforced concrete, or ferroconcrete, was born. Monier exhibited his creation at the Paris
Exposition in 1867 and received a patent for it. Because reinforced concrete combines the
tensile strength of steel with the compressional strength of concrete, it is able to withstand
heavy loads and is commonly used in the building of many commercial structures even today.

After its inception, Portland cement became the focal point of concrete technology and many
scientists and engineers turned their focus to it. One of the first patents for its production was
issued to J. M. Mauder, Son & Co. in 1843. In 1845, Isaac Johnson claimed to have burned its raw
materials to clinkering temperatures. However, it was American David O. Saylor who first
demonstrated the importance of true clinkering in 1871 and he received the first American
patent for Portland cement. J. Grant of England took Saylor's ideas a step forward by chemically
analyzing the key ingredients of Portland cement and showing the importance of using the
hardest, densest portions of the clinker.
In those days, the kilns used to make concrete were vertical and stationary, and were allowed
to cool down after each use-a big waste of energy. A more efficient kiln was needed, and in
1885 an English engineer developed a kiln that was slightly tilted, horizontal and could be
rotated. This was called the rotary kiln and allowed for better temperature control and more
efficient mixing of materials. This resulted in a more consistent output of high quality concrete.
By 1890, most kilns used in concrete production were rotary.

American inventor Thomas Edison advanced rotary kiln technology when he introduced the
first long kiln in 1902 in his Edison Portland Cement Works in New Village, New Jersey. His kiln
was 150 feet long, 70 feet longer than the kilns used at that time, and paved the way for today's
kilns that are sometimes more than 500 feet long. Edison received a patent for his kiln in 1909.
In 1908 Edison also built concrete homes in New Village, which are still standing today (pictured
right).

The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw many firsts in concrete history, including:

 the first reinforced concrete bridge in 1889;

 the first American concrete street, placed by George Bartholomew in Bellefontaine, OH
in 1891;
 the Ingalls Building, the first concrete high rise, in Cincinnati, OH in 1903;
  the first mile of rural pavement for automobiles in the U.S. (Wayne County, Michigan) in
1909

The birth of modern concrete

A revival of interest in concrete in the 18th century occurred when engineers and
scientists began to experiment with new cements culminating in the development of
Portland cement by Joseph Aspdin and later by Isaac Johnson.

In the early 19th century concrete began to be used extensively in houses, generally as
un-reinforced mass concrete, clad or rendered in other materials. The first patent for
using wrought iron bars as reinforcement in flat slabs was taken out in 1854. When
reinforcement, later made from steel, became more widespread later in the century, a
wider range of structures such as bridges and industrial buildings began to be
constructed in concrete. The first multi-storey reinforced concrete building, Weaver´s
Mill, was erected in Swansea in 1898.

In the early 20th century, various different reinforcement systems were introduced, with
special reinforcement types and arrangements. The first codes and regulations for the
design of reinforced concrete structures were published in the UK in the 1920s and
1930s, by which time concrete became one of the most widely used construction
materials. The development of prestressing, largely by Freysinnet in the 1930s, saw the
construction of ever more elegant and slender structures in concrete. Concrete was used
to great effect in both World Wars, particular in defensive positions and for structures
such as the floating ‘Mulberry’ harbours.

CONCRETE

OVERVIEW / GALLERY / ARCHITECTS / BUILDINGS / MORE

OVERVIEW  
 It is difficult if not impossible to imagine the 20th century without
concrete. Surely the landscape of modernity and modernization
would be unrecognizable without it. By 1900 concrete may
indeed have been considered modern, but as pointed out by
technical manuals throughout the century, it was by no means a
new material. Ancient builders put it to use, most notably the
Romans, who built walls (faced with brick) and arcuated spans
(the 145-foot span of the Pantheon’s dome the most famous and
well-preserved example). This classical pedigree appealed to
many architects of the early 20th century, although modern
concrete practice had more recent origins.

Europeans experimented with it in the 18th century, when the

English engineer John Smeaton used a form of hydraulic
cement (a cement that hardens underwater) to rebuild the wall
and lighthouse at Eddy-stone off the Cornwall coast in 1756.
The French began their own experiments some 30 years later,
 
using a combination of clay and cement from limestone. Louis
Vicat perfected hydraulic cement around 1800, and by 1850
Joseph Monier was producing concrete flowerpots and sewer
pipes using wire mesh and timber molds. In 1824 the English
bricklayer John Aspdin invented a type of cement dubbed
“Portland,” after the stone it resembled. This high-strength
variety proved crucial, for it became, and remains, the standard
binding agent in the concrete used today. Portland cement was
exported to the United States at the end of the American Civil
War, and as in much of Europe, concrete frame structures were
constructed for a variety of industrial uses. Particularly valuable
for fireproof attributes, concrete effectively insulated the iron or
steel embedded within. In some places, such as the American
northeast, they were a relatively common sight by the start of
the 20th century. By 1887 the French engineer and building
entrepreneur François Hennebique patented a host of
techniques for embedding steel bars in concrete.
Chairman & Managing Director
Mr. P Prathap Reddy
Executive Directors
Mr. D. L. Kantham - Director (Technical)
Non-Executive Directors
Mrs. P. Deepthi Reddy
Mr. P. Venugopal Reddy
Independent Directors
Mr. P. Pradeep Kumar
Mr. Kancherla Ravindranath
Mr. Anil Kumar K.
Mr. Mocherla Sairam
Mrs. Umanath Varahabhotla
Key Management Personnel
Mr. Krishna Srivastava
Mr. Petluru Venugopal Reddy
Mr. Raj Kumar Singh
Mr. P J V Sarma