Joseph Monier

French landscaper

• Born: November 8, 1823
• Birthplace: Saint Quentin La Poterie, France
• Died: March 13, 1906
• Place of death: Paris, France

Around the mid-1800’s, Monier began experimenting with ways to make concrete planters that were durable and light. His idea for reinforced concrete influenced the construction of buildings and bridges.

Primary field: Civil engineering

Primary invention: Reinforced concrete

Early Life

Joseph Monier (mahn-yay) was born into a poor farming family in Saint Quentin La Poterie, near Nîmes in southern France. He was the sixth of ten children. Little is known about his childhood. Joseph and his brothers helped their father in the fields and with landscaping. According to legend, when the local abbey suggested that the fourteen-year-old boy be sent to school, his mother refused, saying that Joseph was too smart for school and would get along fine in life without an education. At nineteen, he was sent to Paris to tend the garden of the duke’s palace. He used his evenings to teach himself to read and write.

Life’s Work

Around 1846, Monier became a gardener at the Jardin des Tuileries of the Louvre, whose extensive gardens contained various plants and flowers that attracted visitors from around the world. The expensive and exotic flowers needed to be replanted often, and Monier began considering an alternative to wooden flowerpots, which were not durable and were also easily damaged by weather and plant roots. Clay pots were very fragile as well.

Monier started his own landscaping company in 1849 while working for the imperial palace of Luxembourg. Around this time, concrete began to be used for non-building purposes. For example, structures were covered with a layer of concrete to make them fireproof. Planters made of concrete were easily broken, so Monier began to experiment with the material to make sturdier containers. The only way he was able to make the concrete pots stronger was to increase their thickness, which made the flowerpots very heavy and difficult to move. Monier knew that to be useful in landscaping, flowerpots had to be sturdy but light enough to be moved easily.

Monier probably attended the 1855 World’s Fair, held in Paris. On display there was a small ship built by Frenchman Joseph Lambot that was constructed with cement mortar that had been reinforced with iron. Lambot is credited with building the world’s first concrete boat and inventing ferrocement. By 1861, Monier’s landscaping business had grown and was known for his fashionable use of rocks. He had begun experimenting with new methods for making concrete planters, as well as water basins and troughs. Monier used iron mesh to strengthen the material without the weight of extra concrete.

On July 16, 1867, Monier received his first patent for his system of building iron-reinforced concrete troughs used for landscaping. That same year, he showed his invention at the Paris Exposition. Whereas concrete structures had problems with tensile stress fractures, and iron—though strong, readily available as long pipes, and useful for simple jobs—was expensive and difficult to use in more complex projects, Monier’s system of adding a steel frame to the concrete slab solved both problems. French engineer François Hennebique saw Monier’s horticulture troughs and basins at the 1867 exposition and started his own construction company. In 1892, Hennebique patented his own method for reinforced concrete construction.

In the years following the Paris exposition, Monier filed for five new patents and six patents building on his original one. In 1868, he obtained a patent for iron-reinforced concrete pipes; the following year, he received one for reinforced concrete panels for buildings. Monier continued to work on new applications, and he obtained a patent for reinforced concrete bridges in 1873. He designed the first bridge using this technique in 1875 at the castle of Chazelet. Only 16.5 meters long and 4 meters wide, the bridge spanned the river. His last patent, issued in 1878, was for reinforced concrete beams. Monier’s patents do not contain much technical information. It appears that he producd the material without understanding the science behind the techniques.

During the late 1870’s and early 1880’s, Monier sold his patent rights to various German and Austrian builders. Among them was Gustav Wayss of Berlin. Wayss understood the importance of reinforced concrete to the construction industry, and through a series of business deals he obtained all Monier’s patent rights by 1887. Wayss spent years experimenting to understand the science of reinforcing concrete. He published the results, terming the process the “Monier system.” Between 1887 and 1899, Wayss’s company built 320 bridges throughout Europe using Monier’s design of crisscrossed iron rods under a thick layer of concrete.

Critics of the Monier system pointed out a series of potential flaws. They worried that wet cement would rust the bars, making them porous and breakable. It was also speculated that the iron and concrete would not always bond correctly. This would result in a weak structure, capable of breaking as easily as regular concrete. In order to silence the critics, several tests were carried out. Segments of reinforced concrete were excavated and destroyed to examine the iron rods. The rods were intact and looked as though they had just been forged. Tests were also done on slabs of reinforced concrete that were left outside during the winter months. Monier’s system held up under these conditions as well. Thanks to Monier, architects and builders finally had a cheaper, stronger, more pliable material that revolutionized the construction industry.

Despite the value of his inventions and patents, Monier filed for bankruptcy in 1888. His business associates from throughout Europe and his many friends petitioned the French president on his behalf. Monier was grateful, saying that he was happy just to have created an invention that benefited all civilized people. He died in poverty on March 13, 1906, at the age of eighty-two.

Impact

In addition to garden pots, Monier patented ideas for arches, bridges, pipes, floors, and railroad ties. His invention of reinforced concrete changed the face of cities throughout the world. Most of the large buildings in major cities would not be possible without reinforced concrete. The same can be said for a number of bridges.

Several engineering, construction, and architecture textbooks have been written about reinforced concrete. It lowers the cost of the construction and materials, shortens the schedule, and increases occupancy levels, strength, and durability of the building. When completed in 1910, the Paulinskill Viaduct in Hainesburg, New Jersey, was the world’s largest reinforced concrete structure. The bridge, built by the Lackawanna Railroad, is 35 meters high and 335 meters long. Today, the longest reinforced concrete arch bridge is the Wanxian in China, spanning 420 meters. In 1955, only 40 percent of U.S. bridges were made of concrete. By 1995, the percentage was up to 70 and still growing. The National Bridge Institute found that 20 percent of steel bridges built since 1955 were deficient. It also found that only 7 percent of all reinforced concrete bridges ever built were deficient.

Reinforced concrete bridges, roads, and buildings are built to withstand hurricanes, tornadoes, wind, fire, and even terrorism. Reinforced concrete was a key building material used in World War II and Cold War bunkers and bomb shelters. The material is also used to build airport terminals, runways, tunnels, and parking garages. Many homes are built on a slab of reinforced concrete.

Bibliography

Allen, Edward, and Joseph Iano. Fundamentals of Building Construction: Materials and Methods. 5th ed. New York: Wiley, 2008. A popular textbook used to study architecture design and construction. Includes a brief history of building materials from ancient to modern times. Contains key definitions, review questions, and hundreds of pictures and drawings.

McCormac, Jack C., and Russell H. Brown. Design of Reinforced Concrete. 8th ed. New York: Wiley, 2008. An engineering textbook covering all aspects of reinforced concrete design. Discusses the various ways reinforced concrete is used in construction, up-to-date building codes, and how to design earthquake-resistant structures.

Newby, Frank, ed. Early Reinforced Concrete. Studies in the History of Civil Engineering. Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2001. A series of essays covering the history of reinforced concrete through 1915. Includes a paper on early uses of concrete in England prior to 1890. Educational for anyone interested in the history of civil engineering.

Olonetzky, Nadine. Sensations: A Time Travel Through Garden History. Boston: Birkhäuser, 2006. A history of the garden, beginning with the Garden of Eden. Discusses how technology has changed gardening, through the invention of the lawn mower. Includes Monier’s invention and how it has affected gardening.