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Show HIGHWAY BUILDERS OF ANCIENT TIMES Improving the highways Is not a new Idea. Highway engineering dates back to the earliest days of history, when it first became necessary to insure in-sure the transportation of supplies for tribal armies. Julius Caesar was among the foremost fore-most highway builders. Many other noted Romans interested themselves in this work. The Appian Way, a long, straight boulevard leading te ancient an-cient Home, Is among the examples of early highway construction. So firmly was this roadbed laid a thousand years ago that it is still one of Italy's finest avenues. A late example of fine road building is the Boulevard des Anglais, which skirts the Mediterranean at Nice, France. It is said to have been constructed con-structed by British soldiers, prisoners under Napoleon Bonaparte. A wide, smooth avenue which is underlaid with a deep stone foundation, It Is apparently appar-ently unaffected by time or weather conditions, has endured for a hundred years and bids fair to last many years more. A considerable impetus was given to good-road building by John L. Mc-Adam Mc-Adam of Scotland. He utilized crushed stone top dressing on a convex roadbed. road-bed. It is pamed macadam, for its Inventor, In-ventor, but with a slight difference in the spelling of the name. Macadam road surface was quickly adopted in America, and proved an Improvement over dirt roads. It did not easily acquire ruts, and was particularly par-ticularly unaffected by rain. On the east coast, where clam shells were plentiful, they were used by many municipalities mu-nicipalities for macadamization.. The shells when finely ground under the weight of traffic, proved efficient as top dressing, though hard on rubber tires while wearing In. Then came the automobile, requiring, requir-ing, for utmost comfort, smoother road surface than had previously' been necessary. Bumps that a slow-moving vehicle negotiated with comfort, were disturbing to occupants of motorcars, traveling at speeds of from 20 to 40 miles per hour. Highway engineers turned to tarred surface, asphalt and concrete for a solution so-lution of the problem, and found It. The materials which made such satisfactory satis-factory sidewalks were as useful for road paving. Cobblestones are disappearing, disap-pearing, replaced by smooth brick pavement, asphalt, tar or concrete. The nation's intercity highways are paved. County roads, not heavily traveled, are supported by a minimum of taxpayers. tax-payers. They are still a problem, but one that Is eased by better maintenance main-tenance than formerly. Nearly all farmers own cars. Hence they are willing to spend their time and money for road improvement. This is in the form of road dragging each spring, and oil spreading, which makes the dirt impervious to rain. The automobile has rapidly advanced ad-vanced highway Improvement In the United States and Canada, where, due to the great distances to be traversed, road betterments had been slow in coming. Large sums obtained from the license fees paid by motorists are now annually devoted to road construction and maintenance. |