Macadam is a type of road construction, pioneered by Scottish engineer John Loudon McAdam around 1820, in which crushed stone is placed in shallow, convex layers and compacted thoroughly.
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10 Facts About Macadam
2.
Macadam became director of the Holyhead Road Commission between 1815 and 1830.
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3.
Macadam recognized that some of the road problems of the French could be avoided by using cubical stone blocks.
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4.
Macadam turned the other faces more vertically than Tresaguet's method.
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5.
Macadam accomplished this by incorporating a layer of brushwood and heather.
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7.
Macadam began to actively propagate his ideas in two booklets called Remarks on the Present System of Roadmaking, and A Practical Essay on the Scientific Repair and Preservation of Public Roads, published in 1819.
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8.
Macadam wrote that the quality of the road would depend on how carefully the stones were spread on the surface over a sizeable space, one shovelful at a time.
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9.
Macadam emphasized that roads could be constructed for any kind of traffic, and he helped to alleviate the resentment travelers felt toward increasing traffic on the roads.
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10.
Macadam advocated a central road authority with trained professional officials who could be paid a salary that would keep them from corruption.
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