Interesting Facts About Concrete

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

Watch Richard Ambrose and Jonny Phillips quickly construct a building made of concrete canvas—a material that has all the elements of concrete, but is flexible enough to be turned into any shape. This technology allows people to erect permanent structures in a fraction of the time needed for traditional building techniques.

• The word concrete comes from the Latin word "concretus" (meaning compact or condensed)

• The earliest known occurrence of cement was twelve million years ago, when a natural deposit formed after an occurrence of oil shale naturally combusted while adjacent to a bed of limestone.

• Concrete was used by the Ancient Egyptians as infill material in the pyramids of the Giza Necropolis.

• Located in Rome, the Pantheon is the largest unreinforced (no metal frame) concrete dome in the world. It was built in 120 A.D.

• Thomas Edison experimented with precast concrete houses.

Roman Pantheon, still the largest
unreinforced solid concrete dome ever built.