Submitted by jamescookenotthatone t3_1181yq6 in todayilearned
Tarmac is a company. The term is a macadamising material/surface.
If you like his roads then you should try his nuts!
They’re talking about this tarmac.
Yeah I know. They meant tarmacadam which is different to tarmac
Tarmac is short for tarmacadam.
Yes, which is probably why they called their company it.
Aye but it’s more commonly known as being the short form of tarmacadam and used colloquially to refer to any type of blacktop road.
[deleted]
Yeah but that's wrong isn't it? Like calling all vacuum cleaners a hoover when hoover is the brand.
Proud Scotsman chiming in here!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Scottish_inventions_and_discoveries?wprov=sfti1
i know, right? this is a good one
Nope, neither are wrong, but for different reasons. With hoover, the brand became so dominant at one time that it's name was synonymous with the product. With tarmac, historically calling the road surface tarmac was correct and the name stuck, even though the process changed. That happens a lot with the English language, the name stays even if circumstances change. Another example is movie trailers, they were so-called because they were previews of coming attractions that were shown at the end of a film, or in other words they would "trail" a film. The name stuck even though today they are shown before a movie or even screened independently. Words endure even when meanings change.
>Because of the historic use of macadam as a road surface, roads in some parts of the United States (such as parts of Pennsylvania) are often referred to as macadam, even though they might be made of asphalt or concrete. Similarly, the term "tarmac" is sometimes colloquially applied to asphalt roads or aircraft runways.[22]
I've always referred to blacktop or asphalt as macadam. I didn't realize this was just a local thing (Pennsylvania).
Macadam is now used for the buildup of support below the surfacing.
I'm always fascinated when a word falls into place. Never even correlated them two . Good one OP .
Is using the term PC instead of Personal Computer wrong?
No but that's different in my opinion
How? Where I'm from, PC is also a company.
Sealed surface roads were campaigned for by the Cycling Touring Club (now Cycling UK). Sealed surface roads were necessary because the few cars of the day were destroying Macadamised surfaces and making them a misery for all other roadusers. They also campaigned for major roads to be maintained by central government funds.
The CTC originally banned bicycle riders on the grounds that bicycles were working class and a gentleman rode a tricycle (there was also probably something about no respectable woman would ever be found with an instrument of pleasure between her legs).
I just see it as different
From central Pennsylvania. I remember my elementary school always calling the paved section of the playground macadam. But I've never heard anyone use the word macadam since then.
do you pronounce it mack-uh-dam or m'caddum?
Macadamized roads, especially in Maryland and Pennsylvania, really helped to facilitate fast troop/supply movement during the Civil War. Although I’ve read the road surface wasn’t comfortable on soldiers feet on long marches
mack-uh-dam
Same experience in East PA
1500 years after Rome fell we figured out this whole "roads" thing, again.
I always wondered if this word had any relationship to macadamia nuts...turns out they are both named after different people with a last name of McAdam/MacAdam
I grew up on the border of Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia and we pronounce it "mack-adam."
So interesting how words are pronounced differently even within the tristate area.
Huh. I grew up in PA and just always that that's what the blacktop roads were called. Neat.
[deleted]
m’caddum. Googled “pronounce macadam” and it said“muh CA dum” (emphasis is on the middle syllable). The google answer page also speaks it out loud, to remove any possible confusion.
That would be the second one then
Roads will last for centuries without maintenance
... unless we use cars on them
my mouth just dried out thinking about that.
People around here pronounce it like mu-CAD-um.
I'm from eastern PA and my husband was from the Pittsburgh area. He didn't know the word. I thought it was just him. I had no idea it was regional.
Good catch! I’ll fix my reply.
Yeah I'm from eastern PA (I forget anything past Harrisburg exists tbh lol)
Indians still use them in rural areas, it's commonly known as kaccha rasta aka raw roads. They are quite reliable.. Water bound macadam roads
Same. first I’d ever heard of that was when I was in PA
And yet every old person I’ve encountered who used the word macadam used it in reference to tarmac.
Stephen King calls it that too
They probably didn’t have to check every rock. Maybe every third rock?
We in Germany build our forest roads (only for forestry related driving) in this way.
Just need to check one, then pocket that rock and use it as a template. Bigger than mouth rock? Goes in that pile. Smaller than mouth rock? The other pile over there.
Pittsburgh region native here, checking in. I've never heard the word before.
Surely they had to recalibrate the mouth rock occasionally, to see if it still is up to spec?
So like the lightbulb challenge but the extra downside of scraping your teeth and not being able to crush it?
Abbreviation is not the same as genericization
In Belgium we do the same. The original roads were asphalted over but still referred to as macadam
I guess those workers had a higher bodily mineral content than the average person
Most roads are still built this way, your top level of asphalt pavement is only a few inches thick and then will have some manufactured gravel under that to maintain stability. That's where most of your strength comes from, the gravel under the pavement. They're also "crowned", as the OP discussed, to allow drainage of water.
Crushed rock and the science behind it, which is also the science of roadways and pavement, is super neat and one of those "I didn't know it was that complicated" things that people use day to day.
tips 19th century hat M'Cadam.
[deleted]
I’m in central PA, no idea that was a local thing.
Tips cart
I suspect Phineas and Ferb have something to do with this..
Mack Adam. From SE Pa
I’ve lived in Pittsburgh a very, very long time. Never heard the word either.
This guy mouth-rocks.
[removed]
In places that don't see frost they can last indefinitely. Copenhagen started heating sidewalks about 20 years ago and the first ones they laid down in the trial still look perfect.
Simon Winchester's book, " The Men Who United the State" gets into the early American roads. No one knew of those ancient roads. The had to learn from scratch.
jamescookenotthatone OP t1_j9etovt wrote
Something I found amusing.
>Size of stones was central to the McAdam's road building theory. The lower 8 in (20 cm) road thickness was restricted to stones no larger than 3 inches (7.5 cm). The upper 2-inch-thick (5 cm) layer of stones was limited to stones 2 centimetres (3⁄4 in) in diameter; these were checked by supervisors who carried scales. A workman could check the stone size himself by seeing if the stone would fit into his mouth. The importance of the 2 cm stone size was that the stones needed to be much smaller than the 4 inches (10 cm) width of the iron carriage wheels that travelled on the road.[5]