To save content items to your account,
please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies.
If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account.
Find out more about saving content to .
To save content items to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org
is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings
on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part
of your Kindle email address below.
Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations.
‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi.
‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
An officer in the Royal Engineers, Sir Charles William Pasley (1780–1861) wrote on matters ranging from military sieges to architecture. In this substantial work, first published in 1838, he outlines the experimentally determined properties of various building materials, with a view to their practical application. Offering guidance on how to decide between different calcareous mortars and cements, Pasley discusses how to judge their comparative strengths. Heeding advice from the Institution of Civil Engineers, he made this work a broad overview, rather than simply focusing on his special area of interest: natural and artificial cements. His research on cements led to the large-scale manufacture of products such as Portland, patent lithic, and blue lias. Pasley discusses the research of other authors in the appendix. Also reissued in this series, in English translation, is Louis-Joseph Vicat's Practical and Scientific Treatise on Calcareous Mortars and Cements, Artificial and Natural (1837).
Little is known about Christopher Davy (c.1803–49), despite his regular contributions to architectural and engineering magazines in Britain and America. Describing himself as an 'architect and teacher of architecture', he also took an interest in steam engines and railway construction. In this work, published in 1839, and using information gathered from experiments by the Board of Ordnance, Davy begins by describing the characteristics of the geology of England and Wales, with regard to its suitability for obtaining building materials and laying strong foundations. He describes the means by which soil and rock samples may be taken, and gives details relating to the construction of the foundations of St Paul's Cathedral on the troublesome London clay. Later chapters discuss the practicalities of pile driving, the use of concrete, and the properties of limestone. Reflecting the progress of technical knowledge in the early nineteenth century, the work features several illustrations of contemporary apparatus.