The Race to Patent Reinforced Concrete
Patents played also a critical role in transmission
of reinforced concrete technique in Belgium and elsewhere. This diffusion had two levels, national
and even international trends and local individual inventors
The Rise of Patenting
The system of patent played also a
significant role for reinforced concrete in the industrial implementation of the material.
Furthermore, they allow nowadays to discover the existing past network of this invention (involved
persons, means, etc.).
The advent and early developments of reinforced concrete were related to national patenting
Filing patents was not a consistent process from country to country, but regardless of the process, Patenting was reason for the rapid spread and usage of concrete at the end of the 19th century
Patents on
reinforced concrete constitute today a primary source of information, both for their technical
content and for the assessment of the market penetration of the innovative material.
A patent, submitted to the Ministry of Industry and
Labour (namely now Office Belge de la Propriété Intellectuelle, OPRI), was accepted without any
verification of its relevance, originality or feasibility (Fig. 1). Therefore, the quality of patents is rather unequal.
During the end of the 19th
century until the start of the 2oth
century, reinforced concrete patents supported both the development of structural forms adapted to the materials and the innovations in the processes of construction
Secondly, their contributions through patents, literature or pieces of work contain
essential technical information, useful for any appraisal of a reinforced concrete structure prior to
1914. Assessing such structures requires knowledge about their structural characteristics. Finally,
the increase of patent submissions on reinforced concrete shows that the new material was at the
center of the attention of the industry at the turn of the 20th century. This trend may also reflect also
the economic impact of the composite material in the field of construction.
Comparing to France, Belgium received an impressive submission of patents. This may be explained by the fact that the legal access to patent was very liberal, that the country was open to the importation of foreign inventions and by the economical importance of Belgium at that time.
Brussels. Besides having started his career
in Belgium, F. Hennebique (1842-1921) was absolutely dominant in Brussels, with more than 80 %
of the market of reinforced concrete.
Hennebiques contribution to the marketing of reinforced concrete was spectacular and in Britain as elsewhere in the early 1900s his system predominated over others, due as much to the organization of his company as to the intrinsic merits
Francois Hennebique, known for his pioneering of reinforced concrete, was the leader of the RC industry in the late 19th century. He was able to do this by setting up agencies, sub agencies, and contractors like no other engineer. He used them in large numbers and he used them across the world, ensuring responsibility for as much of the reinforced concrete industry as possible.
The patents on reinforced concrete in the early stage were generally submitted by building contractors
and seldom by engineers or architects: "While engineers were doubting and scientists were
calculating, inventors applied and improved, and practice bring every day of new facts"
Most of the reinforced concrete patents were
submitted by commercial agencies, acting as intermediary body between inventors and the diffusion
of their invention
Hennebique established commercial arrangements to ensure the controlled employment of his system, with special training courses for his engineers and selected contractors 'licensed' to use his system in return for royalties.
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1 Ignacio Marcos, Jose-Tomas San-José, Amaia Santamaría & Leire Garmendia (2018) Early Concrete Structures: Patented Systems and Construction Features, International Journal of Architectural Heritage, 12:3, 310-319
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2 Marcos, I., San José, JT, Cuadrado, J., (2014). Patents in the introduction of concrete armed in Spain: case study of the Alhóndiga de Bilbao. Construction Reports, 66 (534): e024
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3 Honda, Yasuhiro. “The Hennebique Company: An Early Industrialization for the Reinforced Concrete (1880-1914.” Historical Studies in Civil Engineering 21 (2001): 227–32.
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4 CUSACK, PATRICIA. "Agents of Change: Hennebique, Mouchel and Ferroconcrete in Britain, 1897-1908." Construction History 3 (1987): 61-74. Accessed October 28, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41613635.
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5 Anaya, Jesus. “Historical Patents and the Evolution of Twentieth Century Architectural Construction with Reinforced and Pre-Stressed Concrete ”
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6 ASTM International
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7 American Concrete Institute
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