The Technical Development of Roads in Britain by Graham West

Author:Graham West [West, Graham]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781138743212
Google: 7xnLygEACAAJ
Publisher: Routledge, Chapman & Hall, Incorporated
Published: 2021-12-13T03:47:03+00:00

7 The Coming of the Motor Car

They saw a small cloud of dust,

with a dark centre of energy,

advancing on them at incredible speed.

The end of the nineteenth century saw Great Britain provided with a network of macadamised roads inherited mainly from the turnpike trusts. But this network was no longer the primary transport system of the country, that role having been taken over by the railways for goods, freight, mail and fast passenger journeys. However, as the twentieth century began the beginning of another change was already apparent — the advent of the motor car — but before discussing its effects we must make brief mention of the bicycle.

The introduction of the pneumatic tyre in 1888 made the bicycle a practical proposition and in 1890–95 there was a cycling boom. However, increasing use of bicycles showed that they were unsuited to macadamised roads, for not only did bicycle tyres get punctured frequently by the stones in the surface, but the pneumatic tyres themselves loosened stones by a sort of suction action as they rolled over the road surface. So road engineers had forewarning that the macadamised road was no longer suited to the traffic.

The first motor cars, powered by the petrol-fuelled internal-combustion engine, were introduced into England from France in about 1895, but these early models had wheels that were fitted with solid rubber tyres. By 1903, when motor car speeds had risen to 20 miles per hour, pneumatic tyres had become necessary in order to give a satisfactory ride, and they soon became standard. In the succeeding years, the increasing number of pneumatic-tyred motor cars compounded by many times the problems of punctures and the plucking out of stones from the road surface that had first been brought to light by the bicycle. Also, in the summer the pneumatic tyres sucked up great clouds of dust from the road surface that made the wearing of goggles by motorists universal, as shown by contemporary photographs and prints.

The first solution to the dust problem was to emulate Beau Nash and try to damp down the dust with water. At the turn of the century horse-drawn water carts, equipped with perforated sprinkler bars were a familiar sight on the roads in the summer as they trundled up and down ‘laying the dust’.

However, a more permanent solution to these problems was required and one approach lay in finding a means to bind the stones in road surface together and seal the surface against the suction action of the pneumatic tyres.

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