Tarmac
Thought id treat myself to an explore on Christmas, seeing as santa forgot to bring me my presents!
It was the start of a new century. The Boer War raged, Queen Victoria's long reign had just ended and the civilised world was starting to feel the effects of the new age of the motor car. The search was on for a material that would create better road surfaces. . .
As if by chance, on a road near Denby ironworks in Derbyshire in 1901, the county surveyor of Nottingham - Edgar Purnell Hooley noticed a barrel of tar had fallen from a dray and burst open.
To avoid a nuisance, someone from the ironworks had thoughtfully covered the sticky black mess with waste slag from nearby furnaces. . . and the world's first tarmacadam surface was born by accident!
Hooley noticed that the patch of road, which had been unintentionally re-surfaced, was dust-free and hadn't been rutted by traffic. So he set to work and by the following year, 1902, Hooley obtained a British patent for a method of mixing slag with tar, naming the material Tarmac.
By June 1903, Hooley formed the TarMacadam Syndicate Limited, the origin of what is now known as The Tarmac Group, the UK's leading supplier of building materials.
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Hope you enjoyed
