Concrete - History
Concrete, a material that doesn’t bring thoughts to mind about a beautiful and aesthetically appealing environment. But still we use concrete, almost without exception, in all buildings we construct. Why? It depends on the concretes qualities as a hard, reliable, economic and ecologic material with long life cycle.
The use of concrete is not a modern occurrence, but rather antique. Even the old Romans had their concrete or concretum, a latin word which means solid matter. And concrete really proved to be a solid material because the oldest remnants of concrete found by archaeologists are several thousand years old. Some of the most impressive older concrete constructions was erected during the Roman period, for example the Pantheon in Rome. Around the Mediterranean Sea you can still find aqueducts, drainage systems and amphitheatres built in concrete for 2000 years ago.
After the Roman era the technique to produce concrete was lost. It is not until the middle of the 19th century that concrete is becoming the dominating construction material of our time. In England a new production method for concrete is introduced, by burning a mixture of limestone and clay at very high temperatures. The result was cement that resembled the English Portland stone, hence the common name “Portland cement". In England and on the continent big cement factories were rapidly growing. Cement became the raw material in the concrete production.
HTC Superfloor™ - From humble beginnings to the world market
Polished concrete have existed in different forms and have been performed with HTC equipment before 1996. The technique was greatly refined during a project in 1996 where HTC got the oppurtunity to push the development of diamond tools and grinding methods forward. Suddenly there were completely new areas of use for concrete floors in industrial and public premises. The result was a totally new flooring concept, HTC Superfloor™, that was introduced in our company newsletter HTC-News during 1997. The technique then mainly consisted of grinding with water, but a fast development of the diamond tools soon lead to the dry grinding methods utilized today. Presently our method is introduced to architects, concrete producers, construction companies and facility owners on a global market.