WI: Earlier paved asphalt roads

Until the 20th century, roads were usually not paved. Sure there were ancient Roman roads, Inca roads, etc. But the vast majority of roads weren't paved. Even city centers were serviced with dusty packed dirt roads. This was not only unhygenic, but these roads were easily pitted and rutted by horse and wagon. When it rained it turned to mud.

A major change came with asphalt. This is what is commonly called "tar". Asphalt is taken from tar pits and when it cooled it became a solid. It could be remelted and poured over gravel, which is then rolled to make a nice hard surface. This was far more economical than Roman style road building, requires little engineering know-how, and was easy to repair and resurface.

The material and technique were all available for centuries. Would access to cheap and plentiful roads revolutionize the way of life in ancient times?
 
Interesting...however, isn't one problem with asphalt the fact that it does need constant maintenance? You'd need quite a sophisticated logistical network to ensure that resurfacing crews would be within easy distance of any one point of the system, even way out in the mountains or wherever.
 
If it's any help, I read somewhere that asphalt, also known as macadam was invented in 1839 by a Scotsman named David McAdam. I did not make this up.

I think the big problem was durability especially with metal horseshoes.
 

Oddball

Monthly Donor
Interesting...however, isn't one problem with asphalt the fact that it does need constant maintenance? You'd need quite a sophisticated logistical network to ensure that resurfacing crews would be within easy distance of any one point of the system, even way out in the mountains or wherever.

Yes, but that is not very different from roads with surface of gravel ;)

If you have a certain level of drainage and fundament, a asphalt road requires less maintenace than an gravel road.

With low levels of drainage and fundament, gravel is better.

Anyhow, as soon as you start to have an road that approaches anything beyond tracks, organized maintenance is required.

(And yes, before I started working with dams and hydro power, I used to build roads and tunnels... :D)
 
If it's any help, I read somewhere that asphalt, also known as macadam was invented in 1839 by a Scotsman named David McAdam. I did not make this up.
That's probably synthetic asphalt, which is made from petroleum. Asphalt exist in the natural world.

I think the big problem was durability especially with metal horseshoes.
This shouldn't be a problem. What I've come across researching this is that the two problems with horses on asphalt concerns overheating on hot days and slippage during wet days. The solution being to make sure the horse has all four shoes for proper insulation and to avoid protruding shoe studs as this cause slippage on this type of surface.

I've found some pictures of horse carriage on asphalt as well.

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OK so now you have natural Asphalt and a good supply of gravel now figure out how your going to replicate the D.O.T. to maintain it,Invent a process and the plants to process the tar into road asphalt and the engineering to design and build your transportation network,This includes bridges,And now you have to figure out how to marry up your materiels which im assuming are not in the same place.as a note it takes multi-tons of gravel for a short section of road and i hope you dont have to make the gravel from stone or your completely hosed.

It required a massive effort to build Asphalt roadways in OTL,even up to the 40's the industrial world didn't have them and some parts of the still dont except for a highway or 2 . As a side note Roman roads still exist in places asphalt would vanish in 20 years if not properly maintained,with modern equipment we employ 1% or so of the US population to maintain and build our roads. So while its feasible to invent a asphalt road system earlier than OTL its not plausible
 
If it's any help, I read somewhere that asphalt, also known as macadam was invented in 1839 by a Scotsman named David McAdam. I did not make this up.

I think the big problem was durability especially with metal horseshoes.

I've studied this a bit. Make that 1839 somewhere between 1783 and 1795. Macadam roads were originally a layered mix of crushed stone that had a very hard surface. Tar was later used to bind the finely crushed top. The first Macadam road in America was the Philadelphia and Lancaster Turnpike, built in 1795. The National Road (now US Rt40) was Mcadam as well, construction began in 1811(or 1806?), and ended in 1839.
 
OK so now you have natural Asphalt and a good supply of gravel now figure out how your going to replicate the D.O.T. to maintain it,Invent a process and the plants to process the tar into road asphalt and the engineering to design and build your transportation network,This includes bridges,And now you have to figure out how to marry up your materiels which im assuming are not in the same place.as a note it takes multi-tons of gravel for a short section of road and i hope you dont have to make the gravel from stone or your completely hosed.
You don't need to "process" asphalt. You put a bucket into a tar pit and fill it up. Crushing stones is also not a problem with pre-industrial tools. The only limitation is manpower. In the ancient world this was not a problem for major empires. For one thing it's a lot less labour intensive than Roman style stone roads. Maintenance is so much simpler that local farmers can perform it once a decade or so.

Even without city to city roadlink, surely just having paved city streets would be a significant benefit.
 
This idea played a supporting part in the (IMHO) superb Henry IX timeline.
It's discussed throughout the TL, but a highlight was the Isthmus road across Panama.
 
You don't need to "process" asphalt. You put a bucket into a tar pit and fill it up.
Even without city to city roadlink, surely just having paved city streets would be a significant benefit.

But that raises another problem- what about areas without ready access to tar pits i.e. most areas? Without a natural source of asphalt they would have to turn to actual tar instead- and that requires processing of wood, which again means you may have a resource problem.

Paved city streets might work.
 

NapoleonXIV

Banned
MacAdams innovations IIRC, were to make the gravel smaller than the wheels of the standard wagons, so they packed the road instead of forming ruts, and to pitch the road for drainage, tho I think the Romans did this as well, binding the surface with tar was also his invention, but was a rarity, I think.

If you have extensive paved roads you might get earlier development of the motorcar. Steam powered carriages were invented in the 1790s, but never took off because they needed good roads. Far cheaper and easier to simply lay two iron rails and place your motorized carriage on that
 
I found this from About.com

The History of Roads and Asphalt
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By Mary Bellis

[SIZE=-1]The first indications of constructed roads date from about 4000 BC and consist of stone paved streets at Ur in modern-day Iraq and timber roads preserved in a swamp in Glastonbury, England.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]Late 1800s Road Builders[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]The road builders of the late 1800s depended solely on stone, gravel and sand for construction. Water would be used as a binder to give some unity to the road surface.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]John Metcalfe, a Scot born in 1717, built about 180 miles of roads in Yorkshire, England (even though he was blind). His well drained roads were built with three layers: large stones; excavated road material; and a layer of gravel.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]Modern tarred roads were the result of the work of two Scottish engineers, Thomas Telford and John Loudon McAdam. Telford designed the system of raising the foundation of the road in the center to act as a drain for water. Thomas Telford (born 1757) improved the method of building roads with broken stones by analyzing stone thickness, road traffic, road alignment and gradient slopes. Eventually his design became the norm for all roads everywhere. John Loudon McAdam (born 1756) designed roads using broken stones laid in symmetrical, tight patterns and covered with small stones to create a hard surface. McAdam's design, called "macadam roads," provided the greatest advancement in road construction.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]Asphalt Roads[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]Today, 96% of all paved roads and streets in the U.S. - almost two million miles - are surfaced with asphalt. Almost all paving asphalt used today is obtained by processing crude oils. After everything of value is removed, the leftovers are made into asphalt cement for pavement. Man-made asphalt consists of compounds of hydrogen and carbon with minor proportions of nitrogen, sulfur and oxygen. Natural forming asphalt, or brea, also contains mineral deposits.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]The first road use of asphalt occurred in 1824, when asphalt blocks were placed on the Champs-Élysées in Paris. Modern road asphalt was the work of Belgian immigrant Edward de Smedt at Columbia University in New York City. By 1872, De Smedt had engineered a modern, "well-graded," maximum-density asphalt. The first uses of this road asphalt were in Battery Park and on Fifth Avenue in New York City in 1872 and on Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington D.C., in 1877.[/SIZE]
 
Steam powered carriages were invented in the 1790s, but never took off because they needed good roads. Far cheaper and easier to simply lay two iron rails and place your motorized carriage on that

The early railways were no more cheaper than good roads by MacAdam or Telford, frequently they even cost more because of the need to create almost perfect levels, leading to much more viaducts, tunnels and so forth.

The real reason for the failure of the steam carriage was technical. The railway locomotive, circa 1830, is actually an easy, low tech solution compared to an advanced steam carriage. Steam carriages could be made to go on good macadam roads, but they needed much more sophisticated arrangements in steering, transmission, springs, and more advanced building materials, etc. Because of these tougher requirements, the technology developed "more slowly" and the big capital turned to costly but reliable railways instead. The ability of the railway to carry heavy goods in great numbers was also important, because it was exactly the growing industry that needed those reliable connections.

Arguably, in 1840, steam carriage technology had advanced more during the last decade than railway locomotive technology, but the bar for reliability (and success) was just much higher.
 
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